Etymological field notes

"Physiologie du Flaneur," by Louis Huart (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     I try not to admire Lee Bey too much. Out loud, in public, that is. Because the Sun-Times architecture critic is a modest man, and it's unseemly to have a colleague, particularly one as sketchy as myself, always gushing on about you. 

      Beside, the truth is obvious, and I try not to traffick in the obvious — Lee embroiders and enlivens the paper with an endless stream of fascinating columns about the rich architectural heritage of Chicago. Someone should give him a Pulitzer Prize, right away, and the fact they haven't yet, is one of the many indictments of that particular award (or heck, maybe I blame them unfairly. Maybe he's never been submitted — he is, as I said, humble. I've never submitted my stuff, because my time is precious, and chasing awards is not worth it. I wouldn't be surprised if Lee feels the same).
     Privately admiration is another matter. I regularly look up from one of his columns, briskly gesture to it with a snap of the hand, and mentally address an unseen audience: "This! This is how you do it!"
     I can't recall ever abandoning a Lee Bey column halfway and stopping — he grabs you by the nose, drags you through whatever subject is at hand, even if its some obscure building you never previously heard of or could imagine yourself caring about until you hit that first sentence.
     Last week Lee did something which is, well, very rare, at least for me. He was writing about a massive, Frank Gehry-designed desk in the lobby of the Inland Steel Building that is going up for auction. And he unleashes this. See if what stopped me will stop you too:

     "Widely read Chicago flâneur and architecture-watcher Lynn Becker brought attention to the auction last week on social media."

     "Flâneur"? I'd never read that word in my life. I sometimes deploy words that puzzle readers, but rarely encounter one that puzzles me. It's a treat.

     See, this is the bond Lee and I have — we are not only interested in a wide variety of stuff, but we assume our readers are also interested in a wide variety of stuff and, in addition, are not stupid. (When stupid people do write in, violently objecting to some piece of sense I've presented them with, I sometimes reply, with genuine astonishment, "But I didn't write it for you...")
     So Lee can deploy flâneur and assume that either readers already know it or if they don't, can quickly look it the fuck up. Which I did: "A flâneur (from the French verb flâner, meaning to stroll or saunter) is a 19th-century French term for an urban wanderer who casually explores a city without a set destination, observing society with a detached but deeply engaged eye."
     At the risk of putting on airs: that's me. Well, not the "without a set destination" part. Typically I'm heading to some restaurant for lunch, or up to the Newberry Library to raid their stacks. But I give myself plenty of time, and walk, mentally twirling a cane and assessing the landscape. You can't imagine how many columns I've found that way.
     It's not an obscure term. Baudelaire waxes poetic about what he called the "passionate spectator."
     I was curious as to where Lee picked up " flâneur" so decided to do that reportorial trick and ask.
     "That's a great word," said Lee. "I think I learned it my first go round as architecture critic," (Lee left the paper for a while, to our horror, to work for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and help Richard Daley's administration not mess up architecture as badly as they messed up everything else, as well as teach and half a dozen other projects before returning, thank merciful God, to us). "I can't remember where I picked it up, some odd place like Mad magazine or National Lampoon. I thought, 'I like that word.'"

     See? Before I let this go, I have to point out the comfortable-in-one's-skin quality reflected in Lee's speculating on where he got the word. Mad magazine. Or National Lampoon. Not exactly Architecture Digest or Domus or any of those high hat trade publications. I can't imagine Paul Goldenberger saying, "Yeah, it's something I glommed from a Bugs Bunny cartoon..." One of the many benefits of being a Chicago journalist working for a Chicago publication with Chicago colleagues for Chicago readers in Chicago. We get to be both flâneurs, when we choose, and normal people too.

     

'The kids feel it' — summer camp has kids singing the blues

Nyrobi, 17, left, listens to some tips for singing "I'd Rather Go Blind" at Blues Camp Chicago.

     What is the blues? The blues is pain set to music.
     Take “I’d Rather Go Blind,” the 1967 classic written by blues queen Etta James. Beaten by her drunken foster father, James spent time in Cook County Jail for forging checks to support her longtime heroin habit. You can hear it in her voice.
     But what about singers who are not Etta James, such as a high school student from the northwest suburbs?
     “Something toooooold me, it was oh-oh-ver,” sings Nyrobi, 17, slowly, in a thin, wavering voice, on a small stage Wednesday on the first floor of Columbia College, 1014 S. Michigan. “When I saw youuuuu with her, talking. Something deep down in my sooooul....”
     Jackie Scott interrupts.
     “The woman is writing this song because she saw her man with another women,” says Scott, an imposing woman with a gold ring on her left hand that spells, “BLUES.” “Imagine you saw your boyfriend with another girl. You’re not going to be singing.”
     And here she delivers a spot-on imitation of Nyrobi’s airy warble.
     “You’re not going to do that, right?” Scott continues. “You’re going to push it out a little more.”
     “SOMETHING TOLLLLLLD ME,” she belts, in a strong, loud voice. “IT WAS OHHHHHVER!”
     Welcome to Day 3 of Blues Camp Chicago, where the world of summertime childhood fun meets the snap-brim hat and two-tone shoes discipline of blues musicianship. There are studio rehearsals, sound checks and sing-alongs, plus snacks, skating and a “sneaker ball.”
     “We want them to be kids, of course. We want them to understand and appreciate blues as American roots music,” said Fernando Jones, the veteran Chicago blues man who founded Blues Camp Chicago 17 years ago.

