It was a a very good year

     I try never to get in a tug-o-war with strangers on Facebook.
     There's no end to it. 
     Because there's more of them than there are of me.
     But, being human, sometimes I get sucked in.
     Someone posted a painting of a farmer and his son gazing off into the sunrise with a caption "I miss the American I grew up in."
    Talk about a slow pitch down the middle. I couldn't help it. I swung on my heels.
      "Then you don't remember it," I wrote.
     She objected, naturally enough, and I removed my gotcha question from its special lead-lined case.
    What year, I asked, specifically, are you missing? When is this lost time of happiness that you wouldn't mind returning? 
    "1952," she said.
     I did a little research research—as I said, no end to it—and then returned to her page.
    Did she, I asked, miss the thousands of Americans who died in Korea? 
    Or was it the thousands, mostly children, who died of polio? 1952 was the worst year ever for that dread disease: 57,000 cases in the United States. In one week in July, 11 of the 14 Thiel children of Mapleton, Iowa, got sick. That September, four of six children in a family in Milwaukee caught a particularly virulent strain of polio and quickly died, one after another. Is that what she wants back?
    Maybe it was the Red Scare that she was shedding a nostalgic tear for: Joe Stalin was very much alive in 1952, and loyalty oaths were big. Or McCarthyism—Tailgunner Joe had not yet been chastised by his fellow senators. 
    Maybe it was rampant Jim Crow. That was fun.
    Here the conversation ended. Which is the main reason not to engage in these conversations, to stretch the word. Because even if you win, you lose. Changing your mind is hard, particularly for a person old enough to pine for 1952. They'd rather shrug and move on than face the shattering prospect of being wrong.
    I just don't get that. I'm wrong all the time. I thought the Kinks song "Lola" was about a girl. I thought cell phones were a fad. Being wrong, and the ability to admit it, doesn't undercut my worth as a human—it emphasizes it. When I cop to making a mistake, it's almost like revealing a superpower, because so few can do it. It's as if I could turn invisible or fly, and almost as useful.
    And I understand what motivates people to nostalgia. The wonderful details of your life remain clear; the less felt details of the news fade away.  
     It isn't that I'm not nostalgic myself. I am. I was 17 in 1977, and there were cool things going on. Punk was big in London, and I was there, on Wardor Street, bouncing to the Vibrators at the Marquee Club.  In my hometown, if you stopped at the gas station, Clark's, Jack would come out, pump your gas, check your oil, chat a bit, and maybe slip you stick of gum. That was nice.
    But I would never, ever argue that 1977 was a Golden Age. I'm not saying that all years are the same. Some are worse—1942—some are better. But however you see a year, you have to recognize that you are viewing it through the lens of your own experience. The day my first son was born in 1995 was a very good day. For me. Not so good for the parents of the seven kids who died when a bus was hit by a train in Fox River Grove. 
     I'm going to really try to stop engaging strangers on Facebook. It's a challenge enough to do it with your friends and loved ones.
    My father once said to me, "You know, people were just kinder when I was growing up."
    And I answered, "This era of kindness of which you speak, dad, was that the Great Depression or World War II, because I just don't see it."
    I don't remember his reaction. 

"Everything I ever knew was behind my thumb,"

Left to right, Robert Kurson, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman

    "Why didn't you tell me it was going to be like this!?" my wife enthused. 
     We were hurrying through a windowless hallway at the Museum of Science & Industry on Thursday night, heading to the Crown Space Center to view the Apollo 8 spacecraft, having been thrilled and uplifted by the launch festivities of "Rocket Men" by Robert Kurson, which featured the author interviewing the three astronauts from Apollo 8. 
     "I didn't know," I confessed. "It could have been Bob at a card table with the astronauts and a handful of people."
      I do have a tendency to underplay literary occasions—just in case. The instance lodged in my wife's mind is when I suggested, in a half-hearted, might-as-well sense, that we go to this library dinner, which turned out to be the Carl Sandburg awards, making cocktail chatter with Don DeLillo and Scott Turow, and me on stage with the assembled Chicago literary luminaries, such as we are. 
     The truth is, with these book events, you really never do know. Perhaps I am influenced by my own book signings, where I can be the only attendee. I naturally assumed that the people going would be like me, longtime admirers of the author acting out of loyalty. The thought that 500 people would cram the MSI theater at $35 a pop out of, not only interest in Bob's work, but from passionate respect for the astronauts and the space program never crossed my mind. 
    But there they were, a full house at the MSI auditorium, giving a standing ovation to the astronauts before they said a word. 
    Maybe I was just projecting. At the beginning of the evening, I had no knowledge of Apollo 8 except that it came between Apollos 7 and 9.  My strong memories were with Apollo 11, and the Moon landing, and Apollo 13, dramatically limping home after the explosion, and of course Ron Howard's brilliant movie.
     Then Bob took the microphone and started by talking about the Apollo 8 mission, how Neil Armstrong considered it more daring than his own, because it was assembled quickly--in four months—out of fear the Russians would orbit the moon first. Up to that point, in mid-1968, only Mercury capsules had orbited the earth and returned. The Saturn 5 rocket, to this day the most powerful machine ever made, had been tested exactly twice, the second time a catastrophic failure.
     Bob made the leap sound like the most exciting thing in the world, and maybe it was. The crew of Apollo 8 would be going on a journey 2,000 times further than what was planned: 240,000 miles to the Moon as opposed to parking 125 miles up in Earth orbit.
    All that was before we heard Kurson lead the Apollo 8 crew, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, through 90 minutes that was in turns moving and informative, funny and fascinating.  
     Even before it began there was a surprise. While we sat waiting my wife turned to me and said that astronaut Eugene Cernan, was from her hometown of Bellwood and she remembered him coming back for a parade, and what a thrill it was. She tapped at her phone to call up details of the parade—all this technology surrounding us boosted by the space program. I looked at her dumbfounded—you know a woman for 35 years, you think you know everything about her, so it's notable when you learn something new.
     Then the astronauts, amazingly sharp despite being in their 80s, started sharing their personal stories: Lovell talking about arranging Neiman Marcus to deliver a fur to his wife on Christmas, while they were in space. Borman throwing up, which you really do not want to do in zero gravity.
     Anders talked about the iconic earthrise photo, driving home to those back on Earth what a small blue planet we live upon.

