Breathe

      Saturday afternoon was rainy, but showers were supposed to hold off for a few hours in mid-afternoon, so my wife and I decided to head over to the Glenwood Avenue Art Fest in Rogers Park because, well, we always go.
      Why? Well, there's food and music and young couples with kids in strollers and kids with their faces painted like cats, plus hipsters leading real dogs, and unfortunate tattoos and green hair. Lots of booths selling local craft beer, and booths selling food, and crafts that range from the well-wrought and desirable to the artless and pitiable. The crowd is old and young, thin and fat, black and white, male and female and the entire spectrum in between.
      Besides, my brother-in-law, Alan Goldberg, a longtime community fixture, cooked up the thing, 18 years ago, and if you can't support your family by attending a summer fair once a year, well then, you've got problems, buddy.
      There are also booths for community groups and politicians, and those can be interesting and even lead to stories. 
      "Maybe we'll bump into Kelly Cassidy," I said as we approached, to my wife, of the state representative from the district, who has a notable cameo in my Chicago book and is in the headlines for her good works in Springfield.
     First we met the new alderwoman for the 49th ward, Maria Hadden, who body-checked Joe Moore out of office after 28 years. A staffer pointed her out, and I introduced myself. She turned and fled like I was radioactive. 
     Then as I predicted, we saw Kelly, outside her booth.
      "Have you met my wife?" she asked.
      "The other Kelly?" I seemed to recall a spouse also named Kelly, but I was behind the times. 

State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, left,
with her wife Candace Gingrich

      Two years and three days ago, she married Candace Gingrich.
      "Her brother is Newt Gingrich," Cassidy explained, as we shook hands.
      "The man who ruined the United States," I said, as if stating a simple fact. Which I was. It was Gingrich, Speaker of the House during the Clinton years in the late 1990s, who weaponized the Republicans Party, teaching them to marshal the English language against reality—it doesn't matter what truth is as long as you could attach a bad, or good, name to it and repeat that name often enough—and treat their opponents not as the other side of the political spectrum, but as traitors. It would probably have happened anyway, but Gingrich was the Sampson toppling the pillars of our body politic, then, fawning over Trump now in a way that would make Chris Christie blush.
      My wife tactfully wondered about their family reunions.
      "We're not a family that gathers a lot," said Gingrich, whose brother Newt is 23 years older than herself. I allowed that most families run the gamut.
      "I have relatives who are Trump supporters," I said, not adding, "distant relatives whom I haven't spoken to for years and would never want to speak to again." 
      I wondered how the couple met.
      "The story is ridiculous," said Cassidy, who met her future spouse through her past one.  "When Newt became Speaker she said, 'I know his sister...'"
     Cassidy asked her if she would come to Chicago to speak at events.
     "I'd never been to Chicago," began Gingrich, who lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 
     This was in the mid-1990s. 
     "And you were blown away by its incredibleness?" I wondered.
     "What I was blown away by was her," said Gingrich.
     But they were both in relationships, so they remained friends, going to Cubs games. But that changed.
      We didn't talk too long—I knew Kelly was there to meet constituents, not jawbone with me. So Edie and I wandered the fair, saw family, hung out, contemplated ceramics. I had an excellent gyros, she had an excellent chicken and avocado salad arepa. We both shared a cup of complicated cocoa gelato from Black Dog. I worried I hadn't quizzed Gingrich thoroughly—she was really a classic American type: the gay relative of a conservative political asshat. Dick Cheney's daughter, Alan Keyes' daughter, now Gingrich's sister, and I'm sure there are more. I should have pressed her on her notorious brother, who did so much to set the ball of our current political decline rolling briskly downhill.

Bailey, a half-sharpei, half bulldog. 