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Flashback 1999: Deep background — Dig this: Foot by foot, tunnel moves ahead

 

      The Deep Tunnel is a vast, 110-mile-long, 30-year-old, $3 billion-dollar project. It isn't yet completed, but already is proving insufficient to the task of draining the climate-change-stoked rains hitting the Chicago area. According to a story Tuesday in the Sun-Times, the tunnel is getting fuller faster. That's bad news, particularly for homeowners in the Southwest suburbs, whom the Deep Tunnel was supposed to protect from flooding.

     I've been down the Deep Tunnel, twice. Once when they were flooding the Thornton Quarry in 2015. And for the first time in 1999, a story not before posted here:

In the Deep Tunnel, 1999

     In 2005, in the basement of a house that hasn't been built, the possessions of a boy who hasn't been born will stay nice and dry during a major rainstorm because of work going on right now 310 feet under Torrence Avenue.
     The second-to-last leg of the Deep Tunnel Project is creeping slowly forward, a foot at a time, as a gigantic digging machine eats into the dense dolemite limestone.
     Work is conducted 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by two dozen miners who, with their beards, coveralls and miner's helmets, are a vision from Harlan County, Ky., working to bring Chicago into the 21st century.
     The Deep Tunnel began 93 miles and 27 years ago. Every four days, on average, rainwater would back up a sewer system somewhere in Chicago, sending raw sewage spilling into the already polluted Chicago River. The tunnel was conceived as a man-made underground river to carry away storm overflow.
     "This is the second greatest accomplishment in our history," said new Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner Martin Sandoval. "The first was the reversal of the river."
      The Deep Tunnel is so vital to the growing Chicago area that when a small section collapsed in June, beaches were closed and water supplies were compromised. Interest in the unseen tunnels grew after that, and the Water Reclamation District invited the media down Wednesday to see what they are up to.
     Digging, mostly. To get to the digging, you step into a circular yellow metal cage, big enough for four people, that is lowered into a hole in the ground.
     The cage touches ground in a cavernous area, blasted from the rock, where the gigantic digging machine was lowered and assembled in 18 separate pieces. An electric train takes miners to the machine, two miles away and moving forward at nearly a mile a month.
     The noise is tremendous. Forty-seven cutting heads spin into the limestone across a rotating circle 27 feet wide. Every 7 feet, the machine releases a pair of "gripper pads" — disc-brakelike devices, 5 feet wide, that push out against the walls of the cave to keep the machine from spinning — and moves forward. The pads reset, and the digger's spinning face grinds onward.
     Miners must be alert. Sensors monitor for methane gas. They run into fault lines, or different types of rock — 1,800 feet of the tunnel had to go through shale, which is not as strong as the limestone, and the roof of the tunnel had to be specially reinforced as the machine moved forward, to avoid collapse.
     Meanwhile, miners atop the drill bore a pair of 5-foot-deep holes into the roof and attach a semicircular metal band with 5-foot-long hollow metal rods that are driven into the holes, spreading wide to set into the stone and help support the ceiling, which feels wet and crumbly.
     Along the length of the two miles, groundwater glistens on the walls and occasionally pours in cascades that will be shut off with grout before the interior of the tunnel — a blanket of concrete a foot thick — is poured. The crushed rock is removed by a conveyor belt and sold.
     Not only will the Deep Tunnel keep basements dry and the Chicago River pure — a bass fishing contest will be held on the river next year — but it also provides a good source of crushed limestone. The new United Parcel Service facility at 75th and La Grange is sitting on stone from the Deep Tunnel.  

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct, 21, 1999

Sophie Cunningham finger paints a vivid picture of MAGA mindset

     After this ran, a reader chided me for letting it run without a photo of the point itself, assuming it was a mistake. It wasn't. We lifted heaven and earth trying to get permission to use that photo. I contacted Imagn Images (whose name looks like a typo) and Reuters — which supposedly handle permissions for the photo, though not in real time, apparently. I also badgered several top IndyStar editors, as well as the photographer herself, directly. And I know editors at the Sun-Times were doing what they could. All for naught. Another way newspapers have one hand tied behind their backs. Any idiot can grab any photo and toss it online. Responsible publications — what few remain — follow rules, and don't seize the work of others. As do ethical web sites. As much as I wanted to slap the photo in the circle in the meme below atop the blog, I couldn't.