      "It's ironic, we came to explore the Moon but we really discovered the Earth," said Anders.
     Lovell—who, I was surprised to learn, flew on 8 as well as 13—spoke of holding his thumb so it blotted out the Earth.
     "Everything I ever knew was behind my thumb," he said.
     The Apollo 8 mission began Dec. 21—officials worried that a Christmas tragedy in space would forever mar the holiday, that a capsule with three American corpses inside eternally circling the moon would kill it as a romantic nighttime icon. The three astronauts, all career military, were tasked with speaking to the largest audience to listen to human voices—an estimated third of the earth's population. The sum of the guidance they got to prepare their marks, said Borman, was 'Do something appropriate."
     Talk about trust.
     "That's one of the great hallmarks of our country," he added.
     Or at least was. The ghost of our current political predicament hovered over the event, at least for me. While never directly evoked, it flashed when Borman expressed relief that nobody from Washington was involved to mess up their plans, or Bob spoke of the unifying force of the mission, what good people can do when they work together.
     The astronauts ended up, at the advice of the friend of a friend, a former fighter in the French Resistance, reading the opening lines of the Book of Genesis. 
     And yes, they got sued for injecting religion into a government sponsored program, Borman laughed. But the lawsuit was thrown out.
     I haven't read the book yet, but Bob does a typical Bob thing—he explores a section of the story heretofore ignored, in this case the wives and families of the astronauts.
    "We are the only crews in Gemini or Apollo that still have our original wives," said Borman, turning to Bob, and telling him that, of all the books written about Apollo 8, his was "the only one who gave the wives proper credit."
     That was the only unsurprising part of the program, because that's what Bob does. At the beginning of the program, he explained how he was taking friends to the Museum of Science & Industry, noticed the capsule on display, and became intrigued. It was hiding in plain sight. Think of all the people who walked past that capsule. Millions, including me. Which is as good a recommendation of a writer as I know: the guy who looks at something right in front of everybody, sees the thing we all ignore, understands its true value, and then does the hard work to make everyone else finally understand it too. 
    Okay, I'm signing off now so I can start reading.

DePaul law school ‘N-word’ flap: ‘Intent makes a word hateful’

"The problem we all live with" by Norman Rockwell (Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts)

     This column was almost twice as long when I first finished it, and some important aspects were lost in cutting it to fit the paper. First, that the whole thing was prompted by not one but two thoughtful emails form reader Scott Zapel, a Glen Ellyn attorney. Second, that the above powerful painting by Norman Rockwell—with its subtle but unmistakable taboo word scrawled on the wall above the girl being escorted to school—ran in the Sun-Times without incident last week. "I'm not editing Norman Rockwell" an editor explained. Third, an explanation of why white people can and should comment on racial matters even though some think they can't and shouldn't. I saved the paragraphs to send to those who try to make the case for the latter.
      There were more points I couldn't even begin to enter into, such as the need for law school to anneal would-be lawyers for what can be a tough, demanding profession, one that is undermined if they have to cater to their sensitivities or risk being cut off at the knees by tremulous administrators. All the DePaul students did was wound a veteran teacher, undermine the value of their own degree, and present themselves as unwilling to face the fraught world into which they must practice the profession of law.  