     I almost turned and immediately headed back. But no. It's one of the last Saturdays in summer. Try not working for a while, Neil. Just wander.
     But on the way out, I noticed the pair, sharing a meal at Kelly's booth, now deserted of staffers. We swung by, and I observed that usually it was the other way around: the politician leaves, the staffers stick around. 
      They laughed. I decided to ask one last question and then let them be. Sentient America is dealing with a daunting problem, I began: how to cope with a frightening, reactionary man who is not going away anytime soon. Having Gingrich as a brother her entire life  required her to cope with a similar burden. Any tips for people trying to get by?
     "Breathe," said Gingrich. "Breathing is always a good thing." 
     She observed that you''ll go crazy if you throw yourself at forces beyond your control, at problems you can't fix, at least can't fix right now.
    "It's the little things we all have control over," Gingrich said.
     It is no coincidence, she observed, that liberals are trying to fight pollution during the environmental regulation-shredding Trump administration by limiting use of plastic drinking straws, a small step in combatting global pollution. Go ahead; there's no shame in that.
     "There is so much more you could be doing, yes," she said. "But you are doing something."
      Quietly file at the bars of our predicament while saving our strength for better days. 
     "You can't control all the bad stuff, but you can control some," she said.
     That makes sense.
     The festival's last day is Sunday, Aug 18 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.  The gyros are expensive—$10—but worth it.
     

     

Flashback 2000: Climbing the status ladder

The Marx Brothers (from left) Chico, Zeppo, Groucho and Harpo

    I stumbled across this column looking for something else, and was surprised both by the facts it contained, and that I wrote it. Yes, 19 years is a long time. But usually, there is some glimmer ... this was all fresh. Plus it was 538 words long, 30 percent shorter than my column now, a reminder that while I rhapsodize the space of the past, that wasn't true when the column ran in the features section. When we had a features section. Anyway, I enjoyed this, and hope you will too.

     The Palmer House is made of sandstone quarried in Berea, Ohio. I know that because I grew up in Berea, the former sandstone capital of the world.
     It is one of the more touching human qualities that, so deep is our desire for status, we try to absorb accomplishment and glamor from the places that we live, or lived.
     In Chicago, there is no need to scrounge for glory. Open the bag and glittering baubles tumble out, from the most famous man in the world (Michael Jordan) to the most beloved doll (Raggedy Ann, who made her debut in the windows of Marshall Field's, stitched together to tout the Johnny Gruel stories).
     Though we do not need new ornaments to hang on Chicago's name, I feel obligated to report what I just learned about the vital role Chicago plays in the recent biography of . . . drumroll please . . . Groucho Marx and the Marx Brothers. Who knew?
     After their bid for success in New York went cold, the brothers Marx decided to move, en masse, to Chicago, to test our Midwest waters.
     "It would take a combination of bravado, faith and lunacy to trade New York for Chicago at this time," writes Stefan Kanfer, in his fine book, Groucho (Knopf, $ 30).
     They end up at 4512 W. Grand, and in the years to come, many crucial developments that led to their magnificent success fall into place somewhere around Chicago.
     They get their famous nicknames in Galesburg, during a poker game between shows. An obscure trouper named Art Fisher dubs them Groucho (for his mood), Harpo (for his instrument), Gummo (for his galoshes, or gumshoes) and Chicko, later Chico, for his eye for the ladies.
     Harpo joined the act in Waukegan, in the middle of a show, creeping unannounced into the orchestra.
     Harpo used to talk onstage, until one night when they appeared in Champaign-Urbana. A critic—and this must be the high-water mark for critics actually having an impact on the thing being criticized—noted that Harpo was a skilled pantomimist. "Unfortunately the effect is spoiled when he speaks."
     He never spoke onstage again.
     Groucho had his appendix out at Michael Reese Hospital. He married a Chicago girl, and hung out with Carl Sandburg and Ben Hecht.
     I saved the best for last. With the United States entering World War I, their mother, Minnie, read that anyone involved with farming would be exempt from the draft.
     "That was all Minnie needed to know," Kanfer writes. "She made immediate plans to acquire a farm."
     The Marx brothers moved to a 27-acre farm in La Grange and began raising chickens. It sounds too incredible to be true, but apparently it is. My only regret is that they didn't base a film on their efforts which, inevitably, failed.
     I couldn't help but wonder if the Marx legend lives in La Grange. I called Village Manager Marlies Perthel.
     Anything the town is famous for? "Not really," she said. "The one thing we're known for is we do have a historic district."
     Anybody famous live there?
     Groucho Marx," she said, "many, many years ago."
     That was a relief. At least La Grange-ites know they should hold their heads high. Do they?
     "It's a little humorous," she said. "In staid, conservative La Grange."
     Ah, a little humor. What else can you ask for in life?

