Twenty years a columnist

Enhanced image courtesy of Philip Wizenick

       Twenty years ago today, on Jan. 23, 1996, the Sun-Times' new editor-in-chief, Nigel Wade, whom I had met once, maybe twice, phoned me at home on Pine Grove Avenue, where I was in the third month of a year's paternity leave. In my memory, I have a baby balanced on a cloth diaper on my shoulder, spewing down my back as I juggle the phone. But that is perhaps a faulty recollection.      Nigel asked if I'd like to write a column for the newspaper. I said yes, and got busy.      While I try to avoid attaching any particular significance to my column—I've known too many self-important journalists, puffing themselves up like frogs—20 years as a newspaper columnist in Chicago strikes me as significant. Almost a miracle, really, given how many ways there are to blow up, burn out, give up, go away, slide into the ditch and stay there. Each new day, each next sentence, is an invitation to hang yourself, the entire endeavor a kind of public Russian roulette, for 20 years, and here I am still spinning the cylinder and clicking away, somehow unscathed.       A milestone worth noting, and since nobody is leaping up to celebrate the event, I'll have to do it myself, which is fitting, because while I do value my helpful colleagues, being a columnist is mainly a DIY affair. That's my picture on top of the column, nobody else's.        Yes, there are better ways to spend one's life. I was named a columnist along with Leslie Baldacci, a kind of his-and-hers matched set. She gave up journalism in 1999 to become a teacher, and while you'd have to ask her, I'd bet money she never regretted it for a second. And if you ask me who made more of a difference in life, who was more important, I'd put my chips on Leslie, no question. She's still a teacher, teaching other teachers to teach, and I'd say that injects more real good into the world than spooling sarcastic about the crisis of the moment.      Then again, injecting good in the world was never my goal. I do not regret two decades spent doing this.  Not at all. It is a peculiar task, filling that space, and I like to think it is suited to my personality and I do it with skill.  Unlike Phil Kadner, who just retired after a long tenure at the Southtown Economist, I cannot point to a list of changes fomented and wrongs exposed. In fact, I can't think of one. But it has been, I believe, an interesting column to read, and that really is my only ambition.  That, and to have fun, which I do. I'm the rare writer who likes to write, who sits happily pounding away at the keyboard, laughing at my own stuff. I know that isn't the cliche of the tortured perfectionist,  and suspect that self-satisfaction is the mark of the hack. So be it. You gotta dance with who brung ya.      Do I sound grateful? I am. I'm glad I have colleagues whose work I respect and am inspired by, a few who have become friends and whose insight I value: Eric Zorn comes to mind, Rick Kogan, Rick Telander, Mark Konkol, Esther J. Cepeda.  I'm proud to be among a stable of talent at the Sun-Times. Mary Mitchell, Mark Brown, Fran Spielman, Richard Roeper, Chris Fusco, Tim Novak, Frank Main, Maureen O'Donnell, Scott Fornek.  When I started this, I wasn't a kid—I was 35—but knew a few giants of the business. Some were extraordinarily kind to me—Roger Ebert, Jeffrey Zaslow, Andrew Patner, Michael Cooke, Steve Neal—and some weren't kind to me at all. To this day, I go out of my way to make new reporters feel welcome, and I suppose I have Mike Royko to thank for that, because I remember how it stung to get the back of his hand, every single time. Not that it's difficult. I'm genuinely excited that the paper is once again hiring new talent, like Andy Grimm. I like reading stuff that's good, and know that success is not a pie, and somebody cutting himself a bigger slice doesn't diminish my share.      Having been through many editorial incarnations and permutations over the years, I'm happy to say that the professionals I work most closely with now work very well together as a team: copy editor Bill Ruminiski, assistant metro editor John O'Neill, Steve Warmbir (who is called the "Assistant Managing Editor for News" but in my mind is just the "City Editor," a far more august and apt title) and publisher Jim Kirk. I don't want to speak for them, but from my perspective, we respect each other and get the job done.      Five years ago, someone asked me what I learned, doing this:
     "Good column today," Neil Liptak, a reader in the far southwest suburban town of Elwood writes. "Made me want to ask you: What have you learned after writing your column all these years?"
     The prudent route would be to thank him and go on. "The first thing that came to mind was, 'People are crazy,'" I replied. "But that's extreme. Maybe Hemingway's, 'The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for.'"
     Still glib. And the question lingered. Nobody ever asked me that before, and I began to suspect it deserved a sincere answer.
     Where to begin? Thousands of columns . . . geez, what haven't I learned? There is a Chicagoland Puppetry Guild. The United States and China are almost exactly the same size, in area. The pleats in a kilt go in the back. Some survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima fled to Nagasaki, where they also survived the second atomic bomb. The only elective office Jane Byrne ever held was mayor of Chicago. The Cook County medical examiner performs autopsies with a 10-inch kitchen knife. The 14th floor sky bridge on the Wrigley Building was built to skirt banking regulations. There is an S/M dungeon on Lake Street, two blocks from the Thompson Center.*
     I could go on and fill the column with trivia — the first cell phone call placed by a member of the general public was to Jack Brickhouse; the globed streetlights on Wacker Drive have the lovely name "boulevard electroliers" — but my sense is that the reader was aiming for something more, something akin to wisdom.
     I'm uncomfortable with the notion of dispensing wisdom. First because it means I consider myself to be wise, which is both untrue and an invitation to ridicule. ("I'll tell ya what ya learned, Steinfart, ya learned that a no-talent HACK can make a living spewing his psycho liberal bull..."), and second because wisdom tends to be both contradictory and situation specific. "A penny saved is a penny earned" is good advice, unless you're hiring a band to play at your wedding, when you should spend every cent you can scrape together or borrow, because otherwise you'll have a lousy band and what's the point of that? (Instead of wisdom, I'd rather dispense wedding advice: Skip the rental napkins. Jews, don't ceremonially step on a wrapped light bulb instead of a wine glass; light bulbs pop. Splurge the two dollars for a real glass).
     But general, one-size-fits-all wisdom?
     There must be something.
     How about "Doubt is good"?
     Doubt gets bad press, because it's seen as lack of self-confidence. But in the sense of questioning your assumptions, doubt is wonderful, the difference between being a thinking person and being a zealot. The world is full of zealots, glittery-eyed and certain. Better to be characteristically uncertain, skeptical and demanding proof.
     "Am I wrong here?" is always a good question to ask yourself. In the column, it isn't the things I'm unsure of that come back to haunt me — I check those. It's the parts that I am convinced are correct that can cause trouble.
     So, re-evaluate now and then. Do a spring cleaning of your biases as well as your garage.
     What else? Memory is faulty. People lie, all the time; they lie to others and to themselves. One example or two isn't proof of anything.
     Persistence is important. More people quit than fail. They want the big "I Tried Once" trophy and the idea of dropping their head down and working hard is repellent to them. I don't know if I got this from writing the column or from being half-Polish — I think of we Poles as grab-the-traces-and-drag-the-plow-through-the-hard-earth kind of people.
     Or at least we were; my branch of the family hasn't been there for almost 70 years. Which brings up another bit of wisdom: Times change, and you need to keep up with them.
     The beauty of a column is it forces you to stay current. I'll be on the cusp of opining what Tokyo is like then realize, whoops, I was last there in 1989. Keep on top of stuff. Don't be naive. Don't believe things credulously.
    Brevity is good. Nothing helps a 1,200 word column like cutting it to 800 words.
    Nostalgia is a lie. If someone suggests the past was better, make them name a year, then dredge up the forgotten horrors of that year.
     There is more world than we have time to grasp, and people too often wall themselves off and dismiss anything they're unfamiliar with out of fear — fear of the unknown being a major motivator in people who'll jump through hoops rather than admit they are wrong about anything, out of vanity, another universal. Everybody makes mistakes, but not everybody can admit it. Recognizing that you are capable of error is the path to wisdom.
     There's never enough space. Maybe that's what I've learned: Columns are short, life is short. Try your best to make it interesting.
                 —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 22, 2011

* No longer true; they tore the building down this month.