     Let’s pretend that I am passionately against flag burning. It’s disrespectful. One day I am outraged to discover there is an organization that routinely burns flags. To make matters worse, this group is not some band of anarchists, but the American Legion, which collects worn flags and burns them in solemn ceremony.
     So I condemn the veterans’ group. Organize protests. Demand their suppression. And should somebody be so rude as to observe that I’m lashing out at the wrong people — you’re supposed to burn worn-out flags, it’s the respectful way to dispose of them — I reply, “Yeah, but anarchists are elusive. American Legion posts are so easy to find.”
     Would you experience a warm glow of admiration for me? No? Good, because that’s how I feel when the foes of what I am obligated to call “the N-word” manifest themselves, such as recently at DePaul University College of Law, where a professor, Don Hermann, had his class taken away after students complained when he uttered the lately unprintable word in the set-up to a legal problem.
     The professor didn’t hurl the word at a student, or toss it out as the punchline of a ribald joke. The offensiveness of the word was part of the issue students were to sort out.
     No matter. Haters who use the word vindictively, like my flag-burning anarchists, are not easily punished. But the professor is right there.
     Still, my gut impulse was to let the matter pass in silence. History is a horror show, people are hurt, and react in all sorts of curious ways. If some grasp at what they consider empowerment by conducting epistemological snipe hunts, why should I care? My copy of “Huck Finn” isn’t going to be sanitized. It isn’t as if I’m chafing to use the word. Yes, it felt silly not to be able to articulate what noun Ira Gershwin cut from “Porgy & Bess” in 1954; I can’t believe one black child would cry himself to sleep if I had.
     Context is everything. I can't 100 percent support Prof. Hermann because I wasn't there. On one hand, 50 of the 80 students in his class, given the chance to transfer out, did so, which doesn't speak well to his technique. On the other, he has taught college for decades, and if he were a raving bigot, it would have come out by now.
     I've taught college; it's a ballet, and if your students are rushing off to report you, then you haven't taken their measure. You should know before you leap if they're going to catch you.
     Being young, they're extremists, and miss the crux, what Dan Savage, appearing on Matt Fiddler's excellent podcast "Very Bad Words" explained in five words:
     "Intent makes a word hateful."
     Bingo. People get confused because the word is accepted from black comics but can undermine the employment of law professors. Rather than expend mental effort to gauge each instance, they react to the race of the user.
     An understandable lapse. It is a vile word, barbed with suffering from the past, present and—sorry to be the one to tell you—future. Trying to bar it from historical and artistic uses is futile, but is your right. As is mine to oppose you. Which I do because trying to ban a word is an insult to those who were lashed by it. The past is a bad place we must look at with open eyes. Were I to insist that history texts be scrubbed of photos of naked bodies of Jews being cast into pits in the Holocaust, because they're upsetting, I too would be wrong and worthy of rebuke.
     On Wednesday we marked 5o years since the assassination of Dr. King with respectful solemnity. A jubilee of progress it was not, as the sickness of racism festers in Americas. Our president is an unfit white bigot whose campaign was built on hate. The internet, a continuous howl of invective. The finely-honed sensibilities of the DePaul law students are not a sign of racial progress, but of frustration. Denied general victory, they clutch at tiny symbolic triumphs, no matter how vindictive. General white indifference to the controversy is a sure sign of just how illusionary their triumph is, because you know white folk cling to their prerogatives. I object because, in my view, if you respect somebody, you tell them when they're wrong.

Letter to the future

Dear 2060 America:

