Farewell Mad, thanks for the skepticism

     The world was my father and mother, big sister and little brother. The single-level ranch house on Carteret Court, and a few blocks beyond. A mile away, Fairwood School, a couple dozen white suburban kids, led by the teacher—in 6th grade Miss Benson, who lived with school secretary Miss Palmer, an arrangement we kids never thought twice about, but whose significance would strike me about 25 years later in one of those “Ohhh...” moments. 

     Order reigned, and while life in all its messiness certainly roiled places far from Berea, Ohio—wars, protests, moon launches—even those were rational, understandable, delivered

in sensible reports each morning in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and at 5:30 by Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News. The little black and white TV was perched next to the dining room table, and we’d all watch, my father mandating silence.
     The first whisper of chaos, the bugle call that the cavalry was on its way to save me, was Mad magazine. The adult world wasn’t the temple of reason and dignity it pretended to be. It was a madhouse, a crazy anthill, seething with idiocy and hypocrisy. Not only could you laugh at it, you had to.
     I remember the first issue of Mad magazine that found its way into my hands. The June 1970 parody of “Easy Rider.” I can see that cover as if it were on the newsstand at Rexall Drug. Mort Drucker’s caricature of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper—I didn’t know how spot-on it was because, of course, I hadn’t seen the movie; alongside, the magazine’s dimwit mascot, Alfred E. Newman, pedaling his bicycle.

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Flashback 1995: Having a Blast on Fourth of July Should Mean Fun, Not Injuries

      

     Not even 10 p.m., the night before Independence Day, and the leafy suburban paradise sounds like the Battle of the Marne—low percussive booms and staccato pops, cascades of crackles and distance roars. I'm not a fireworks fan, obviously—not only are they dangerous, but they frighten my dog, who is cowering at my feet as I type this, looking up at me accusingly, wondering why I don't make the ruckus stop. If only I could, Kitty. The best I can do is try to remind those who feel compelled to set them off at least remember to stop at a decent hour and try to be as safe as possible until they do. The service piece below isn't the most gruesome fireworks safety piece I've ever written—that would be this—but it serves its purpose. Have a safe and sane 4th. 

     Spread your fingers out in front of you and count them. If you've got all 10 and would like it to stay that way after July 4, then take a moment to think about fireworks safety.
     In the week before and after last year's Fourth of July holiday, 121 Chicagoans went to hospital emergency rooms with injuries from fireworks, according to the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council. Most of the injuries were minor burns. A quarter were eye injuries, many resulting in some blindness. Seven people lost fingers or toes.
     "National data tells us that between 8,000 and 12,000 people are injured every year by fireworks," said Dr. Elizabeth Powell, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Children's Memorial Hospital. "About half of those are kids. The eyes are most commonly injured, followed by hands and fingers. Not all of them are major injuries, of course, but if we can prevent them, why not do so?"
     Even those who aren't planning to go near fireworks need to think about safety—bystanders suffer 40 percent of fireworks injuries. In 1992, a 37-year-old Chicago woman had her right hand blown off while trying to bat away an illegal firework tossed in her direction. Investigators later determined that the "firecracker" had the power of a half-stick of dynamite.