Bruce Rauner accomplishes the impossible

     Let's be fair to the governor.
     Sure, anyone paying attention to Illinois is compelled to believe that Bruce Rauner has accomplished nothing in his first year in office except shred programs for children, the disabled and the poor.
     Not only did Rauner fail to make tangible progress, but he didn't even tread water properly. The normal operation of the state, such as passing an annual budget, failed to occur, sacrificed on the altar of the governor's hunger for term limits, union enfeeblement and other unrelated pet causes. He's like an office manager geting himself hired by promising to expand a business who then promptly fails to pay the electric bill, as a point of principle against the electric company monopoly, so they turn the lights off.  Now we're sitting in the dark, listening to him explain.
     The temptation is to conclude Illinois would do better with no governor at all, than this one who can't seem to manage basic human interactions. On Thursday, Rauner announced his support for Illinois Senate President John Cullerton's pension reform plan, only to have Cullerton immediately cringe away, shivering, from the governor's embrace. "It's not my plan," Cullerton said, explaining that Rauner had twisted his idea.
     But give credit where credit is due: Rauner has accomplished something real,  something that I would have thought impossible:
     He makes Rod Blagojevich look good.

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The Romans managed it

     That was fast.
     It's been, what, a month since the bright red "Loop Link" lanes opened on Madison and Washington, special bus-only routes designed to more than double the speeds that Chicago Transit Authority buses transverse the Loop, from an average of 3 mph, which is slower than briskly walking,  to a giddy 7.5.

     But just look at at them. A month of being pounded by traffic and what was described as "red pavement" in the city's grandiose plans of last year has revealed itself in the harsh light of January to be more like red tar paper, and is already coming up in big chunks. You can't very well expect drivers to avoid the red lanes if the "BUS ONLY" designation has peeled up and blown away. 
    Already plagued by delays over the past six months and greeted with a chorus of complaints from drivers who suddenly find Loop streets a lot narrower, the $32 million project might not have increased bus speeds, but it's given the downtown a shabby, am-in-Detroit-or-what? feel. 
      If this were in the newspaper, I'd feel obligated to call the city department of transportation  four or five times to squeeze out whatever half-hearted and feeble explanation they'd offer to illuminate What Went Wrong, and what Might Happen Next and why pave-the-road-so-it-doesn't-come-up-immediately technology, which was mastered in Roman times, seems to have eluded the City of Chicago, the City That Works Except When It Doesn't. But if I hear from the city, I'll rush to append it below.  
     In the meantime, the in-depth investigative work that led to these photos delayed my walk to the train a full 10 or 20 seconds one day last week. Additional investigation, which entailed walking down Washington Street on my way into work Thursday morning, showed that the red bus lane there is fine, so perhaps this is a localized screw-up limited to Madison Street's unique ecology, whatever that might be. Perhaps you, in your leisurely strolling, can find further examples of this latest embarrassment. Still, I suppose we should count our blessings, and not complain too much about a screw-up like this. At least no one was killed.

      

Abner Mikva laughs at 90

     Abner Mikva turns 90 Thursday. To mark the milestone I took the revered Chicago icon, who made his mark on all three branches of government—former congressman, retired federal judge and White House counsel—to lunch last week.
     How does it feel to be 90?
     "It's going to be kind of a shock," he said, using the future tense with a lawyerly precision. "I keep thinking of all the good reasons why I should be happy about it... I've already given up all the things I really enjoy: golf, tennis, sex, poker. There's nothing left to give up in the 90s."
     I get the golf, tennis and sex part. "But why poker?"
     "I have macular degeneration," he said. "I can't see the cards. I love the game."
      Mikva used to fly in just for the Washington Post's poker game. He said his favorite Washington figure to work with was Bill Clinton.

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"What matters infamy if the cash be kept?"

     I had lunch with former congressman, former federal judge, former White House counsel, current Chicago icon Abner Mikva last week—my Wednesday column will be about our conversation. He mentioned a column I wrote about him 10 years ago. I couldn't find it, but I found this, from the long-ago era when Rod Blagojevich was our governor, and it was so much fun I thought you might enjoy.
     This was back when I had a full page, with a brief "Opening shot," several small segments, and a joke at the end.

OPENING SHOT
     Obscurity pressed hard upon Juvenal, the Roman satirist who spent
his career crouched miserably in the antechambers of rich patrons, waiting for a half-gnawed chicken leg to be tossed his way. 
     That's why his satires remain so fresh today — you see this poor mope, thwarted at every turn, overlooked, underfed, trying to make his way through the crowded Roman streets, enviously eyeing the rich in their curtained sedan chairs, not noticing the burly centurion about to plant a hobnail boot on his toe. 
     So it would do the old Roman's heart good, I believe, to know that in 2008, in a nation he never heard of in a world he could not imagine, one of his pithier lines spontaneously popped into the head of a Chicagoan when he heard that his old boss, David Radler, had been released from a Canadian prison after less than a year in jail. 
     "What matters infamy if the cash be kept?" I thought, quoting Juvenal, figuring that, for the money Radler got from his crimes, minus penalties and legal fees, I'd gladly make birdhouses in the federal penitentiary for a year, and so would you. 

IS IT SHOWING OFF OR SHARING? 
     Am I bragging by mentioning a classical writer? Maybe so. But why is it viewed that way? Nobody says, "How can you guys pay attention to these football games, week after week, month after month, year after year. It's the same thing happening over and over. Doesn't it get boring? Why insist on talking about it?" 
     No, I accept that football is a passion that many love, one that adds richness and texture to their lives. Who am I to judge their fancies? Yet do they return the favor? Nooooooo. I was listening to the radio the other day — WGN — and this jamoke starts mocking people who talk about reading War and Peace. "Oh, I'm reading War and Peace," he gushes, in a smug, Homer-Simpson-imitating-a-fairy voice, as if the only reason to read War and Peace is to impress strangers. 
     I was truly offended, and I don't offend easily, and for the very reason most people get offended — because my ox was gored. I am currently reading War and Peace, out loud to my older son, and we're both loving it, not because it gives us something to brag about, but because it's great. When Tolstoy describes a horse, it's like an actual horse canters into the room, twitching and snorting. When Natasha jumps into her mother's bed to tell the old countess about Prince Andrei, it could be any 16-year-old girl gushing about her dreamboat.
     It's real. I know the common wisdom is that classics are these horrendous blocks of stone written by dead white males and forced upon the unwilling through some malign conspiracy. And I can see how people feel that way. Classics have their drawbacks. War and Peace is 1,200 pages long, and every character has four names. It gets confusing. I'm sure climbing Mt. Everest has drawbacks, too. But must I suppress enthusiasm, keep quiet, just because you can't imagine any reason to read it other than braggadocio? Every Monday we all have to hear about what the flippin' Bears did, yet let slip something about a book you love and you're a bigmouth blowhard preening your feathers. It's not fair. 

THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT 
     Usually experts have to be hunted, cornered, flushed out. So it was a pleasant turnabout to have one of the foremost legal authorities in Chicago phone me up out of the blue Tuesday. 
     "I want to talk about the attorney general's lawsuit," said Abner Mikva, former federal judge and adviser to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, referring to Lisa Madigan asking the Illinois Supreme Court to freeze embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich's powers. "I know you're questioning it, but we thought long and hard and looked at it carefully before we filed." 
     The Illinois Constitution clearly sets out reasons a governor can be relieved of power: death, impeachment, failure to meet qualifications of office, "or other disability," the loophole that Mikva believes the court can use to spike Blagojevich. "It doesn't say 'mental' or 'physical'," said Mikva. "It would cover just about anything the court wants to prevent the governor from carrying out his duties." 
     Isn't that the problem? If this is a disability, it is a political disability, and is not the governorship by nature a position given to controversy? True, the governor is not typically caught scheming to sell a seat in the Senate, but the particulars are not the crucial aspect. Do we really want this precedent, that our courts can strip our governor of power for being accused of doing something bad? Could not an attorney general with fewer scruples than Madigan—who I believe is a straight arrow—abuse such a system? 
      "We thought it made more sense for the attorney general, the highest law enforcement official in the state, to make the case to the highest court in the state," said Mikva. "I don't think it is asking the court for an outlandish interference. It is the least invasive thing anyone could do. . . . Well, the least invasive thing he could do is resign." 
     Amen. Not that anyone expects Blagojevich to do the noble thing.
     "Had he been thinking about what's best for the state, he wouldn't have gotten himself into this mess in the first place," I said. 
     "Of course not," said Mikva. "But that's not his bag, I'm afraid."

TODAY'S CHUCKLE 
     I bumped into George Lemperis, owner of the Palace Grill, the famed diner and Blackhawks hangout on West Madison Street. He told me the following: Two inmates go through the lunch line with their tin trays, then find a spot in the crowded prison lunchroom.
     "This slop tastes awful," says the first, grimacing over his spoonful of gruel.
     "You think this is bad," says the second. "You should have tasted the food here when you were still governor."
               —Originallly published Dec. 17, 2008

"Possible criminals on the loose"

   

     Martin Luther King Day is upon us, again, and me without a card or anything...
     See, that's the problem. There's no upside for a white guy to talk about race. It's all risk and no reward. At worst, you end up making some inadvertent slip and lose your job.
     At best? You're still a white guy commenting on race. What could you say that would possibly matter? Why bother? "Sorry, not my table. Mary will be serving you today..."
     So ... nothing about race here. Just another regular, not-about-race column. The 1958 UN Law of the Sea conference; how many Chicagoans understand its implications....?
     Oh, hell, in a for a dime, in for dollar.
     I was walking my cute little dog through the lily-white suburb of Northbrook (black population, 0.6 percent) thinking about race Friday morning. What to say? There are more black people on the Metra Milwaukee North line in recent years? A good sign! There used to be none, and now there are some. And in the street -- a black kid on his bicycle. A black guy living on the next block. We've stopped together on the corner of Shermer and Walters, across from the train station, and I've looked at him, expectantly, but he never looks at me. So whatever hale, awkward white guy greeting I would blurt out just curdles in my mouth. "Welcome to suburbia, black person! Allow me to vent my innocent white guy goodwill upon you!"

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Johnny Chung scores again

    College pranks don't get much attention. Which is why it was surprising on Saturday to pick up the New York Times and not only see a story about a prank in the paper, but on the front page, under the headline, "Forget the Quarterback Sneak: A Deception Play for the Ages."
    In it, writer Bill Christine describes the 1941 Plainfield Teachers College prank, which he calls "one of the greatest hoaxes in sports history." It wasn't. It was a slight, charming deception that took place in the agate football scores at the back of the sports pages of a couple East Coast papers. Though Christine tells the story in great detail and at length—a full inside page—he never explains why he's telling us now about this 74 year old prank, and I can't explain why he would. It's a curious lapse. You can read it here. 
     Or you can refer to my 1992 book on college pranks, "If At All Possible, Involve a Cow," where I relate the incident with the concision it deserves:

     There is no rule that a college prank has to be pulled by a college student. Morris Newburger certainly wasn't in college: he was a stockbroker with the firm Newburger, Loeb & Company. He was also fascinated with the obscure schools that were listed in the college football roundup in the New York Herald Tribune.
     In the fall of 1941, he amused himself during America's last moment of global innocence by creating his own school—Plainfield Teachers College—and phoning the scores in every week to the Herald Tribune. 
     Newburger did his homework. When asked, he was ready with 22 names for the lineup roster—names of his friends, neighbors, business partners. There was also a certain Morris Newburger starting at right tackle.
     Every team should have a star, and Plainfield's was Johnny Chung, the half-Chinese, half-Hawaiian tailback known as the Celestial Comet. Under his leadership, Plainfield went 6-0, and seemed a shoe-in for the prestigious Blackboard Bowl.
     As can happen with these things, matters got a little out of control. Newburger found himself printing up letterheads for the Plainfield Teachers Athletic Association and took a post office box in Newark. Jerry Croyden, the imaginary director of sports information, sent out news releases and phoned tidbits to the papers. The Celestial Comet was tearing up the field.
     Sadly, the Plainfield Teachers never made it to the Blackboard Bowl. Enjoying himself immensely, Newburger bragged to one pal too many, and word leaked into journalism circles. With Time magazine preparing to expose the hoax in their next edition, Newburger rushed out a release having the Celestial Comet flunk his exams, and so many players became ineligible that the rest of the season was cancelled.
     The Herald Tribune finally smelled something fishy and checked with the Plainfield Chamber of Commerce, discovering the utter nonexistence of a Plainfield Teachers College about the same time the November 17, 1941 issue of Time hit the stands.