     I was reading an article in the New York Times today, about the echo chamber between President Donald Trump and Fox News, and how a group of Central American immigrants moving through Mexico became, in the little fear-shriveled minds of the president and his supporters, a terrifying invasion. 
     And it occurred to me, in not all that many decades, when our country is certain to be 25 percent Hispanic — it's already 18 percent Hispanic now — you'll look back on this period and wonder how it could have been possible, how such an important element of this great nation could have been allowed to be abused. How such an often great nation, the United States of America, could have elected this unfit clown, this unashamed hater, whose thoughts and policies used to be found on vile booklets left on bus station urinals, as president of the United States. 
     You've got to wonder: What was wrong with these people?
     I wish I had an answer. It amazes us and we were there the whole time.
     Not to be glib about something so wrong, so dangerous. If you're wondering whether we knew that something horrible was coming, that all wouldn't be staff firing and inane misstatements of reality, well...
     Yeah, we knew. Or we should have known. People have already been hurt, our country has already been damaged, at home and abroad. Did we know that worse was to come? Yeah, we knew. Or should have known. Or let ourselves guess and then pushed the knowledge away. Or denied the obvious.
     At least I know. If I had to summarize the Trump presidency up to today, I would say: we've been lucky, so far. If Trump were a skilled tactician, if he actually had a malign agenda beyond aggrandizing himself, and saying anything to please those who support him, he could have caused enormous damage. 
     But that might be coming. Probably is coming. Because each day we drift away from what we used to be, a normal, fact-driven, respectable society that at least paid lip service to notions of fairness and equality. That's gone, and while you can argue we've had some pretty dark chapters in our history — the bad stuff is oddly a comfort now, a reminder that we've done some heinous screwing up before — at least we weren't being led by such a ridiculous asshat. At least we weren't what we are now. Something both ridiculous and terrifying, our usual courage led by the pants-wetting swagger of the chronically terrified. 
     In our defense, there is a lot of that going around. We didn't invent prophylactic surrender of our ideals. The British dropping out of the European Union because they were afraid they'd have to let in Turks. The rise of nationalism in France and elsewhere. The Philippines electing a murderous madman. Israel lurching further and further to the right under the wildly corrupt Benjamin Netanyahu. Even segments of Germany are thinking, "That whole Nazi thing, it wasn't so bad for us..."
     This is terrible time for democracy all round. 
     Yes, we used to lead the world, not catch its every ailment. Now we don't (lead) and do (catch). Now the rest of the world looks on at us with fear, confusion and pity.
     Maybe you do too.
     Anyway, I don't want to belabor the point. Usually I write for people today, but I wanted to drop this note in a pixel bottle and toss it in the electronic ocean where maybe you'll find it or, more likely, you won't. Assuming you'll care and, given what's happening in 2018, I'd expect a bull market in not caring about much of anything.
     A pity. You should know, millions of Americans in 2018 were aghast and ashamed and eager to do whatever they can to winch our country out of this ditch of idiocy it has slid into, upside down, wheels spinning. It's a big task, and I am certain the aftershocks of our folly will be felt by you in 42 years. My hope is, not too much. Try to understand the improbable nature of the threat, and the way amazement and disgust blinded us to what was really happening. Be kind, and forgive us. I figure, by 2060, when I'm 100, kindness will have come back in style. At least I hope so. Because it's sure in short supply now.
    With apology, regret and best wishes,
    
    2018 America

Notes from underground

J.J. Madia, in the tunnels under the Loop that he manages.

    When the choice is go somewhere or not go somewhere, my default is: go.
    Because you never know.
    Not that I rush out to every opportunity.
    That would be impossible.
    Not to mention tiring.
    But when it's a 50-50 coin toss, when I'm teetering on whether something is worthwhile or not, my little personal rule pushes me over the edge.
     Though it doesn't always work out.
     For instance, last week.
     A British film crew was in town, shooting some kind of engineering special in the freight tunnels under the Loop, the ones that flooded so disastrously in 1992. The producers had read my 25th anniversary story online. Would I, a nice woman wondered, mind talking to their cameras about the flood?
     Well...
     On one hand, I could be on British television 24 hours a day and never know it. Any advantage to me would be slight.  Hours of my precious time would be spent to benefit some person not myself.
     On the other, it meant going down into the tunnels—how often do you get a chance to do that? (I had, just a year ago, for the story; but still...)
     Not to forget the allure of TV. Being on TV means something. It is significant, and British TV, double significant. They're so refined, the Brits. My flashing appearance could lead to something....
     True, I had to be at City Hall at 8:30 a.m. to do it. But heck, if I didn't, I'd be doing the same old pottering around the office I always do. Put yourself out. You never know. Maybe these TV folks will become my best friends.
     So I'm there, by the bronze "CITY HALL" sign at 8:30 a.m., bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I get a text from the producer. Traffic. Running late. That happens! No worries! I slide over to Petra's for a cup of coffee, thinking of H.T. Webster.
    You don't remember H.T. Webster, a cartoonist popular between the world wars. Don't feel bad. Nobody does. Except for, I suppose, me. His claim to fame was creating the character "Caspar Milquetoast," star of a series of panels he called "The Timid Soul." In one, poor Caspar stands in the driving rain and, well, it's easier to just show it.
    That's how I felt, a half hour and a $4 cup of coffee later, still waiting for the TV crew. Eventually they showed. Handshakes all around, and down into the bowels of City Hall we go. Boots on, reflective vests, hard hats, we follow J.J. Madia, the city worker whose full time job it is to make sure those tunnels don't flood again.
     To tell you the truth, the Brits—producer, cameraman, sound guy—were not as friendly as I expected. A little distant almost. And as one hour folded into two, it dawned on me: they weren't talking to me, they were talking to Madia. I was just ... well, there, for no particular purpose, sloshing in the water after them.  
     At 11:30 a.m. I decided I had enough. I was supposed to meet my brother, back at Petra's, for lunch at 12 noon. He's be sitting in a booth, gazing at the door, wondering where the flip I was, while I was standing up to my shins in water 40 feet underground. The crew was busily filming Madia expounding over some aspect of the tunnel. I decided to go back myself. I knew the way.
     Or, rather, I thought I knew the way. Turns out I didn't, which I learned when I came face-to-face with a steel bulkhead at a dead end I was certain I hadn't been to before. Getting lost would be bad: there are 39 miles of tunnels under the Loop.
     I turned around, pushing away that sinking, oh-I'm-screwed feeling and, heading back down the tunnel, saw Madia's flashlight, way ahead of me at an intersection of tunnel—I had taken the wrong turn. The Brits were a little nicer since after I left — the producer apologized, and explained that she had put me down for 11:45. A miscommunication. We shot me standing at the corner of Randolph and LaSalle, talking about the Flood. The producer handed me my fee: a dollar.
    Afterward, I had lunch with my brother—that was good, some redemption from being in the neighborhood. A good conversation, as always. Off to the station, waited half an hour for the train, and caught the 2:35.
     Maybe my "go and see" approach needs adjustment, I thought. Maybe the lesson is to stay chained to the computer and work and don't go to iffy opportunities. My new attitude toward such opportunities could be: "Fuck you. Find some other sap to fill your empty airtime."
    No. Just because something doesn't work, once, isn't an indictment of the philosophy. Baseball players employ the walk-up-to-the-plate-and-swing strategy, even though it fails two out of three, that doesn't undercut the value of their approach. You can't get a hit every time. You still keep swinging.
    The train was stopped at Morton Grove. A medical emergency, the conductor announced. The emergency, I realized from muffled screams on the sidewalk, involved a man who had gone berserk in the next car and was being subdued by about eight officers. I joined a group of suburbanites watching blandly from a couple car lengths away. The troubled man was joined by a young lady, also screaming and twisting and flailing as three cops dragged her off.
     Better you than me, bub. Watching the crisis settled my mood completely. A complicated thing, life. Work had lately seemed particularly burdensome—I sent my new 5,000-word story on smiling off to Mosaic Tuesday night—and this lost day turned out to be a reminder that I actually enjoy my work and hate to be interrupted without good reason. A reader among the knot of inconvenienced commuters struck up a conversation with me, waiting for the cops to drag the pair off. That new Sun-Times web site, he enthused. It's fantastic! I told him I was glad to hear that. I won't say it made the previous eight hours worth it. But it helped. 