     Unlike you, I've actually been to a WNBA game. Ten years ago, at the invite of a Chicago Sky publicist. I thought it would be fun outing for me and my wife, and it was, in a low-key way. The crowd was small but enthusiastic. The action on the court was spirited. We had great seats — little tables on the floor behind the net, in fact. We got free popcorn, and an orange and white basketball signed by the lanky Sky star at the time, Elena Delle Donne, who powered the team past the Seattle Storm, 92 to 88.

     The game did not create in me a fervent interest in women's basketball. Which is not insult to women's sports. I'm not captivated by the men's NBA either.
     But even I have noticed the ongoing saga of Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark, whose presence has supercharged the league. Her opponents seem to really hate her, because of — and I base this on my professional research, not personal bias, so don't blame me for these options — 1) her raw talent; 2) her $28 million contract with Nike; 3) her heterosexual orientation; 4) her white race; or 5) all four.
     As a result Clark gets poked in the eye more than Curly Howard of the Three Stooges, and she is constantly being bludgeoned to the floor while refs gaze at the ceiling, if Instagram is any guide.
     All of which could still be safely left to the sports pages. But Instagram has a way of holding your face in certain cultural moments, and Sunday my feed was inexplicably filled with Clark's teammate, Sophie Cunningham, pointing her finger.
      That's it. Pointing. At an opponent. In a very cool, focused manner.
     Perhaps you've seen it. Perhaps some background is in order.

     In a June 22 game, Clark was issued a technical foul after scuffling with Phoenix Mercury forward DeWanna Bonner. The call caused Cunningham to calmly point at Bonner, with an "I see you" look. Bonner started raging, and pointing herself, and demanding Cunningham stop pointing at her, prompting Cunningham to keep pointing, her face serene, rhythmically wagging her finger.
     It might have been another dust mote in the media whirlwind. But the image gained traction online, and on June 30 the White House jumped in, tweeting Cunningham talking about the incident on a podcast, paired it with Donald Trump, also pointing — because everything has to be about him.
     Now Cunningham's is the finger that launched a thousand memes.
     Cunningham crossing the Delaware in place of George Washington. Cunningham as Helen of Troy. Cunningham at the water's edge, ordering a boatload of dodgy looking refugees to "Go the fuck home."
     Why? Well, again theories: Cunningham is 1) tall and blonde, in the mold of the Fox News feminine ideal; 2) she's from Missouri, which led some to assume she's conservative, though there's no sign of that; 3) she's white, admonishing a Black player, causing some on Instagram to decide she's calling out DEI; 4) apparently straight, in a sport where that isn't always the case.
     Cue that patented mind-reading trick the right has perfected, Cunningham's viral moment was deemed a finger in the eye of sputtering liberals.

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'Be alive, until you are not'

     Sunday was a beautiful day at the Chicago Botanic Garden. That's about all I have to say. Families out in abundance, the hot weather banished, for now, the rains pausing for a few hours.

     The day before, July 4, had been a washout. I announced to Edie that we'd grab an umbrella and go show solidarity with the sodden marchers. But Northbrook cancelled its Independence Day parade. They did keep the fireworks show, which we can see from the end of our block — most years. This year it was barely a colorful glow in the fog, as neighbors streamed past us, back from the viewing areas early, announcing the whole thing a dud.

     Not a problem with the pyrotechnics on display at the Botanic Garden. The recent rains seem to have supercharged nature's bounty.
     I was so taken with the bold symmetry of the plants above that I didn't bother noting what they are. Cabbages, I believe.

     Meanwhile, below are flowers on a vertical flowerbed — a grid mounted to a wall, quite a handsome effect.

     I should probably leave it there, but you come here for something substantial to chew on, so let's turn to that bard of nature's balm, Mary Oliver, who celebrates, "The singular and cheerful life/of any flower," to whit, "its obedience to the holiest of laws; be alive/until you are not."

     The poem goes on from there, but you get the picture.