                   —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 30, 2000

Israel rejects a key value of both Jewish and American life

"Freedom of Speech" by Norman Rockwell

     Nothing shows strength like the ability to listen. To not merely tolerate, but consider those who disagree with you. That’s a mark of confidence. 

     To hear contrasting opinions, weigh what merit those arguments might have, and even be open to the possibility that it is you, yourself, who could be wrong.
     Despots never get this. They’re too fraudulent, too terrified of losing their slippery grip on unmerited authority. So of course Donald Trump, that most hollow of puffed-up would-be strongmen, would fail to understand this, completely.
     “It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Reps. Omar and Tlaib to visit,” Trump tweeted on Thursday, of the pending visit to Israel of two American members of Congress. “They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds. Minnesota and Michigan will have a hard time putting them back in office. They are a disgrace!”
     Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim women elected to Congress, are not a disgrace. Nor anti-Semitic. They articulate concerns that many — maybe even most — American Jews feel over the path Israel is taking — its growing nationalism, its catering to ultra-Orthodox fanaticism, its general neglect of the fate of four million Palestinians under its semi-control.
     Yes, the two also encourage the BDS movement — the belief that Israeli businesses should be boycotted, investments in Israel should be divested, and sanctions placed until Israel ... well, does whatever it is the Palestinians want it to do: the Jews vanish, march into the Mediterranean Sea and let Palestinians have their country, I suppose.

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Success doesn't mean victory

    The column in the newspaper can't be longer than 719 words. There isn't room. I'm not sure if that's the precise limit—my gut tells me I could sneak in 720— but that's the number I don't let myself go beyond to make sure it doesn't run 790 or 800 words, which wouldn't fit on page 2, where I like to see it smiling back at me in the mornings.
     Sometimes I bite the bullet—on Monday, when I was trying to explain the allure of manhole covers, I went 900 words and got the column sunk deeper in the paper.  But on most days, if it runs 720 words, I take one word out. It might say something, and not something good, that I didn't feel the need to request the same for Wednesday's column. It held up Mothers Against Drunk Driving as a reason for hope, if not a roadmap, in the frustrating battle against gun violence. MADD's success, and the nation turning away from smoking, show that change is possible.
      Even starting out with a Sam Kinison bit, I felt I could make my point in my allotted space. But at that length, some nuance is lost. When I sent the column to Mothers Against Drunk Driving—they had provided a high-resolution copy of the photo I wanted to use—their response had a certain tone of ... disappointment.
     "Sadly, while we have come a long way, drunk driving is STILL the No. 1 killer on our roads," wrote Becky Iannotto, MADD's senior manager of communications. "It’s no longer funny and thousands of lives have been saved, but we still lose 10,000 to 11,000 people every year. Still working to change attitudes, support enforcement and strengthen laws until we can really get to zero!"
      I saw what she was saying. Just as as addicts and alcoholics are said to be in recovery, but never "recovered," so MADD has successes without victory. The fight continues: this Saturday is "Saturation Saturday" in conjunction with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's $13 million "Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over Campaign."
      I shouldn't write off overlooking that to tight space. The truth is, I was trying to make a point—MADD has accomplished great things against an entrenched killer, so can opponents of Armed America. To pause, and observe that despite nearly 40 years of gerbil-on-a-wheel effort, it's still an enormous problem, well, that would kind of take the air out of the message I was trying to inflate. 
     I should have mentioned MADD's ongoing fight.
     Nor did I mention Moms Demand Action, a grass roots organization trying to do exactly what I was suggesting: weaponize the pain felt by the survivors of victims of gun violence and use it against the entrenched and lucrative macho gun fantasy that thwarts any kind of commonsense action on the topic. 
       That's the beauty of the blog: it can add an asterisk where need be. Although, that said, the overwhelming reaction of readers was gratitude to read something at all hopeful about our current political state. So to the degree that my omissions might have reinforced the sense—or should that be "illusion"?—of hope, I suppose it was not an entirely bad thing.

