Flashback 2004: "Single life is fine till about 30, then normal people marry"

In this 1449 work by Petrus Christus, a betrothed couple buy their wedding
ring from a goldsmith who, judging from his grim glance, must be single.

     Facebook let's you "tag" someone — inform a person being talked that their ears should be burning — and I was tagged regarding Mary Wisniewski's fine review of my newly-published book in NewCity. I of course read the comments, which included this: 

     I love Steinberg! One of the best Chicago writers around, except when he wrote, "Married people are better [than single folks]." I countered with, "So my drug addicted, abusive dad was better than Mother Theresa just because he was married and she wasn't?" Sorry....had to throw that in, because as a single person who hasn't even gotten a parking ticket in 7 years (and that one was thrown out) it still bugs me. Otherwise, NS is top of the line and I'll def put this book on my buy list.

     An excellent point. Though leaving me curious about the original column, written in reaction to Richard Roeper lauding the joys of bachelorhood.  I think reposting it is appropriate, particularly since Rich's birthday is Monday. Also, note the date: 2004. I was about to get a master class in just how much marriage can make you a better person, whether you like it or not. Just as Rich was no doubt influenced by his extraordinary singlehood, so I was biased by my exceptional wife, who points out that what I meant to say is not "Married people are better" but "It's better to be married." Exactly right, as usual.

     Once I had a friend who had never tasted shellfish. Not a shrimp, not a crab leg, not a lobster. Not once. Never. This seemed very strange and more than a little sad, and I asked him why. His answer was odder still.

     "My mother is very allergic to shellfish," he said. "She might have passed the allergy along to me." But he didn't know. "You're not certain?" I asked. "You don't know. Maybe you're not." True enough, he said, but he didn't want to take the risk.
     I never quite got over his revelation. Now and then I'd say, out of the blue, "C'mon — let's go over to Northwestern Memorial right now — we'll split a shrimp cocktail in the emergency room lobby. If you start to go into shock, we'll be right there. One shrimp. They're great. You don't know what you're missing." 

     He always refused.
     I thought of him this week, reading the responses of single people to Richard Roeper's column on the joys of bachelorhood. Their point, simply stated, is that they're happy being single, so why should married people try to pressure them into marriage?
     The short answer is: Because they don't know what they're missing. Being married is better. Forget the studies about living longer and healthier. Married people are more plugged into life, their shoulders are to the struggle of moving civilization. Single people keep the cosmetic surgery industry alive and that's about it.
     Of course single people are happy. I'd have been happy staying in kindergarten. But life requires you to move on, and those dragging their feet shouldn't try to transform it into a virtue.
     How do single people know they wouldn't like marriage? It's as if I lived my entire life completely within the limits of Cook County and refused to leave. Yes, Cook County's great, and yes, I could be happy. But if I start claiming there is nothing good beyond the border, nobody would buy that.
     Sign and the millions are yours
     I've been single, and if I criticize it, at least I was there, though not to suggest my bachelorhood and Richard Roeper's are in any way comparable. Which is another thing. Rich, God bless him, is not exactly Everyman in this area. His touting bachelorhood is like Michael Jordan lecturing a high school class on basketball as a career. Works for him, sure, but he's the exception that proves the rule.
     Rich excepted, most singles are leaning against the bar, sighing, waiting for somebody — anybody — to happen by. The social swirl is a fallacy, at least after age 30 or so, when all the normal people get married. But like all fallacies — like the I'm-Crashing-Through-the-Jungle-in-My-Big-SUV delusion — people cling to it.
     Thus the pressure from married friends. We are not, as the single people writing Rich seem to suggest, the malicious band of sideshow deformities in Tod Browning's "Freaks," keen to pull the unmarried into our nightmare as we chant, "You are one of us."
     Rather, in our eyes, we are trying to help our single friends salvage what's left of their lives before the years pass, irretrievable. Single people are cowards and it pains us to see them strut around in their narrow boxes, declaring them the whole wide world. Occasionally, you want to open the door and offer them shrimp.
     There is no Miss Perfect
     It takes guts to scrap all the pipe dreams of perfection and commit yourself to an actual person in the living world. Marriage is good because — and single people just can't get their arms around this — you are not the best person there ever was. Marriage binds you to someone else and puts you under their influence. As the years go by, you drift in their direction, as by a gravitational pull.
     Usually that's a good thing. Sure, I know people who marry an idiot and over time grow idiotic. But that's the risk you take, and marriage — like life — is all about risk vs. reward. Single people are willing to risk an evening of their lives and, sometimes, are rewarded with a great evening. Married people risk their entire lives, and while things do go spectacularly wrong, they tend to go right and either way they are actually building something real, which is more than single people can say.
     Married people are better. I can't imagine the monster I'd have become if I didn't have my sainted wife pulling me in the opposite direction. Left to their own devices, people do not change, they only become more so, concentrating themselves as the years go by. That's why so many old people, deprived of their mates, reduce down into these bitter, vinegary distillates of their former selves.
     A few of the singles tossed around the old chestnut that 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. Well, yeah, and 100 percent of lives end in death. What's the point? I've been married for 13 years, and if, a couple of years from now, my wife leaves me because she has finally had enough of my obnoxious habits, I'll still be glad that we were married.
     On any given day, singlehood might look better — more fun, more free. But then, buying a flat screen TV is, in the short run, more fun than opening a 401(k). Then the years clock by, and the married people reap the rewards, while the single people buy cats and tell themselves they haven't missed anything. But they have.