      In 1993, a 4-year-old Chicago girl watching fireworks being set off died after a rocket struck her in the eye and lodged in her brain.
     Two years before that, a malfunctioning mortar killed a 30-year-old Burnham man. He looked into the tube of the device, trying to determine what was wrong with it, and it ignited, nearly decapitating him.
     The thousands of injuries nationwide, and occasional deaths, are not surprising, considering that most of the $ 300 million in fireworks sold in the United States are ignited by people who are not trained in handling them.
     Most consumer fireworks—mortars, roman candles, bottle rockets and the like—are illegal in Illinois. But the state's proximity to Indiana and Wisconsin, two states where giant fireworks stores line the highways, guarantees an ample fireworks supply to Independence Day revelers.
     In addition to fireworks being legal to sell in neighboring states, there are plenty of illicit fireworks in any state—M-80s, cherry bombs, M-100s and the like, not to mention homemade fireworks that can explode if you drop them.
     Even the devices legal in Illinois—snakes, poppers, smoke bombs and sparklers—can cause injury if not used properly. Sparklers are particularly dangerous, because their tips can reach 1,200 degrees and they are often liberally handed out to children, even young children, who invariably wave them.
     "These are not toys," said Dr. Tom Esposito, a trauma surgeon at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.
     Fireworks can cause injury even with minor mishandling.
     "I took care of a 6-year-old child who had a package of firecrackers explode in his pocket and give him second- and third-degree burns," said Powell. "It seemed such a senseless way to be injured. You wouldn't give your 6-year-old a pan of boiling water to carry, but nevertheless he was allowed to stick these things in his pocket."
     Some feel that fireworks are so dangerous the only safe way to use them is to watch professionals present a display.
     Four years ago, the National Society to Prevent Blindness, now called Prevent Blindness America, changed its stance from cautioning people to use fireworks safely to urging them not to use them at all.
     "Most agencies like ours would say, 'They're dangerous, you shouldn't be using them and, oh, by the way, if you've got them here's how to use them safely,' " said Tod Turriff, director of programs for Prevent Blindness America. "Looking at the statistics, people obviously can't use them safely. There's no safe way so why propose one?"
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 1, 1995

On July 4, recall disaster along with the glory

 

      Happy Fourth of July, in advance. On Thursday you’ll be picnicking, parade-watching, ooohing at fireworks, maybe setting off a few, carefully. If I’m going to get a word in, best do it now, so we can all kick back, relax and celebrate our beloved country’s glorious past and bright future.
     Her troubled present, maybe not so much. Independence Day, the third in the Trump administration. The twist this year is the president is hijacking the celebration in our nation’s capital and turning it into — what else? — a glorification of himself.
     And adding his own personal flourish: tanks.
     American tanks, one hopes. The participation of tanks in patriotic spectaculars is really more of a Russian thing — those May Day parades with perfect ranks of goose-stepping troops, plus tanks and missile carriers rumbling past the generals on the reviewing stand.
     Oh, Trump has ordered up generals, too, and commanded them to stand beside him. Maybe next year he’ll include gymnasts twirling ribbons on sticks.
     Grim stuff. But maybe we can find reason for hope instead of despair. But how? I could point out that there might only be one July 4 left n the Trump administration.
     Or five.
     Hard to say.
     It’s a holiday, almost. Let’s be optimistic. One, then. I’ll put out the flag, as a patriotic American. It is still a great country, despite all those determined to make the country “great again” by betraying its every value.
     Remember: We’ve had grimmer Fourths; four when our nation was divided by Civil War. It’s odd, to take comfort in low points of our history, but the present is so very, well, present, it tends to warp our perspective.

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Pulitzer-worthy then, termination-worthy now.

      Freelancing is nothing new in journalism.  A publication wants to include many more voices than the largest staff can contain. But with the gig economy, piecework is becoming more the norm than the exception.
     Being on a staff, however,  offers protection beyond insurance and a salary. It is an institutional commitment, vital when controversy starts chopping the waters, as is inevitable when a journalist does what he or she is supposed to do: agitate the public.
     Canadian cartoonist Michael de Adder was let go from his New Brunswick, Canada, publishing company this week, after he tweeted this cartoon of Donald Trump regarding the bodies of the father and daughter who drowned in Rio Grande while trying to cross into Texas and saying "Do you mind if I play through?"
     While there is a question whether he was let go because of this cartoon—Brunswick News, the Canadian company, denies it—the timing is suspicious. Media companies, particularly right wingers, have a way of purging divergent thought, lest it scorch the eyes of their readers and viewers.
     Here's another irony. Thirty years ago, Sun-Times cartoonist Jack Higgins drew almost the exact same cartoon, mocking vice president candidate Dan Quayle for hiding out from the Vietnam War in the Indiana National Guard. The paper didn't fire Higgins; rather, it submitted the drawing for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for excellence in editorial cartooning. It won.