     

Buh-bye to Dorothy Brown

     My sense is that Dorothy Brown figures, if she retires, then she can't be prosecuted, as the charges of corruption that have swirled around her office for years gather to gale force. A version of the ostrich's head-in-the-sand defense: "If I'm not in my office," she no doubt thought, in the kind of flash of genius that marked her nearly two decades as Clerk of the Cook County Circuit Courts, "then the feds will never be able to find me!"

     Fran Spielman spells out the latest news, as always. 
     The phrase Brown used, several times, is that it is time for her to "go to the next level."
     That's one way to put it.
      I was on the Sun-Times editorial board when Brown became county clerk in 2000—that's a scary thought—and remember the unsettling perkiness she exuded, which I came to see as a smokescreen for the ineptitude, arrogance and corruption—proved against her underlings, not against her, not yet—that followed. 

     Her department, who generally despised her, must be dancing in the hallways. I can't say I'll miss her: I've tuned Brown out for years. But I did think this might be a good moment to dig a few Dorothy Brown chestnuts out of the old vault. It's too early to breathe as sigh of relief: she hasn't quite gone away. But at least that happy day is in sight. It will be interesting to see which level she ends up sinking to: maybe she can join Carol Moseley-Braun in pecan farming and tea sales.

      What would be coming out of the clerk's office if Dorothy Brown hadn't ordered her employees to keep their mouths shut? As it is, they're dishing dirt like frenzied ditch diggers. Two great accusations came zipping my way: a) that Brown has her security detail empty out elevators before she uses them, and b) that this same security detail also pulls her boots on for her. Devoted to the requirements of the form, I ran this by Brown, who responded a) no, she uses the judges' elevators and b) no, they don't.
     At this point I thought the fair thing to do would be not to print these baseless charges. I checked with two editors here, who said:
     a) "Why start being fair now?" and b) "It's election season."
     See, it isn't just me.
                          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 10, 2004


     God bless Dorothy Brown. She's the perkiest person I have ever met in politics, bar none. The Cook County Circuit Court clerk has more spunk than an Olympic gymnast. She makes Katie Couric seem like Eeyore.
     Have you met the woman? Imbued with energy, excruciatingly well-mannered and the grace of God flowing from her like glow off a light-bulb. Her cringing subordinates might paint a different picture, but that's how she comes across during her visits to the newspaper.
     Of course, she can't run her own department, never mind run the city, not that she'll get the chance: Mayor Daley will crush her like an egg.
     Still, while she lasts, she should provide an interesting contrast to the morose Saul sulking on the fifth floor of City Hall: Daley, the sourest, most visibly unhappy man to hold elective office in America since Calvin Coolidge retired to Vermont, vs. Dorothy Brown, who seems about to bust out into song at any given moment. I'd like to pretend she'll give the mayor a run for his money and he'll only get 70 percent of the vote this time. But I doubt it.

      —originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 3, 2006

MADD success offers hope for progress with gun control

Cari Lightner, 13, was killed by a drunken driver a few hours after this photo was taken in 1980. Her mother Candace went on to found Mothers Against Drunk Driving