Rahm flaps his broken wings

      Remember Chris Christie? Big guy, governor of New Jersey, once thought he could be president? That was before the incident two years ago that knocked him from Republican party darling to mortally wounded also-ran: the closing of the George Washington Bridge as payback to the mayor of Fort Lee for not supporting him.
     Christie's defense was that his top aides did it, while he knew nothing.
     Which he seemed to think let him off the hook. But it didn't. What it did was create two equally unpalatable choices: either he really did know and is lying — the answer that makes the most sense, given his bullying, hands-on-everything personality.
     Or he didn't know, but placed his trust in chuckleheads who could engage in jaw-dropping political pranks, undermining the well-being of the public, right under Christie's nose while he remained in the dark.
     Really, which is worse?
     Now turn our gaze to Rahm Emanuel, our diminished mayor and the Laquan McDonald video. Having committed to his "I didn't know" defense, Emanuel is confronted with the paper trail of his top aides huddling constantly with officials from the law department and the police, discussing the McDonald case. For eight months. These same aides and officials also met with the mayor. But, Emanuel insists, they never brought up this matter. Because, like Christie, he seems to think ignorance is preferable to knowledge, and once you've lied about knowing, that might seem the only route left.
     What's Garrison Keillor's classic line about slipping in the shower? "It's isn't the fall that hurts you; but what you do trying not to fall."
     The not-knowing defense, when it comes to Rahm, is ludicrous, and he should abandon it while he can. Rahm is knowledge incarnate. He can spout forth the most stupefying gush of facts and figures and self-justifying statistics. To see him go mute and mournful and out-of-the-loop on this, holding up his broken-wing, all saucer-eyed and sad, like one of those waifs in an alley in a black velvet painting, well, it's an insult to us but, remember, (all together now) "Rahm thinks we're stupid."
     So where from here?
     Calling for him to quit is like begging God to send a fiery angel. Sure, it might help, but it ain't happening. If anything, this whole episode will prompt Emanuel, not to go away, but to stay even longer. My sense was he wasn't going to run for a third term before this happened, but between wanting to bully the City Council into approving his budget in October, and trying to maintain his ebbing sense of authority, he now say's he is going to, and he probably will. Because quitting = failure, and Rahm Emanuel can't fail, at least in his own estimation.
     Three years is a long time. Public attitudes can shift in a heartbeat. Let's say, as they fear, a cop gets shot while squinting at a suspect, asking himself whether that's a gun or a cellphone. Whoops, turns out to be a gun. Let's say by some miracle that gets on video. Suddenly the police view isn't quite so hypothetical.
     For the record, I still don't think Chuy Garcia should have won. The deer-in-the-headlights look that Rahm is slipping into now, in the depths of crisis, is how Garcia greets every morning on a good day. I hear every kind of credulous nonsense shouted from the streets. But I have yet to see a sign reading "WHERE IS BOB FIORETTI WHEN WE NEED HIM?!?"
     Rahm's an abrasive, charmless man. That said, the problems he faces are not ones solved easily. The schools can't get fixed because they're never fixed. The pension time bomb is protected by a force field of law that would thwart James Bond. And while it would have been great if, the moment Emanuel learned of the McDonald shooting he was on TV, denouncing it, how would that have played with the 11,000 members of the Chicago Police Department, who throw a sulk if treated with anything short of worship?
     Let's pretend for a moment that Rahm Emanuel is toast. So who's gonna run the city next? Nobody seems to be volunteering. Not yet anyway.

Lois Weisberg: "A flair for life"

Life magazine, Aug. 6, 1956

     

     I was just finishing up my column Thursday morning when my boss stuck his head in my office and told me that Lois Weisberg had died, and could I write her obit? I said sorry, I've got this column to finish, but knew that I was just ducking trying to grasp her long, complicated career. I had read Malcolm Gladwell's "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg" in the New Yorker years earlier and had no desire to compete with him. But 15 minutes later I finished up the column, guilt set in, and I went after him and told him I'd do it. It made for a full day, but Fran Spielman did yeoman's work helping out, which is why she has a joint byline. The column also ran, but I'll post that here tomorrow.