Remembering Roger Ebert

     In addition to April 4 being the 50th anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., it is also the fifth anniversary of the death of Roger Ebert, the admired film critic of the Sun-Times. If you are wondering why I'm remarking on one rather than another, it's that I looked back over what I've written over the years about King and was not impressed by anything in particular, considered what I might add to the already extensive conversation now, and decided my thoughts were too scattered to bear sorting out.
      On the other hand, this obituary, I believe, bears re-reading, because it reminds us that in addition to changing the way America watches film, Ebert also had an important role—perhaps an even more important role—in changing how we think of sickness and disability. It was the single most read story the Sun-Times posted in 2013, and while at first I thought "save it for 2023," my second thought was, "post it now; maybe you won't be writing this in 2023."

     Roger Ebert loved movies.
     Except for those he hated.
     For a film with a daring director, a talented cast, a captivating plot or, ideally, all three, there could be no better advocate than Roger Ebert, who passionately celebrated and promoted excellence in film while deflating the awful, the derivative or the merely mediocre with an observant eye, a sharp wit and a depth of knowledge that delighted his millions of readers and viewers.
     “No good film is too long,” he once wrote, a sentiment he felt strongly enough about to have engraved on pens. “No bad movie is short enough.”
     Ebert, 70, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, and who was without question the nation’s most prominent and influential film critic, died Thursday in Chicago.
     “We were getting ready to go home today for hospice care, when he looked at us, smiled, and passed away,” said his wife, Chaz Ebert. “No struggle, no pain, just a quiet, dignified transition.”
     He had been in poor health over the past decade, battling cancers of the thyroid and salivary gland.
     He lost part of his lower jaw in 2006, and with it the ability to speak or eat, a calamity that would have driven other men from the public eye. But Ebert refused to hide, instead forging what became a new chapter in his career, an extraordinary chronicle of his devastating illness that won him a new generation of admirers. “No point in denying it,” he wrote, analyzing his medical struggles with characteristic courage, candor and wit, a view that was never tinged with bitterness or self-pity.
     On Tuesday, Ebert blogged that he had suffered a recurrence of cancer following a hip fracture suffered in December and would be taking “a leave of presence.” In the blog essay, marking his 46th anniversary of becoming the Sun-Times film critic, Ebert wrote “I am not going away. My intent is to continue to write selected reviews but to leave the rest to a talented team of writers hand-picked and greatly admired by me.”
     Always technically savvy — he was an early investor in Google — Ebert let the Internet be his voice. His site, rogerebert.com, had millions of fans, and he received a special achievement award as the 2010 “Person of the Year” from the Webby Awards, which noted that “his online journal has raised the bar for the level of poignancy, thoughtfulness and critique one can achieve on the Web.” His Twitter feed had more than 841,000 followers.
      Ebert was both widely popular and professionally respected. He not only won a Pulitzer Prize — the first film critic to do so — but his name was added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005, among the movie stars he wrote about so well for so long. His reviews were syndicated in hundreds of newspapers worldwide.
     The same year Ebert won the Pulitzer — 1975 — he also launched a new kind of television program: “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You” with Chicago Tribune movie critic Gene Siskel on WTTW-Channel 11. At first it ran monthly.
     The combination worked. The trim, balding Siskel perfectly balanced the bespectacled, portly Ebert. In 1978, the show, retitled “Sneak Previews,” moved to PBS for national distribution, and the duo was on its way to becoming a fixture in American culture.
     “Tall and thin, short and fat. Laurel and Hardy,” Ebert once wrote. “We were parodied on ‘SNL’ and by Bob Hope and Danny Thomas and, the ultimate honor, in the pages of Mad magazine.”
     His colleagues admired him as a workhorse. Ebert reviewed as many as 306 movies a year, after he grew ill scheduling his cancer surgeries around the release of important pictures. He eagerly contributed to other sections of the paper — interviews with and obituaries of movie stars, even political columns on issues he cared strongly about on the editorial pages.
     In 1997, dissatisfied with spending his critical powers “locked in the present,” he began a running a feature revisiting classic movies and eventually published three books on “The Great Movies” (and two books on movies he hated). A second column, his “Movie Answer Man,” allowed readers to learn about intriguing details of cinema that only a Roger Ebert knew or could ferret out.
     That, too, became a book. Ebert wrote more books than any TV personality since Steve Allen — 17 in all. Not only collections of reviews, both good and bad, and critiques of great movies, but humorous glossaries and even a novel, “Behind the Phantom’s Mask,” that was serialized in the Sun-Times. He even wrote a book about rice cookers, “The Pot and How to Use It,” despite the fact that he could no longer eat. In 2011, his autobiography, “Life Itself,” won rave reviews. “This is the best thing Mr. Ebert has ever written,” Janet Maslin wrote in the New York Times. It is, fittingly enough, being made into a documentary, produced by his longtime friend, Martin Scor­sese.