         —Originally published in the Sun-Times,  Jan. 23, 2004 

Northshore Notes: Simplicity

     A good story not only takes you somewhere but teaches you something. I not only enjoyed accompanying Northshore bureau chief Caren Jeskey on her ramble today, but appreciated learning about the existence of Purple. And soon so will you.

By Caren Jeskey

     Fresh out of grad school I took a temporary job, working for a small company called Archeus, an Employee Assistance Program, also known as an EAP.  A place to call when an employee is caught doing things they should not do on the internet and needs “counseling.” Many employers offer this service.

     Granted, this was 20 years ago, when folks didn’t realize that nothing you do online is private. EAPs are also the places to call when you need grief support, marital help, or when the stresses of life get to be too much. We’d counsel folks over the phone, or in satellite offices peppered around the Loop.
     The owner of the company was an elegant man, Reverend Sterling Minturn. I met him twice. Once at the office, and once at a martini lunch at a private club on Michigan Avenue. It was when I was working for Archeus that I experienced the coolest synchronistic experience of my life, which I wrote about in EGD back in April of 2020. 

     During that time I was also working for a corporate wellness program. They sent me out to Burr Ridge, to the Mars chocolate factory where I offered “Lunch & Learn” programs. I’d teach swing shift workers how to decompress with simple breathing and stretching practices. They’d send me home with coolers of dry ice and Dove ice cream bars. A win-win. 

     M&M’S® has recently introduced their newest member, Purple. She was “designed to represent acceptance and inclusivity” and “is known for her earnest self-expression. Keen self-awareness, authenticity and confidence are the driving forces behind Purple’s charm and quirky nature.” 

     Why not? I appreciate the rah-rah of a simple, old-timey pleasure these days. Bring on the Cracker Jack man with sailor hat and bell-bottoms. I was going to say Aunt Jemima, but remembered that her sweet mamie role has been rightfully retired.
     Flashing back to the past, I drove by Mars on my way to an appointment in Burr Ridge yesterday. I always take back roads and enjoyed a 75 minute, leisurely Friday afternoon drive out out to the southwest suburbs.

     I remembered an allergic reaction to super hot sauce at Heaven on Seven in nearby Naperville. They have glass droppers placed in childproof medicine bottles tucked away on a high shelf, and I was silly enough to ask to try them. The waiter cautioned me, suggesting one drop only. Being the high-roller I was, I had three. My neck immediately turned red and itchy, and my date and the waitstaff contemplated calling 911. I talked them out of it. “I’m fine!” I said. I was too embarrassed to admit I might need help. In the middle of that night I woke up to try to put out the mitts of fire that were my hands. I held them under cold water, but not before rubbing my swollen eyes, causing them to burn. Capsaicin poisoning. Being young and foolhardy, I slept it off.