By Neil Steinberg and Fran Spielman

     She had the respect of both Harold Washington and Richard M. Daley and was friends with both Lenny Bruce and Maggie Daley. She was comfortable hitting up John D. MacArthur personally for money. She was lauded in the New Yorker and has a credit on the liner notes of Allen Ginsberg's 1959 recording of "Howl."
     Oh, and Lois Weisberg had a hand in creating many of the cultural institutions that make the city of Chicago such a vibrant place.
     Ms. Weisberg, 90, who died Wednesday at her home in Florida, was the tireless, idea-spouting, chain-smoking (before she gave it up) commissioner of cultural affairs through most of Daley's administration.
     From 1989 to 2011, she had a hand in almost everything that lent sparkle to the city, from helping create Millennium Park to re-opening Navy Pier as a tourist mecca to suggesting to Maggie Daley that the city turn a white elephant Loop embarrassment, the grassy field of Block 37, into Gallery 37, an artistic mecca for school kids. She turned the abandoned Chicago Public Library main building into the event-packed Chicago Cultural Center, made "Taste of Chicago" a success, and oversaw creation of the Blues Festival and the Gospel Festival.
     "Most of us make an effort to think outside the box now and then," said Kimberly Costello Keefe, who served under her in the Department of Cultural Affairs. "It was no effort at all for Lois, who never really saw or understood the box to begin with. Nothing was off limits, unthinkable, impossible and that’s why her legacy is so broad and diverse."
     In the mid-1970s, aghast at Chicago's neglected public parks, then "considered rubble-filled, dangerous political fiefdoms," Ms. Weisberg formed Friends of the Parks. She single-handedly saved the South Shore Line from Chicago to South Bend by pressuring Rep. Sidney Yates and organizing school trips to the Dunes to show the line's value.
     "Lois has this thing — whatever it is — that brings people together," wrote Malcolm Gladwell, in a worshipful profile, "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg," in the New Yorker in 1999, the year she brought an obscure Swiss event, "Cows on Parade" to Chicago.
     Not everything she touched worked, of course. The follow up to the cows, bringing ping-pong tables to city streets the next year, failed to come near its success. She was also behind the "complete chaos" of the Bears 1985 Super Bowl victory parade, though — Rahm Emanuel take note — she admitted she made a mistake, by locating the parade on LaSalle Street and preparing for 150,000 spectators. Half a million showed up.
     "I should have figured out what would happen.," she said.
     Bestowed with awards and tributes, she had the rare honor, in 2006, of being declared the first "Legendary Landmark" by the Landscape Preservation Council of Illinois.
     "Since she wasn't a building, they honored her body," Mary Cameron Fry wrote in the Sun-Times.
     Lois Porges was born on the West Side of Chicago, daughter of Mortimer and Jessie Porges. Her father was an assistant attorney general for Illinois, her mother was a housewife. She grew up in Austin and went to Austin High School. She took elocution lessons and at 16 was the only teen in a local theater group.
     "She was always, always interested in the theater, always," said her sister, June Rosner.
     Ms. Weisberg first attended University of Illinois, then transferred to Northwestern University, graduating in 1946. There she met Leonard Solomon, a pharmacy student, and they married shortly after graduation, making newspaper columnist Irv Kupcinet, who was married to Solomon's sister, Essee, her brother-in-law, and Kup offered entry into the world of Chicago celebrity and theater.
    She was doing radio plays with her childhood friend, Sondra Gair, and became interested in George Bernard Shaw. She then noticed his centennial, July 26, 1956, was nearing, and would be uncelebrated in Chicago. So she waylaid John D. MacArthur at the Pump Room and squeezed $10,000 from him, persuaded the city's adult education council to let her throw a Shaw birthday party for 800 at the Hotel Sherman, complete with Shavian vegetarian lunch. Norman Thomas and William Saroyan spoke, and the event drew notice in Life magazine.
     "That's how it started," she once said.
     Her home on Scott Street turned into a salon for writers and musicians and artists. Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane would show up. Her parties might have Dizzy Gillespie and Ralph Ellison. William Friedkin, who would go on to direct "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection" stopped by often. Arthur C. Clarke, whom she met at a science fiction convention, was in town once, and she paired him up with another writer who happened to be here, Isaac Asimov. In 1959, she sponsored beat poet Allen Ginsberg to visit the city, and recorded him reading "Howl" — "Lois Solomon" is credited on the album's liner notes. Off-color comic Lenny Bruce was a houseguest, to the consternation of her mother, who came to call.
     "Bruce had been in the shower and opened the door wearing only a towel," Ms. Weisberg later recalled.
     She and Solomon divorced, and in 1962 she married Bernard Weisberg, a well known civil liberties lawyer who became a federal magistrate.
     In 1975, Ms. Weisberg was director of development for Business and Professional People for the Public Interest. She read a magazine article about the decline of Chicago's park system and snapped into action, creating Friends of the Parks, leading a volunteer cleanup of Jackson Park.
     "People need the parks as much as they need bread," Ms. Weisberg said, when honored in 1995 for the group's creation. "They are probably the most important recreational part of life of any city."
     She was also executive director for the Chicago Council of Lawyers.
     She joined Mayor Harold Washington's staff in 1983 as executive director of special events, though one of her first events — Washington's birthday party at McCormick Place — did not go smoothly. Wheeling out a giant birthday cake, Ms. Weisberg realized they didn't have a knife to cut it. Grabbing a convenient hammer, she extended it, smiling, toward the mayor, and was wrestled away by his security detail, who had no idea who she was.
     She "figured out every detail" of his second inauguration in 1987, including handing out packets of seeds to honor Chicago's "city in a garden" slogan.
     "We want them to be a symbol of the birth of a new Chicago," she said at the time.
     In July, 1987 she quit, saying she was "completely drained after four years in a pressure cooker" and wanted to spend more time with her family. But in 1989 Daley appointed her head of his new Cultural Affairs Department.
     "What an odd pairing. They worked very fruitfully together for a very long time," said her son, Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of Slate. "Their partnership was a marriage of strange bedfellows. Daley saw the good she did for the city and realized those weren't results he could get any other way. She found him open in ways she didn't expect to her unconventional approach to government."
     In 1991, Ms. Weisberg oversaw the transition of the city's 1897 landmark central library on Michigan Avenue to the Chicago Cultural Center.
     "It must be a place where families and people of all ages can have the opportunity to partake in free cultural programs in the visual arts, dance, music and theater," she said.
     In 1999, her "Cows on Parade" brought an estimated $200 million in commerce to the city. She created local art fairs and street festivals, and brought public dancing to summer evenings.
     "If you're talking city arts festivals, exhibits, concerts, grass-roots arts funding, you're talking Lois Weisberg," M.W. Newman wrote in the Sun-Times in 1991 calling her "the den mother of the arts."
     In January, 2011, when Daley was merging the Department of Cultural Affairs with the Department of Special Events, Ms. Weisberg quit.
     "One of the main reasons I am leaving is that I am angry about the way the mayor has treated me," Weisberg told the Tribune. "Not to ask me about [the merger], not to get any input from me about something like this merger, and about privatizing the festivals, strikes me as just wrong."
     She had also been under pressure for her way of connecting people and making hires, which was not in keeping with Shakman restrictions.
     In addition to Jacob Weisberg, survivors include Joseph, her other son from her marriage to Bernard Weisberg, as well a daughter from her marriage to Leonard Solomon, Kiki Ellenby, eight grandchildren and three great grandchildren, as well as her sister, June Rosner. Her daughter Jerilyn Fyffe died in 2011.
     What was Lois Weisberg's secret that allowed her to live such a full life?
     "She just had a flair, a flair for life," said Rosner. "She always had these wonderful ideas."
     "She didn't understand the obstacles and difficulties," said Jacob Weisberg. "She had a one of a kind talent for making things happen. She thought a good idea was a powerful force in the world."
     Funeral services will be Monday 1:30 p.m. at Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago.

Powerball isn't trying to make you happy

     Sometimes, the simplest question will help bring clarity. I wrote a column Monday celebrating the simply joy of blowing two bucks on Powerball. Then Rosemarie, a regular reader, asked this:

I enjoyed your "Surrendering to Powerball" column and will put to you a question that has long baffled me: Instead of making it more difficult to win — as they have recently done — by giving only one person (or two) a $5 million or $18 million Powerball (or Lotto or ...) prize, why not give $1 million or $6 million to 100 or 500 individuals? It would seem to invite more participants and therefore more revenue from the multiplied interested by doing this. 

A fair question. I thought about it, and answered:

The reason, I imagine, is that bigger pots draw in more players, which draws in more money. The purpose of these lotteries is not to benefit the winners — were that the case, you're right, it would make more sense to give away a thousand million dollar prizes. The purpose is to squeeze more money out of the public. Hence the one billion dollar prize.

     Evidence of the utter irrationality of humans. Because winning $1.6 billion, while no doubt an occasion for joy for the several people who won it Wednesday night, would no doubt have tremendous stresses as well, as a few regular schlebs sudden find themselves in charge of vast fortunes. It could be argued that winning a much smaller sum — say $200,000 — would provide all the bill-killing benefits, with none of the who-should-run-my-foundation? headaches, and do for hundreds if not thousands of people.

     Which means, were people thinking clearly, they'd flock to put their money down trying to win something like the Lucky Day Lotto run by the Illinois lottery, whose odds of winning a $200,000 payout are one in 1.2 million, and avoid Powerball with its 1 in 292 million odds that 44 states working in concert can't seem to win more than once every few months.
     But they're not thinking clearly, are they? They're dreaming. And while I stand by my earlier epiphany that it can be fun to snap up a ticket now and then, that doesn't change the greater truth: the purpose of Powerball is to take your money, not give money to you.

     

Fear and Loathing and Sean Penn

     A few days before Sean Penn's interview with drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo, hit the Internet, I was talking with my younger son about gonzo journalism.
     He had asked if "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is worth reading, and I said yes, it is: very funny, assuming you can get past all the drinking and drug use. Hunter S. Thompson's personality and style was so strong people tended to overlook the fact that he was a drug addict and alcoholic.
     Of course gonzo journalism is dated, a relic of the days when writers were the oracles, the gatekeepers. A little injecting yourself into a story can go a long way. While it can work when the subject matter is inconsequential, like the motorcycle race and district attorney's convention at the heart of "Fear and Loathing," when you have a truly important topic, gonzo journalism reveals its flaws. Nobody cares that your luggage got lost on the way to interview Vladimir Putin. I had just read "The Fight" by Norman Mailer, who goes to Zaire for the 1974 Muhammad Ali/George Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle." Mailer's ego blocks out the sun; he refers to himself in third person:

     Before the drive, they stopped, however, at Kin's Casino, and there each man lost a little at Black Jack. That was about the way Norman wanted it. He was feeling empty — the hour in the Press Room of the Memling had been no good for n'golo. To lose therefore, was a confirmation of his views on the relation of vital force to gambling. Feeling low in luck, he would just as soon squander this bad luck at the Casino...

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Not so good a time after all

Ivan Albright painted a series of self-portraits at the end of his life.