     Roger Joseph Ebert was born in Urbana on June 18, 1942, the son of Walter and Annabel Ebert. His father was an electrician at the University of Illinois, his mother, a bookkeeper. It was a liberal household — Ebert remembers his parents praying for the success of Harry Truman in the election of 1948. As a child, he published a mimeographed neighborhood newspaper and a stamp collectors’ newspaper in elementary school.
      In high school, he was, as he later wrote, “demented in [his] zeal for school activities,” joining the swim team, acting in plays, founding the Science Fiction Club, co-hosting Urbana High School’s Saturday morning radio program, co-editing the newspaper, being elected senior class president.
     He began his professional writing career at 15, as a sportswriter covering the high school beat for the News-Gazette in Champaign-Urbana.
      Ebert went on to the University of Illinois, where he published a weekly journal of politics and opinion as a freshman and served as editor of the Daily Illini his senior year. He graduated in 1964 and studied in South Africa on a Rotary Scholarship.
     While still in Urbana, he began free-lancing for the Sun-Times and the Chicago Daily News.
      He was accepted at the University of Chicago, where he planned to earn his doctorate in English (an avid reader, Ebert later used literary authors to help explain films — for example, quoting e.e. cummings several times in his review of Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking “2001: A Space Odyssey.”)
     But Ebert also had written to Herman Kogan, for whom he free-lanced at the Daily News, asking for a job, and ended up at the Sun-Times in September 1966, working part time. The following April, he was asked to become the newspaper’s film critic when the previous critic, Eleanor Keen, retired.
     “I didn’t know the job was open until the day I was given it,” Ebert later said. “I had no idea. Bob Zonka, the features editor, called me into the conference room and said, ‘We’re gonna make you the movie critic.’ It fell out of the sky.”
     Ebert’s goal up to that point had been to be “a columnist like Royko,” but he accepted this new stroke of luck, which came at exactly the right time. Movie criticism had been a backwater of journalism, barely more than recounting the plots and stars of movies — the Tribune ran its reviews under a jokey generic byline, “Mae Tinee.” But American cinema was about to enter a period of unprecedented creativity, and criticism would follow along. Restrictive film standards were finally easing up, in part thanks to his efforts. When Ebert began reviewing movies, Chicago still had an official film board that often banned daring movies here — Lynn Redgrave’s “Georgy Girl” was kept off Chicago screens in 1966 — and Ebert immediately began lobbying for elimination of the censorship board.
     e had a good eye. His Sept. 25, 1967, review of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in “Bonnie and Clyde” called the movie “a milestone” and “a landmark.”
      “Years from now it is quite possible that ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ will be seen as the definitive film of the 1960s,” he wrote, “showing with sadness, humor and unforgiving detail what one society had come to.”
     It was. Though of course Ebert was not infallible — while giving Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” four stars in the same year, he added that the movie’s “only flaw, I believe, is the introduction of limp, wordy Simon and Garfunkel songs.’’
     Ebert plunged into what turned out to be a mini-golden age of Chicago journalism. He found himself befriended by Mike Royko — with whom he wrote an unproduced screenplay. He drank with Royko, and with Nelson Algren and Studs Terkel. He wrote a trashy Hollywood movie, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,’’ for Russ Meyer, having met the king of the buxom B-movie after writing an appreciation of his work.
     In later years, Ebert was alternately sheepish and proud of the movie. It was the first “sexploitation” film by a major studio, 20th Century Fox, though Time magazine’s Richard Corliss did call it one of the 10 best films of the 1970s.
     It was not Ebert’s only foray into film writing — he was also hired to write a movie for the Sex Pistols, the seminal British punk band in the late 1970s.
     Eventually, Sun-Times editor James Hoge demanded that Ebert — who took a leave of absence when he went to Hollywood to write “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” — decide between making films and reviewing them. He chose newspapering, which increasingly became known because of his TV fame, which grew around his complex partnership with Gene Siskel on “Sneak Previews.”
      “At first the relationship on TV was edgy and uncomfortable,” Ebert wrote in 1999, after Siskel’s untimely death, at 53. “Our newspaper rivalry was always in the air between us. Gene liked to tell about the time he was taking a nap under a conference table at the television station, overheard a telephone conversation I was having with an editor, and scooped me on the story.”