Those Patriot Front fellows seem confused about what ‘pride’ means

Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen

     I'm white. I'm proud. Yet I'm confused about this “white pride” business.
     Because the two qualities seem to belong to different realms, race and self-esteem, without much intersection. My race is a condition of birth. I didn't have to work hard for it. I almost said it's like being left-handed, but I am rather proud of being left-handed, as it sets me apart and imposed a series of minor lifelong challenges that I overcame.
     That's what leads to pride: facing difficulties, accomplishing something hard, something that not everybody can do. Using right-handed scissors requires effort and a bit of dexterity, for a left-hander, but I am not especially proud of that because most people manage it.
     The things I am proud of tend to be endeavors that not only take effort but effort over time and produce a valuable result. They're also something that others fail at. I'm proud of making a living as a writer for the past 44 years, thinking of the lines of the Robert Browning poem, “Andrea del Sarto”:
     I do what many dream of, all their lives,
     —Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
    And fail in doing.
     Include in there being married for 35 years, producing two fine boys — I won't bother ticking off all the ways they're superior to their dad — who launched well and easily transitioned into careers and families of their own. Plus 20 years sober, speaking of things that people try to do and fail, spectacularly.
     None of that fell into my lap. I had to work for it. Hence a certain pride. Not unseemly pride, I hope. I try to view my achievements with a humble practicality. My writing kept me alive but did not set the world aflame. No best-sellers, no Pulitzer. I'm not even the most successful writer in Northbrook — that's Bob Kurson.
     Yes, other groups have pride — Black Pride, Gay Pride — but that is interwoven with overcoming difficulties.

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Needlework

 

    "NEIL I," CVS informed me Saturday, via email, my middle initial making me seem like some kind of dynastic monarch, "your prescription(s) are ready for pickup at your pharmacy."
      Prescription, singular. For insulin pen needle tips. Taking between one and five injections a day, I go through them quickly. One doesn't want to run out of needles.   So when I get down to a couple dozen, I want a fresh box ready. I've been waiting for CVS to automatically fills my pen needle prescription.

    With prescriptions popping up regularly at both Walgreens and CVS, it's hard to keep everything straight, and CVS doesn't tell you what any given prescription will cost until it is filled — in this case, 100 needles for $41.60.

    I sighed. I'd been hoping they'd be free — sometimes they are, sometimes not, according to some logic. I have not yet mastered (my hunch is, different types of prescriptions from different doctors).

   So instead I went on Amazon and bought two 100 count boxes of a nearly identical needles — 32 G, 4 mm pen tips— for $11.99 apiece, almost a quarter of the cost at CVS. I could have gotten them for $9.99 apiece, but didn't like the looks of the box quite as much. It was pink. The boxes I got were green, like the Nano prescription needle boxes. Green seems a mark of quality for me. 

     The only difference I can tell is the $41 boxes have foil covers on the little plastic cone holding each individual needle tip — those seem sturdier, and feel better while being stripped off than the little paper covers. 

     That's nuts, right? Paying more for the little strip you pull off. But when you do something continually, such minor considerations take on greater weight. I've shrugged, standing in line at CVS or Walgreens, and paid the $40 plus, thinking a) I'm here, might as well get more; b) those foil covers do strip off far more satisfyingly and c) the box is green.

     But that seems wasteful. When I was in Portugal, I worried I hadn't brought enough needle tips — we were eating a lot of carbs — so thought to buy another box. That involved walking into a pharmacy, asking, and putting down 7.39 Euros — about $8.45, no prescription needed (actually, you never need a prescription to buy insulin needles at a drug store in Illinois either).

    I do worry, by buying two boxes on Amazon, I might be in violation of the Illinois Hypodermic Needles and Syringes Act, which clearly states that a person may possess 100 such needles. Though it doesn't say you can't possess more, so perhaps it's a gray area. If it is indeed illegal, I would point out that sometimes these pieces on EGD veer into satire, fantasy and fiction, and one can't be certain this isn't some wildly exaggerated medical dream sequence. No need to kick in my door. I'll say I sold the other hundred to my wife — they're her needles now. I just own 100.

     Looking into law and diabetes in general, Illinois and I see eye-to-eye regarding injection. When I first came down with diabetes 1, if I'd be out to eat in a restaurant, I'd excuse myself and go administer insulin in the restroom. A process that had a cool, Keith Richards vibe, to me, which shows you what a straight arrow I've become.

     Nowadays, anyone I know well enough to eat lunch with can be trusted to gaze off in the middle distance while I hike my shirt and jab myself in the stomach. This practice is endorsed by the 2025 Public Self-Care of Diabetes Act, which notes, "The General Assembly finds that forcing diabetics to administer their personal insulin injections out of public view is unnecessarily restrictive" going on to state, "A person with diabetes, or parent or legal guardian of a person with diabetes, may self-administer insulin or administer insulin for his or her child in any location, public or private, where the person, or the person's parent or legal guardian, is authorized to be, irrespective of whether the injection site is uncovered during or incidental to the administration of insulin."

     "In any location..." Hmm. "Irrespective of whether the injection site is uncovered." That makes a person think. Being a wisenheimer, I'm tempted to read this to mean I can drop my pants in the middle of Orchestra Hall in order to administer insulin into my backside and be fully supported by the law. That would certainly inject some excitement into the second movement of some lugubrious piece by Mahler.