 
     To write is to err, as I say when a reader points out one of my blunders with an excess of glee. Mistakes inevitably happen when you put words together and hastily poke them in the public eye, and the writer who takes too much pleasure in another writer's gaffe is mocking someone today for something he may very well do tomorrow.
     That said, an innocent whopper showed up deep in the New York Times Monday that merits sharing. In the Arts section, page three, the "Arts, Briefly" column. Compiled by Andrew R. Chow, which means maybe he wrote it, maybe he didn't. Under the headline "Saluting David Bowie At Carnegie Hall."
     The badly-timed, unfortunately-worded opening sentence reads:
     "It's a good time to be David Bowie, below. He just celebrated his 69th birthday, released an album, "Blackstar," and has a show, "Lazarus," running off Broadway."
     Ouch. Bowie was also dead, or nearly, when the above was written, though of course the author, like the rest of us, had no idea.
     Which is worth relating, both for the rueful chuckle it might draw, and to show how little we really know of celebrities, though we pretend otherwise. We imagine them living large when, quite often, they're not. In this case, Bowie wasn't living at all. 
    My immediate thoughts on David Bowie's passing were posted here yesterday morning. But in the afternoon, polishing them for Tuesday's newspaper, I started this way:

     Of course the public never knew David Bowie was sick. A man who controlled his image so artfully, so thoroughly, who moved from one personage to another and was famous and adored for nearly half a century, well, naturally, he'd slip away without fanfare, leaving us to burst into applause to an empty stage.

     Which was the tack my colleague Rick Morrissey took, praising his silence in the face of illness, as opposed to "the compulsion to make one's cancer fight  a tent revival."  
     A sharp line. And the sort of thing that doesn't get said much, because being sick grants people license to share away, and they do, with varying degrees of tact and skill. 
     Though sharp lines also prick. Even as I was applauding Rick, I had to pause, first thinking of when my alcoholism memoir came out, and some idiot at the Tribune wrote a column saying, in essence, "Gee, where's my addiction, so I can get a book contract?" Making writing such a book seem boorish. A tarter version of the sentiment lauding Bowie for keeping mum (I responded to him with something along the lines of, "You know, Anne Frank did very well with her book, too, though I would hesitate, if I were you, from envying her publishing success too much, because there are other factors you are not considering.")
     The idea that too many are too public about being sick ignores the value of writing about illness. And it lumps together all the sick individuals posting graphic updates from their hospital rooms on Facebook with creative works like Evan Handler's novel of surviving cancer despite the ham-handed care he gets at Sloan-Kettering, "Time on Fire." I give it to every friend who gets cancer, because it's both funny and useful.
     Yes, there's a lot of that going around. But there are a lot of babies being born, yet reacting to your neighbor's infant with, "What? Another?!" is both rude and short-sighted. The world need babies, news, memoirs. First, those might be of interest to people who are not yourself, other people, with other needs and interests — bulletin: you are not the only person in the world. And second, they're obviously of value to the person writing them. And how much should a healthy person really complain about something bringing comfort to the sick? Nobody forces you to read it.
    Third, there is a general value to publicizing illness, in that it takes away stigma. People didn't talk of having cancer, not because they were being discreet, but out of shame. It was a seen as a death sentence and a personal failing. Just as gay people stepped out of the closet to demand funding for HIV research and civil rights for themselves, so people who talk about their illnesses normalize them, and remind us that sickness is part of the life, and deserves attention.
    Bowie's secrecy regarding his illness was characteristic — his art was public, his private life was, well, very private. And in this era, it was an amazing feat, one few celebrities could pull off. But like orange hair, just because it looked good on Bowie doesn't mean everyone should do the same. For instance, Roger Ebert's public battle with cancer was also characteristic, for him, perfectly in keeping with his life of elegant introspection and bracing candor, and it provided a moving denouement that in some ways was as culturally significant as his film criticism. Should he have kept it to himself, just to spare us a jarring picture in Esquire? The brutal full-face portrait was important, thought it wasn't everyone's idea of a magazine photo. 
     A writer is allowed his subject, her field of interest. For me, when I get sick, my guess is that I will try to keep it to myself, not out of reluctance to join the packed tent revival, but out of the feeling that Roger Ebert has already covered this ground, and far better than I ever could.  Of course, you never can tell what you'll do until you're there. Chicago artist Ivan Albright painted self-portraits right up to the time he died. They're hanging in the Art Institute.

David Bowie: Bottomless cool you could dance to.

     David Bowie's son confirmed that the rock star died Jan. 10 after an 18-month battle with cancer.

     David Bowie helped shape my world.
     When I was 16, I was a junior counselor at a summer camp in Ohio. We had a small turntable and just a couple records, if I recall correctly: one was Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars." We played it continually, all summer. 
      By fall I was a Bowie fan, for his flair, the drama of his music—"Ziggy Stardust" is a dark tale of apocalypse and murder, a theme continued on "Diamond Dogs." His bleak worldview helped me navigate the self-generated crisis of adolescence. I remember coming home from high school, putting on the "David Live at Tower Philadelphia" album to the "Diamond Dogs" track, clapping on a pair of headphones and crawling under the desk to listen at full volume. 
     "This ain't rock and roll," he cried. "This is genocide!" 
     I have no idea what that meant, but it sounded good. Plus Bowie was cool, so fabulously hip that just listening to him imparted a bit of contact coolness, even to a chubby Ohio teen with a bowl haircut. 
     The album that came out when I was a senior, "Low," is not his most famous — half the songs are instrumentals, winding, jazzy Brian Eno-influenced numbers. But his "Always Crashing in the Same Car" certainly spoke to me—I wrecked both my parents' cars—and "Be My Wife" certainly did. "Sometimes I get so lonely," he sang. "Sometimes I get nowhere."
     I only saw him sing once, in 1980. He was touring for his "Berlin" album. In my recollection, he stood motionless behind a synthesizer and never so much as said, "Hello Cleveland!" True to form—he actually disliked having to perform—but also disappointing, as a fan, because Bowie was one of those rare stars, like Bruce Springsteen, who you wanted to look back at you. He never did, an artist lost in his art or, maybe, just too aloof. 
     Bowie kept putting out hit albums. "Heroes" was another one of those songs that was a soundtrack to my life. "You, you can be queen. And I, I'll drink all the time..."
    His star kept getting bigger. "Let's Dance" was elegant and sinuous, showing a song could be a hit and have a beat while avoiding the idiocy of disco. And then he just went away, living on some island, it was said, with his wife, the Somali fashion model  Iman.
    Bowie acted in movies—"The Man Who Fell to Earth"—that were strange and wonderful. 
    In recent years, he returned. New music. A retrospective of his life that toured world museums, a living scrapbook, tribute and not coincidentally, record promotion. He always was the consummate businessman. People lined up for hours to see it at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
    I did too, not so much in tribute to Bowie or my teenage self, but because my oldest son, Ross, loves him.  The boys grew up watching "Labyrinth," a kid's movie that had Bowie playing a goblin king to a teenage Jennifer Connelly and the Muppets.  He did that sort of off-beat thing—he was cool enough to pull it off, whether singing "Little Drummer Boy" as a duet with Bing Crosby, of all people, or recording  Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. 
     I remember Ross at 16, playing "Ziggy Stardust" and giving me one of those "What is dad making of this?" looks. I said, "Given that I had that album memorized, word for word, when I was 16, and can sing it for you now, if you're looking for me to be shocked, I'm not."  And then I began the album's first song,  "Five Years." 
     "Pushing through the marketplace...so many mothers sighing," I warbled, before he begged me to stop.
     Just Friday we were in Vintage Vinyl in Evanston—records are back; my kids buy 'em. They had the brand new Bowie album, "Blackstar," which came out Jan. 8, his 69th birthday. I held it up for him to admire,  though, at $38, that's all he did. 
    "I can get it online," he said. 
    So Bowie, the man, ended his story Jan. 10, to the sorrow of his friends and family. But the musician, artist and cultural figure will continue, so long as there are teenagers looking to see their turmoil reflected somewhere, and adults hoping to borrow a bit of bottomless cool and something good to dance to.