CTA 'L' cars mate for life, like swans

     Outside, three flags snap in the breeze: the Stars and Stripes of the United States, the five-starred red flag of Communist China, and a white banner representing CRRC Sifang America Inc. or, colloquially, the Chicago Transit Authority’s L car plant in Hegewisch.
     Inside, almost lost within a vast, new industrial space, two familiar-looking stainless steel train car bodies are propped six feet in the air, dangling coils of cable, surrounded by a bright yellow platform, the first of the 7000 series: 7001 and 7002.
     At the latter, workers in hard hats gather around an electric coupler that doesn’t quite fit, doing what they call a “soft install”: tentatively attaching something and making sure it clears all the obstacles it must avoid on the CTA’s 224 miles of often-cramped track.
     CRRC Sifang — the initials stand for China Railways Rolling Stock Corporation — won a $1.3 billion contract in 2016 to produce 846 new rail cars for the CTA; that’s about half the current fleet. That same year, it broke ground on this $100 million, 380,000-square-foot facility to do it.
     ”Part of the deal was they would build the factory here and build the trains here and all the good stuff that goes along with it, all the jobs,” said David Smolensky, a publicist for the factory.
     That’s 100 jobs now — three-fourths of them from IBEW Local 134 and Sheet Metal Workers Local 73 — and 170 by sometime next year. If you’re wondering why a U.S. company didn’t get the work, that’s easy: There are no U.S.-owned companies building passenger railway cars.

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Here, eat your cheese: The State of the Blog, Year Six

     Last July, the newspaper sent me down to Granite City, to see Donald Trump give a speech at the U.S. Steel plant there. On the way home, I stopped for lunch in Dwight, a small town about 100 miles south of Chicago that turned out to have both an unexpected visitor's center housed in a refurbished vintage gas station, and a stunning bank designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1906 and still in use.
     I wrote a blog post about it, part of the carnival of quotidian essaying that is this blog, shifting from the important to the trivial, the current to the recycled.
    Neither news nor entertainment, fish nor foul, EGD wasn't a commercial endeavor, mostly, though it does have aspirations. And of course holiday advertising support from Eli's Cheesecake and its owner Marc Schulman, a tireless supporter of the blog since Day One. Thanks to him, and to all of you who ordered cheesecake. 
    For five years, the blog marched steadily upward. Readership grew. I imagined it become a Blog of Significance.
      Then this year Mark Zuckerberg turned a dial at Facebook, and readership fell 33 percent between August of 2018 and February 2019. Either that, or the public suddenly became indifferent, which is possible too. Though I do believe it is the former I like to think the quality, such as it is, hasn't suffered, but I'm not really the person to judge. And besides: the whole idea that good work is embraced while bad work is ignored is as baseless a fantasy as belief in faeries. 
     Besides Twitter has also closed down. Last year, I could get 100, 120 new followers a month. Lately I get none. My theory: people see the tweets either pushed by advertising dollars or sent by people with a million followers, neither of which describes me.
     I almost didn't count the numbers this year, but figured that would be worse. What's the point of being honest if you fall silent at bad news? 
    Bad news such as: in July, 2018, EGD had 75,928 readers.  That progressed steadily downward, lower and lower, month by month, until now, when June 2019 clocked in at almost exactly 50,000. with average of about 60,000 hits a month, putting us back to where we were in 2017. And a near-guarantee that next year will be worse.
    This, I believe, is where determination becomes a factor. Never never never and all that Churchillian folderol. 
    When we shift away from statistics, the picture improves. 
    In August, I started The Saturday Snapshot, using reader's photos to soften the weekend, both for the writers and, I hope, readers. Thanks to Tony, Tom, Nikki and all the regular contributors. We also marked Kitty's anniversary. 
    The blog carried all my columns in the paper, sometimes with sharper elements that the paper balked at, such as the Spanish headline on Friday's column. I won't run through all my favorites, though I have to mention the one in September where I featured women who donated their breast-milk to soften their grief after the death of their babies. In October, we hung out in Greenwich Village, at Caffe Reggio. 
     In April, I wrote a dozen pieces of a South American diary, including ones I was proud of on the tango as a guide to life, and a charming cheese shop. 
     Through it all, a steady fire directed at our president and the quislings and lackeys who support him, such as November's "Bias makes you stupid." For that reason alone, I think the blog is worth doing. Not for its limited and dwindling scope now, so much as to tell people in the future that we pushed back. In case they care.
    Which they might not.
    This is the place in the first draft of this report where I pressed the back of my wrist to my forehead and complained of being tired. But luckily I looked at past year-end summations, and noticed I was doing that during the blog's go-go sophomore year, when the numbers were zig-zagging skyward. So dispense with that.  Nobody likes a complainer—well, except for Republicans, who seem to love their whiner-in-chief, for reasons I can hardly fathom.