     In 1981, the program was renamed “At the Movies” and moved to Tribune Broadcasting. In 1986, it became “Siskel & Ebert & The Movies” and moved to Buena Vista Television, and the duo began the signature “thumbs up, thumbs down” rating system that Ebert invented.
      “When we left to go with Disney . . . we had to change some things because we were afraid of [violating] intellectual property rights,’’ he said. “And I came up with the idea of giving thumbs up and thumbs down. And the reason that Siskel and I were able to trademark that is that the phrase ‘two thumbs up’ in connection with movies had never been used. And in fact, the phrase ‘two thumbs up’ was not in the vernacular. And now, of course, it’s part of the language.”
     “Two thumbs up” became their registered trademark and a highly coveted endorsement that inevitably ran at the top of movie advertisements.
      After Siskel died in 1999, Ebert auditioned a number of temporary co-hosts and settled on Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper in 2000. At its height, “Ebert & Roeper,” was seen on 200 stations.
     “Everyone keeps asking me for my favorite Roger Ebert story, or the one thing about him most people might not have known. Here’s the thing: Roger Ebert has already told all the best Roger Ebert stories in far better fashion than I ever could,” said Roeper, who continued the show after health troubles forced Ebert from the airwaves in 2006, until both men quit in 2008 after a contract dispute.
     “And whether you ‘knew’ him only through his reviews or his Twitter feed or his blog, or you were lucky enough to have been his friend for many years, with Roger, what you saw and heard was the 100 percent, unvarnished, real deal,” Roeper said. “There was no ‘off camera’ Roger. He was just as passionate, smart, stubborn, genuine and funny behind the scenes as he was in the public eye. He was a great writer and an even better friend.
     “They can remake movies, but no one will ever be able to recreate or match the one and only Roger Ebert.”
     All that need be mentioned of Ebert’s social life was that in the early 1980s he briefly went out with the hostess of a modest local TV show called “AM Chicago.” Taking her to the Hamburger Hamlet for dinner, Ebert suggested that she syndicate her show, using his success with Siskel as an example of the kind of riches that awaited. While she didn’t return his romantic interest, Oprah Winfrey did follow his business advice.
     In his memoir, Ebert writes of a controlling, alcoholic, faith-obsessed mother whom he was frightened of displeasing. “I would never marry before my mother died,” he wrote. She died in 1987, and in 1992 he got married, for the first time, at age 50, to attorney Chaz Hammel-Smith (later Chaz Hammelsmith), who was the great romance of his life and his rock in sickness, instrumental in helping Ebert continue his workload as his health declined.
     “She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she is the love of my life, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone,” he wrote.
     In addition to his TV and newspaper work, Ebert was a fixture at film festivals around the world — Toronto, Cannes, Telluride — and even created a festival of his own, The Overlooked Film Festival, or just “Ebertfest,” which he began in Champaign in 1999 and dedicated to highlighting neglected classics.
     Between 1970 and 2010, Ebert made yearly visits to the University of Colorado’s springtime Conference on World Affairs, where he has presented frame-by-frame critiques of classic movies to enraptured audiences.
     He had also used the conference to speak on a variety of subjects, from his romantic life to his recovery from alcoholism — he stopped drinking in 1979 — to the problem of spam email. In 1996, Ebert coined the “Boulder Pledge,” considered a cornerstone in the battle against spam.
     “Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message,” Ebert wrote. “Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.”
     Not only was Ebert eager to correspond with and encourage skilled movie bloggers, but he also put his money where his mouth was, investing early in the Google search engine and making several million dollars doing so.
     Ebert received honorary degrees from the American Film Institute, the University of Colorado and the School of the Art Institute. He is a member of the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame and was honored with a sidewalk medallion under the Chicago Theatre marquee.
     He first had surgery to remove a malignant tumor on his thyroid in 2002, and three subsequent surgeries on his salivary gland, all the while refusing to cut back on his TV show or his lifelong pride and joy, his job at the Sun-Times.
     “My newspaper job,” he said in 2005, “is my identity.”
     But as always with Roger Ebert, that was being too modest. He was a renaissance man whose genius was based on film but by no means limited to it, a great soul who had extraordinary impact on his profession and the world around him.
     “Kindness covers all of my political beliefs,” he wrote, at the end of his memoir, “Life Itself.” “No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”
     Survivors, in addition to his wife, include stepchildren Sonia and Jay, and grandchildren Raven, Emil, Mark and Joseph.