Surrendering to Powerball

     I didn't win the Powerball lottery Saturday night.
     Neither did you. Nobody did.
     Shocking, I know, because, well, we had our hopes, didn't we?
     I'm still surprised that I played, twice. So $4 of that a $1.3 billion being given away, maybe, Wednesday is mine.
     Or was.
     I'm a little embarrassed to admit I played. Mr. Logic. Mr. Rationality. Voluntarily paying the Stupid Tax. It's almost as bad as visiting a palmist.
     Well, like any sinner, I have my excuses.
     The first time was a few weeks ago, and a machine made me do it. I popped into the 7-Eleven on Shermer Road to buy a Sun-Times — my wife had taken ours to work. There was a new machine set up by the doughnut case. Designed, no doubt, to relieve the endless pressure on the clerk who has to sell both tickets and Slurpees. I had $2; why not try out the machine? It worked.

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"They have no problem talking to a robot." Meet Paro

     I am not what is called an "early adopter." I have not summoned an Uber car, though I've ridden in one conjured up by colleagues, and I've downloaded the Uber app on my iPhone, inching toward the big moment when I shift from licensed cabbies to piecework drivers.
     And I didn't pet a Paro until Friday, a dozen years after the robotic baby harp seal was created and started showing up at nursing homes and hospitals, and long after it became something of a cultural touchstone, parodied on "The Simpsons" and well-covered in the media.
     Still, it was news to me—I had stopped by the Japanese External Trade Organization's Chicago office, to pick up some background information for a trip to Japan in March for Mosaic, the London web site of medicine and science. Since I'm writing about kawaii, or cuteness,  my contact at JETRO,  Robert Corder, thought I might enjoy meeting Paro.
     And I did, if "enjoy" is the word you can use to describe the slightly vertiginous feeling you get when you glimpse the unfamiliar future hurtling toward us.

     Paro is not a toy. It is a $6,000 robotic baby harp seal that has audio, light, touch and temperature sensors, microprocessors. It bobs its head, looks at you like an inquisitive pup, practically begging to be stroked. It can bat its long eyelashes, and coo and trill in an appealing, lifelike way. 
       "They actually recorded baby harp seals, in Canada, to get the sounds just right," said Corder. "The shape itself, you have to hold it." 
     I admit that it is something easier to pick up than put down, and we ended up passing it to each other as we talked. The robots are made in Japan, but the company selling them, PARO Robotics, is based right here in Itasca. 
     Paro was designed by Takanori Shibata, a Japanese engineer who wanted to develop a robot that would be useful to people.  At first he considered making a robotic cat or dog, but people tend to prefer one or the other, and had pre-set expectations about how cats and dogs should look and behave.  On the other hand, not many people have held a baby harp seal.  Paro was approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a Class 2 medical device in 2009, and is found in hospitals and treatment centers around the world. The seals are useful motivators when dealing with autistic children, for instance.
    "They use it for kids who have ADHD, Asperger's and autism," Corder said. "Those kids can have a hard time connecting, so they teach them to talk to Paro. They have no problem talking to a robot. The teachers will use him as a teaching tool. They use him for breaks. 'Let's take a break and you can have some Paro time.'" 
     In retirement homes, Corder said, Paro not only comforts lonely seniors, but lures them into social interaction. 
    "The people come out of their apartments, come out of their rooms, down to the common area," he said. " They don't bring it to your room. So if you want to have time with him, you have to come out of your apartment. It's a whole strategic use." 
     I felt like a farmer gawping at a Model T, and what made me believe this sort of thing is going to grow bigger and bigger, and not just be a passing fad, is that I kept looking at Paro, which was batting his eyes and cooing and almost demanding attention, instead of looking at Corder, who is just another human being. 
    That no doubt troubles some, and I admit I had qualms floating around myself. Should not every dementia patient and troubled child have human caregivers and live comfort animals? Sure, in an ideal world. And a pony for the children. But in our real world, with an exploding population of elderly with dementia, caregivers will be a scarce commodity, and if comfort is found in robots such as Paro—and it is, studies around the world show—where is the harm?
    Paro made me think of our small dog, Kitty, and another initial, half-hearted mental reservation was, naturally, this robotic seal would not really love its owner the way a dog does. But that love is also a projection. I just think Kitty loves me, because I want her to and she seems to. Just like Paro does.  

Okay, I'm stupid too....

     Yeah, I bought a Powerball ticket. Friday, on the way to the train. 
     Stupid, I know. Because I'm not winning. Nobody is winning, at least nobody has for the past nine weeks. Which is why the jackpot is $800 million. The media focuses on that enormous, nearly-a-billion buck payout, and not the fact that you could have bought every single ticket sold for the past two months and change and still not won.
     But I bought a ticket anyway.
     Why? I suppose because I was hungry, which might sound strange. I had a small salad from home for lunch, now it was late afternoon, I popped into a Corner Bakery. I didn't want to buy a 600 calorie muffin. So I bought the smallest thing in the store, a 99 cent ruggalleh (a little cookie-sized square pastry, for you non-Jews).  It cost $1.10 with our highest-in-the nation tax. 
    So a buck plus shot to momentarily bat back hunger, and no chance at all for the Mount Everest of cash. That softened me up. So when the hand-drawn sign saying "$800 million jackpot!" or some such thing, in the window of the convenience store in the Civic Opera building caught my eye, I had just spend almost as much on next to nothing, and I knew I had two singles in my pocket. 
     What the hell? Why not?
     Lots of reasons. A sucker's bet. A vote for innumeracy, for failing to grasp the reality of long distances, long spans of time, long odds. The odds of winning the Powerball lottery are the same as the odds of picking one person at random from the population of the United States of America and having the person you randomly select be Barack Obama. I played the Powerball a month ago, because they had set up a machine at the 7-11 in Northbrook and I wanted to try the new machine out, and I didn't hit one of the six numbers you need to match. It's like setting out on a journey to Alpha Centauri and making it to Lincolnwood. 
      The glib line is that you are paying for the dream, and I did think of what I'd do if I won the money. Ready for something sad? My dreams of avarice were a new driveway and siding on the house. 
     The truth is, even those who win, which I won't, half the time end up wrecking their lives with the money. They were happier without it. Just as money can't buy a personality or a heart, as Bruce Rauner proves, so it can't buy happiness either.
     Sigh. So putting down two bucks on the same irrational stupidity that leads people to anti-vax theories and the belief that space aliens are watching us, and airing my small-bore dreams of adequacy in the bargain.  Chasing the same empty dream that turns cooing babies into Bruce Rauner, forming his fingers into pyramids and cackling over his piles of gold.
    Well, honestly, just to see that trait laid bare is worth two bucks. And picking up shirts on Saturday morning, the dry cleaner and I had a pleasant Powerball exchange. And my youngest and I passed five minutes actually talking to each other about how we'd spend all that dough. So I did get my two bucks worth after all.