     Yesterday, I knew that driving west into the country would yield great benefits. Road trips always do.
     Clumps of thick forests appeared between fields of tall prairie grasses. After my appointment I asked a local where I might find something pretty to look at. He directed me to Graue Mill. I was not sure what I’d find.
     I parked and found myself in the thick of fall foliage. Old trees surrounded a placid body of water, which I later learned is part of the Salt Creek Watershed. I marveled at the constant beauty of nature and gave a nod to good old Illinois. This land is our land. I walked a half mile or so on a nicely paved path as the dusk settled in. I wanted to keep going, but it was getting dark. I asked a couple if the path wound around the lake. They said “no,” and that I’d best be heading back the way I came. A young boy, 12 or so, came walking up with a fishing pole. He said “I’m going that way. My grandma is picking me up.” The couple encouraged me. "He knows where he's going!" The boy and I wound around the lake and he regaled me with stories of hunting deer with his uncles, and of the 48 inch fish he’d caught a few weeks back. “It was taller than me!” He showed me a picture to prove it. He also showed me the fake minnow bait on his fishing pole and explained that an internal hook was only activated if the bait was firmly snapped back. I’m not a hunter or fisher, nor a vegetarian, so this mini lesson was fun. Hats off to those who catch my food for me.

     His grandma started honking her horn in the distance, so he called her on his phone. “I’m 60 seconds away,” he lied. He stopped and tried to catch a quick fish from the water’s edge. I told him he’d better hurry to his grandma, who was probably worried. He asked me my name and I told him. He ran towards his grandma’s car and called over his shoulder "it was nice to meet you Caren! I’ll be back here Sunday.” I told him I’d try to make it back too.
     A Huck Finn day was had by all.

     “Stars and shadows ain’t good to see by.” Mark Twain, 1885

Headlines ripped from art

                             Used with permission of the Museo Nacional del Prado

     MADRID — At home, a Chicago police press pass and a smile won’t get you anywhere you can’t go with a smile alone. But I keep my media credentials current anyway, for a reason that would send Mike Royko spinning in his grave: free admission to European museums.
     The low position of the fourth estate in the U.S. — battered by a would-be dictator who doesn’t appreciate fact-obsessed busybodies contradicting his delusions — hardly need be mentioned.
     And honestly, I’m not sure whether the free pass means Europeans respect journalists more, or merely pity them. The unemployed also get into museums free.

      Museo Nacional del Prado

     

     If you’re wondering how I found myself in Spain, that’s easy: My wife wanted to go, and as scant as my desire was — considering the time, expense and effort involved — I wanted to be the guy who wouldn’t go to Spain even less. Turns out, there’s a lot of cool stuff there. Barcelona is silly with architecture by their wild genius, Antoni Gaudi. (“EAT YOUR HEART OUT!” I tweeted to our architecture critic Lee Bey.)
     And Madrid has the Prado, the national art museum. In its collection is Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights,” which Americans typically glimpse in a 2-square-inch sliver in a textbook. I spent 20 minutes gawping at its full-size wonder, where humanity dooms itself to hell, as far as I can tell, for the sin of eating berries with birds. Stepping into a gallery, I confronted a more colorful version of the “Mona Lisa.” You might know already, but it came as a shock to me. There are others?

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"Naked and Sated"

     I haven't had the chance to put my Spain notes into any kind of coherent order yet. But in the meantime, I wanted to share with you this restaurant I trucked past in Madrid.
     A health food place, of course. 

     "Naked & Sated is based on real food, without fats, sugars or additives," the owners explain on their website. "We banished the idea that eating healthy and well would leave you hungry. You would be satiated; you would enjoy a delicious meal without worries, a value that later became our tag line: eat without regrets."

     I suspected it's a chain—too much money obviously went into their graphics for it to be a single restaurant—and it is, half a dozen locations in Spain, mostly Madrid, but one in Bilbao. 
     And yes, "naked" was intentional, and not some translation fluke.
     "We took advantage of the double meaning of the word Naked to undress our products in a series of photographs that added a rogue touch to the already daring proposal of dishes," their statement continued. "We made the restaurant menu an object of desire, a poster-size print that diners could take home."
     So the menus have arty prints on the back, such as a peeled banana, slightly pixelated, which I suspect is a wink at porn.

     The culture that spawned a TV show called "Naked and Afraid" (nine seasons on the Discovery Channel; this might very well be a kind of homage) is in no position to pass judgment on matters of taste. I thought it was funny and maybe a little tone deaf, though I'm obviously not the target audience here: too old, too American. Any observations would be welcome. 