Informed Delivery service gives you, and distant snoops, a glance at your mail

 

     "You got a postcard from the University of Richmond Law School yesterday," my older son told us during his weekly phone call from California. "Why didn't you tell me?"
     I answered before the implications of his question had sunk in.
     "Why should we?" I said. "Is there a chance in hell you're going to Richmond?"
     Both my boys, whom you might think of as toddlers, since I sometimes do, are graduating from college this spring (the younger one, champing at the bit to get at Life, graduating a year early). Both are heading off to law school in the fall, God help them and us all.
     "And you got a letter addressed to 'The Steinberg Family' from 'Edie,'" he continued. "What's that?"
     "It was from Cousin Evie," my wife, also on the line, corrected him.
     I asked to know what is going on, and he explained the United States Postal Service has a new feature, Informed Delivery, where you can receive email images of mail you are slated to receive today, or have received for the past week.
     "My name is still associated with your address, so I was able to sign up," he said.
     "This is really creepy," my wife said.
     "It is!" Ross enthused, happily. Suddenly I remember that this was the boy who put a chemical in my glass of milk, causing it to solidify. Who once took a screen shot of my iMac screen, and then contrived for that photo to be displayed on the computer, so nothing I clicked on worked, and it was only when I was at the point of grabbing the computer and hurling it out the window did he laugh and reveal the joke.
     Of course I raced to sign up. The terms of service are extensive, as is typical, and include a little speech about privacy:

For over two centuries, the Postal Service has valued Your privacy, and built a brand that customers trust. When using the Service, the information You provide is accessible to the Postal Service, but may also be collected by third parties such as the companies that control the operating systems of the particular application

     Why is that not comforting? The place can't even capitalize correctly. How are they guarding my privacy?
     The questions were multiple choice answers about places I've lived and, disturbingly, the loan on my car. A dedicated hacker could cut through them like a hot knife through butter. The Postal Service said that is not a problem.
     "I have not heard of any issues with it" said Timothy J. Norman, USPS spokesman for the Chicago area.
     Norman said the service has been very popular, reaching more than 8 million users.
     "This is one of the coolest things we have," he said "You actually see the images of the mail pieces for that day, in a grayscale."
     How long, I wondered, does the USPS keep those photos? Are they building a database of every letter every American receives?
     "I really don't know how long they're available,' Norman said. "I don't think we would probably keep 'em more than 30 days, if that long."
     Reassurance comes in the fact that it's the mail: not exactly a font of fascination, as the first email Tuesday telling me of the bounty I'd have waiting in my mailbox at home.
     One postcard offering FREE ADMISSION to learn about how "STRESS, HORMONES and HEALTH" can be harnessed to fight belly fat. Another from the Chicago Opera Theater is inviting me to a double bill of Donizetti's "Il Pigmalione & Rita." That's it.
     Our veils of privacy are being pulled away one by one. Turns out Amazon has already patented technology so Alexa can overhear a conversation—say, on the mental health of a close relative - and send you advertising for psychiatrists. Given that, I can flip a switch and turn my own damn lights on.
     I imagine the benefit people derive from previewing the mail —"Oh look, my Harry & David catalogue is coming!"— is dwarfed by the potential for abuse.
     Still, my son, whose capacity for mischief is boundless, seemed pretty excited.
     "Now I can know, 'Oh, Mom got mail from a mystery bank in Guam,'" he taunted. "This is so good for domestic abusers or stalkers."
     "Why did you sign up?" I asked.
     "I need to know each piece of mail that comes to the house," he said, reminding me how, when he lived here, we'd both race to the mailbox to be the first to savor the joy of flipping through the fresh stack of letters and periodicals.   
     "Now we don't have that struggle anymore," he said. "It's a valuable service."