     I think that sums it up.  Wherever the beating heart of the internet may be, this ain't it. 

     But we are not without pride, and like to run a tidy shop ourselves. The cheese store in Necron, Chile wasn't Kraft Foods, either, but its proprietor still served up a delicious slab of fresh cheese for my two dollars. I try to do the same. Thank you for finding your nourishment here, and I'll hope to see you often in Year Seven. 


    
    

         

Time's up, Joe.

    Two nights. Two debates. Twenty candidates.
    How many are left now?
    That question is beyond my skill set.
     Four years ago I remember handicapping the 16 Republican contenders.
     Because it's easier to pan than praise. And I've already taken Beto O'Rourke to the woodshed for showing off his high school Spanish.
     Yeah, New Age guru Marianne Williamson was loopy. But you don't really need me to tell you that, do you?
     I will say the first night left me unmoved—so much so that I fell asleep halfway through. I get up early. My wife, who stayed awake, was very enthusiastic about Julian Castro. But I will have to take that on faith.
     Thursday night was very different. Kamala Harris was the breakout candidate, speaking with confidence, power, emotion and none of the wooden punching-above-my-weight quality that candidates like John Hickenlooper exhibited.
     Right up there with her was Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend mayor. So that's what the fuss is about. A man who is clear and direct and fearless and takes responsibility. "I didn't get it done," he said, asked why the South Bend police force was still 6 percent black in a city where the general population is a quarter African-American. No equivocation, no tap-dancing. It was almost shocking.
     Joe Biden wasn't bad, but he wasn't good either. He seemed to be taking a state's rights approach to civil rights, which is nearly a code for supporting racism. If he doesn't know that, he should. One problem with these longtime hacks is they think they can sugar-coat a turd and feed it to the public, because we're stupid, when we're really not, Donald Trump supporters notwithstanding. When California Rep. Eric Swalwell quoted Biden saying, 32 years ago, that it was time to pass the torch to a new generation, Biden replied, "I'm not letting go of that torch." It was a frank admission of the egoism and selfishness of his campaign. He won't let go, so somebody has to take it from him.
     The most inadvertently candid thing Biden said was when stopping himself from speaking. Most candidates barreled on as moderators tried to shut them up. Biden pulled himself short and said, "My time's up."
     Is it ever. 
     Maybe that's good manners. Or maybe it's the timidity that crumples before Donald Trump. The 2020 race won't be played by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.
     We have a long road ahead of us. Things change. But right now, I'd like to see Harris and Buttigieg together on a ticket. They seem in good position to pry the torch from Biden's claw. Then to be the splintery stick to shove up the ass of Donald Trump. If he beats them, well, then we deserve four more years of his clown show misrule.