     It was good to hear Sam Kinison again.
     The maniacal scream, that wicked giggle.
     “Such a moral push, isn’t there in this country?” the comedian says on a 1988 album. “To try to get us to behave.”
     And here let’s leave out a few obscene gerunds.
     “Don’t drink and drive,” he sneers. “God, they have made such a big deal about this, haven’t they? It didn’t used to be such a big deal. You had a few drinks, you drove home. Now you’re a ....”
     We’ll skip a pair of crude anatomical descriptions - “... child killer!”
     The crowd whoops, ignoring that the one printable accusation is often literally true. Kinison explains the reluctant necessity of drunken driving: ”We don’t want to ... but there’s no other way to get our car back to the house. How are we supposed to get home? We’ve got to drink and drive.“
     That neatly sums up the public attitude at the time. Laws were pliant. In Texas, you could legally carry a beer while driving.
     Enter Candace Lightner, whose daughter Cari, 13, was run down by a thrice-convicted drunken driver in 1980. The group she formed, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, did not find drunken driving funny. It showed America what the joke cost, the faces of the more than 20,000 Americans whose lives were taken by alcohol-impaired drivers every year.
     Attitudes changed. Laws changed. You can’t legally drive and drink beer in Texas anymore — open containers were banned from vehicles in 2001. Now driving drunk is a serious crime. No one is laughing anymore.
     Where am I going with this? After the latest mass shootings, calls for common sense gun laws grew louder. They always do, after Parkland and Sandy Hook and America’s litany of shame. Then we go quiet again.

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Meeting the Andrews Sisters at the Manhole

The Andrews Sisters

    Yesterday's celebration of Manhole Cover Monday, plus the passage of nearly 40 years and a certain don't-give-a-damness that settles upon a man in his late 50s, permits me to tell this story, which I used to love to recount to friends.