All we need to do is...

     Readers get the impression that my mail is a septic stream of insult and craziness. Part of that is my fault. I tend to find the insanity more noteworthy than the common sense. It stands out more. But sometimes I get an email that amazes me in its lucidity. Such as this, from Linda Barnes, reacting to my column on what needs to be done to reduce police shooting. It's brief, to-the-point and very big picture, and I thought I'd share it. Not so suggest that any of it would be easy. But how could we imagine the solution would be easy?

      I enjoyed reading your article, "Tasers Won't Help, So What Will?" I agree with your suggestions that police restraint and luck would help, and especially that "everyone needs to try harder." But even with trying harder, there's only so much that can be done, because it is such a mess that needs to be undone. To keep it simple, I would suggest we start by moving in the direction of legalizing drugs, thus largely eliminating the prime reason gangs are shooting and killing people in Chicago. Then, I think we need to ensure there are enough well paying jobs in the area. This is starting to take place with the technical/industry hubs that are forming in the city. Lastly, we need to ensure people are qualified to perform the jobs. This can be accomplished by schools providing technical job training and tutoring, as well as individual and family counseling. 
     We are starting to move in that direction with the specialty community colleges. I think it would be good to start it in high school, which some other cities are doing successfully. What hit home for me this morning is how much preparation goes into developing a young person to be ready for their first day of work. My 21 year old son just left for his first day of work as an Auditing Assurance (Accounting) intern and as I snapped a photo of him in his professional clothes, I realized the lifetime of preparation for this (from the day he started kindergarten until now). This is what all young people need to succeed and if they aren't able to get it at home, I think schools should step in.

     Thanks for listening and thanks for writing such effective articles.

If Tasers won't help, what will?

     The paper allots only 750 words for this column, so an occasional elephant in the room gets deliberately ignored. Wednesday's observation that Rahm Emanuel's tasers-and-training Band-Aid won't solve the problem of police shootings left one pachyderm hiding behind the curtains. Readers were quick to point him out:
     "It is easy to show how everything he is doing or proposing is wrong," wrote Roger Hirsch. "But I didn’t see anything in the column that suggests what you think he should do to get Chicago back on track. Not even one single idea."
     Fair enough. Though tight space is only one factor, just as important is this: I try to never be the Advocate for the Impossible, and putting chips on police culture changing is a sucker's bet. They are machines designed to resist change.
     Still, the CPD is always toward the top of the list nationwide when it comes to shooting civilians. What should it do?

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Get well soon, Terri!

  

     Media personalities come and go, particularly on radio, where DJs land in the Chicago market with a splash and then disappear just as quickly without a ripple. 

     And then there is Terri Hemmert, my fellow Ohioan, always bright, always good-natured, sincere, direct, knowledgable, enthusiastic. And always there. She has been on WXRT 93.1 FM for more than 40 years, and it was worrisome news to hear Thursday that her last program for the time being is Friday. She has cancer, as she announced with her typical candor, is undergoing surgery on Monday, and will need at least a month to recuperate.     
      I am confident that many, many Chicagoans share the deep respect and affection — oh, hell, say it — the love that I have for Terri Hemmert, and join me in wishing her a speedy recovery and quick return to the airwaves, where she belongs. Here is a tribute I wrote to Terri when the city declared her a civic treasure in 2008. 

     A good radio station has a personality, a flavor, almost a smell -- there's an unmistakable fresh-laundry-snapping-on-the-line bleachiness to WGN, for instance, with Judy Markey and Kathy O'Malley chatting over the backyard fence and Orion Samuelson putting the John Deere into neutral, climbing down from the cab, squinting at the horizon and telling us how the soy bean crop is doing as he wipes his big hands on an oily rag.
     Then there is WXRT, which for a generation of Chicagoans is the radio equivalent of Thai takeout -- an essential element of city living, both familiar and exotic, peanuts and limes, nutritious and sinful, an essential luxury that makes up for all the hassles.
     The main course of WXRT is Terri Hemmert -- "Aunt Terri" to her loyal listeners -- who is being celebrated tonight as a "Chicago Treasure" at the Chicago History Museum. Terri just passed her 35th anniversary at the station; she joined as an announcer and public affairs director. In 1981, she became the first female morning radio personality in Chicago, and ever since her calm, soothing voice and musical laugh have been an anchor in a world of flux and madness.
     How did a girl in Piqua, Ohio, get into radio?
     "I wanted to meet the Beatles," she explained, over lunch at Volare on East Grand. "I saw a picture of Jim Stagg interviewing Ringo Starr." So she sought out the famed disc jockey -- who also ended up in Chicago.

     "He encouraged me," Hemmert remembered. "He said, the first thing, 'Don't let anybody talk you out of it.' So I hung in there."
     Eventually she would meet Ringo ("I hope it was worth the wait," he told her) and Paul McCarthy ("Now it's like we're old friends," she said. "I think that's so cool") and hosts a Sunday "Breakfast With the Beatles" in addition to her weekday duties.
     She also has taught the history of rock 'n' roll for 30 years at Columbia College.
     "I love teaching," she said. "That's my favorite thing; I love those kids."
     I observed that teaching is hard, students often intransigent. Hemmert said that's the part she likes.
     "I love getting slackers and whipping them into shape," she said. "Because I was a slacker."
      She is energized by the station's recent move from Belmont Avenue to NBC Tower.
     "I'm still in awe of this city," she said. "I'm thrilled to be downtown."
     Of course, some believe a certain scrappiness went along with being on Belmont Avenue.
     Has not the corporate behemoth -- the station is owned by CBS -- changed WXRT?
     "People always say that -- that being owned by a corporation affected the station," she began.
     "Well, it isn't as if you play 'Penis Envy' anymore," I added, mentioning a satirical Uncle Banzai ditty that Terri once played daily.
     She smiled.
     "WXRT has always evolved," she said. "We still play new music. We still play R&B, we still play the blues, which is very, very rare. We're a mix of old and new. People sense that we're there, and we have a commitment, and that's great."
     The lovely thing about Terri Hemmert is how excited she still gets about playing music and teaching music and being in this city. She could have moved. She had offers that might have nudged her up the career ladder.
     "I love Chicago so much; what a great city," she said. "I like Chicago more than I like radio. I'll die here."

TODAY'S CHUCKLE . . .

     In honor of Terri Hemmert (whose favorite song, "In My Life," lent the headline to her item) a Beatles joke:
     Q. How many Beatles does it take to change a light bulb?
     A. Four.
     John to come up with a light bulb. Paul to claim half of the light bulb. George to complain his lights bulbs are never considered. And Ringo, to actually change the light bulb.
                               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 19, 2008