      Participants in what used to be called, with antique specificity, Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, were expected to spend time working at a real newspaper. This was a central attraction of the place, if I recall. No hazy theorizing, no mucking about in sandboxes and playpens. Junior year, an entire academic quarter, booted into the real world to sink or swim.
     There were options across the country — some tantalizingly in Florida — but those all required the student to own an automobile. And I did not, nor would my parents buy me one or let me use one of theirs.  I don't think I even asked.
    That left one choice: the Green Bay Press Gazette in Green Bay Wisconsin, a town compact enough to cover on foot and by bus.  It was where all the carless students went.
     I arrived in early January — it was 17 degrees below zero when I showed up at the airport, which resembled, I would write my parents, "an abandoned bus station." Passengers got off the plane, ran to their cars and were gone. I dragged the steamer trunk I was carrying by its handle as luggage and went to the area in the airport labeled "Taxis" where a ruddy security guard was gazing out the window.
     "Where are the taxis?" I asked him.
     "It'll be back in a moment," he said. The "moment" was 30 minutes, while I mused at his use of the singular. "It'll be back..." As if the city had one cab, which maybe was the case. A cab did eventually pull up, the cabbie got out, walked over to the security, started to talk like the old friends they were. Then the driver noticed me. Oh, do you need a lift? He said. Yes, yes I did
      I went to the YMCA, to a dingy, loud room out of a Nelson Algren story. "Over fifty years old," I wrote my parents. "Smelly and dark, and really depressing, and not extraordinarily clean." But soon found residence a few blocks from downtown, the upper floor of an older couple named Schwartz. He had lost his larynx and spoke in an incomprehensible buzz by pressing a device to his throat. She took pity on me, and welcomed me with a basket of good apples and use of an electric frying pan. The apartment had a Murphy bed — the kind that swung out of the wall.
     I helped out on the police beat. My first story was on a bank bag of $1,700 that was lost but recovered. Life fell into the pattern of daily journalism, which for me involved visiting the local police and fire stations, on foot and by bus, and collecting the records of their ambulance runs.
    "I don't understand why every time an old woman has trouble breathing we have to put it in the newspaper," I remember griping. What I really wanted to write about was Wisconsin's state rock — I was charmed to find the state had a rock. The story grew and grew, but was never printed, despite my efforts. Like all interns, there was much screwing off. In my ample spare time, I used my computer to write short stories, which I thought would be my true career. They tended to be long, and in trying to print one out, managed to crash the Green Bay Press Gazette's entire computer system.
     Needless to say, I was not a popular person.
     When not at work, being 20 and an alcoholic-in-training, I went to bars, but those bars I recall as small, brightly lit places with the same gathering of flannel-clad Wisconsonites watching the same sporting events. It was early 1981, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Double Fantasy" album had just come out. The first single was "Starting Over" and was on the jukebox. The B side was "Kiss Kiss Kiss," a classic bit of unlistenable Yoko Ono screeching, and my habit would be to visit a bar, have a beer, establish that this was the deadest place on earth and I would never return to it, pop a quarter in the jukebox, punch up "Kiss Kiss Kiss" three times ,and then head outside just as its opening shriek began.
      But then one night, as I trudged around  what passed for a downtown in Green Bay, I saw a different sight. From a distance, I could hear the whump of dance music. Lights were strobing. I paid a cover and went inside, The dance floor was packed. The air hummed with sweat and life. I beamed — finally! — and went to the bar and ordered a glass of red wine, slid into a booth, looked around the room. My happiness curdled and I said to myself, through gritted teeth: "There are ... no ... women ... here."
     I had never been to a gay bar; I probably had never have imagined their existence. The thing to do was to flee but a) I had paid a couple dollars to get in and b) I had a full glass of wine before me. There seemed no harm in finishing it.
     At that moment three men walked up, all dressed in identical white blousy untucked shirts, blonde wigs, make-up and dangly earrings. They identified themselves as "The Andrews Sisters" and slid into the booth around me. We had a conversation the nature of which is lost to me — no letters to my parents describing that — except when the guy to my right asked me to dance.
     "I don't know how to dance," I said quickly, in one breath, instantly thinking of every girl who had ever told those exact words  — I heard that a lot — and uttering a sincere and spontaneous prayer to the Lord in Heaven: "Please God, I hope I didn't seem to them the way this guy seems to me." I looked at him closely, at his sideburns under the makeup. He looked like the singer Joe Cocker. In drag.
    Time passed. I finished my wine. We all looked at each other. The only way to exit the booth would be to either climb over Joe, or ask him to let me out, and that seemed somehow ... rude.
      Instead, polite to a fault, I said, "Okay, let's dance."
     He sprang up and started dancing, eyes closed, head back, not really engaging with me at all, thank God. I surveyed the dance floor around me in a kind of wonder, and had a thought that stayed in mind. Usually specific thoughts at specific moments in your life don't remain, crystal clear, after decades. But this one did. The thought was:
     "Here you are, Neil Steinberg, Northwestern University, Medill School of Journalism, Teaching Newspaper Program, Green Bay Press Gazette, Green Bay, Wisconsin, in the gay bar, dancing with the homosexuals ... what is it like?"
     I looked around at the crowded dance floor. And the truth, the honest, unvarnished truth, is I couldn't quite believe it, couldn't believe these men were sincere. I thought that, if you turned the lights up, and clapped each one on the shoulder and said, "Hey buddy, you're in a gay bar. What are you doing here?" that each would have a tale similar to mine, of confusion, of finding themselves in the wrong place.
     I was 20.
     The song continued, and I danced away from Joe Cocker, toward the exit, then turned and fled into the cold Wisconsin night. Walking away, I turned and saw, for the first time, where I had been, spelled out, "The Manhole." I don't know how I missed that going in. Maybe I read it and missed its significance. That sounds right.
      Of course on Monday I told this story to my colleagues at the Green Bay Press Gazette, who did not take it with the humor that I did. They seemed sort of aghast.  Part of the trick to being a writer is knowing whether the tale you have to tell will amuse your audience or horrify them, and I hadn't figured it out. Maybe I never did.
       The coda to the story is this. I am on the elevator at the Press-Gazette building, some time later. The Swedish janitor gets on, rolling a wringer bucket with a mop in it. The doors close. He turns to look at me and says, "Zo, you vent to de 'Manhole, eh?'
 
     The Manhole, at 207 S. Washington Street opened in 1976, and was "probably the first gay leather bar in Northeast Wisconsin" according to the History of Gay and Lesbian Life in Milwaukee Wisconsin website. It closed in 1981, and is now a parking lot.