     

The day time stopped, and 365 other tales of Chicago

Clocks being tested at the Chicago Lighthouse clock factory in 2015.

     Today's column could be seen as slightly chutzpadik, as my people say. Ballsy, writing about my own book. But the truth is that the media has shrunk: Robert Feder is gone, the Tribune is a shell of its former self. There aren't as many outlets around to notice. The paper used to run excerpts, ballyhooing previous books — we once bought a thousand copies to give away as subscription promotions — but with the move and the consolidation with WBEZ and other various distractions, none of that was happening. So I figured, might as well beat the drum myself. As I tell young writers — or would, if any ever asked — if you don't care about your own work, then nobody will.

    Time stopped in Chicago. On Nov. 18, 1883. Twelve noon arrived and the pendulum of the main clock at the West Side Union Terminal was stilled for nine minutes and 32 seconds, while trainmen stood around, pocket watches in hand, waiting for the future to arrive with a decisive click.
     Solar time continued unabated, of course. High noon sped westward during those nine minutes and 32 seconds from the lakefront to Rockford. But solar time, which had guided human endeavor since the dawn of humanity, would never again matter quite so much in Chicago. The second noon of the day, coordinated with Central Standard Time, arrived with a telegraph signal from the Allegheny Observatory at the University of Pittsburgh.
     Why is this worth knowing today? Well, besides being a cool story unfamiliar to most, as we grapple with advances in technology, it helps to remember just how difficult even the most mundane changes were when they were new. Not everyone accepted Central Standard Time. Not even all the railroads. The Illinois Central, worried the change would confuse suburban commuters, held out for a week.
     And because today, speaking of time — if you are reading this on Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022 — is also the day my new book, “Every Goddamn Day: A Highly Selective, Definitely Opinionated, and Alternatingly Humorous and Heartbreaking Historical Tour of Chicago” is being published by the University of Chicago Press. I figure, if I don’t notice the event, who will?
     The book divides Chicago history into 366 daily vignettes. Some famous, like the Great Chicago Fire or the Leopold & Loeb murder. Some obscure, like the Day With Two Noons, or the surprising number of technological firsts originating in Chicago: not just the cell phone, which many already know about, but a host of developments from videotape to jockey shorts to controlled man-made nuclear fission, from pinball machines to blood banks to malted milkshakes.

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"Witty, economical and often whimsical"

     The would-be writer longs for the book itself, the tangible object, with his or her name emblazoned on the cover. To hold in his or her hands, to see in store windows. Often it seems, based on the self-published efforts that cross my desk, they don't care how greasy or handmade the book seems. So long as it exists in the world.

     As an established author, however, I've turned that logic on its head. To create a book takes so much work, years of effort, and offer so little compensation, relatively, that the work itself has to be the reward. It isn't that you don't care what the thing looks like. You do. But you also, if you're smart, learn to take your satisfaction from the doing of the thing, and not its reception.

    With my ninth book published, ah, tomorrow, I'd pretty much convinced myself the real pleasure is behind me: the research, the writing, the editing, the process.

    As for the rest? Publication of a book is the punishment you endure for the joy of writing one. Because really, what happens? General neglect, interrupted with flashes of misunderstanding.

     However. There is room for surprise in life. The new book, "Every Goddamn Day: A Highly Subjective, Definitely Opinionated, Alternatively Humorous and Heartbreaking Historical Tour of Chicago," based loosely on this blog, doesn't officially drop until Wednesday. But it's already defied my expectations.

     First there was the Printers Row Lit Fest in September. Of all the moments I've had after writing books, from being on Oprah to seeing the book reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review, I don't think anything will match having people line up in a driving downpour to get their books signed. That was humbling.

     And now Mary Wisniewski's review in NewCity, published Monday. Wow. Yes. Really, you should just read the piece. It begins:

     Writing history is a fascinating, frustrating business. You must construct a narrative out of so much that is unknown and incomplete. It’s like working a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing, and only a vague or wrong idea of what it should look like. Or it’s like creating an animation — you must assemble many little pictures, to give an illusion of reality and motion.

     In his new, odd Chicago history, “Every Goddamn Day,” Chicago Sun-Times columnist and author Neil Steinberg creates a kind of animated flipbook, putting together many pictures, one for each day of the year. By filling each story with startling detail, he creates a moving, living picture of Chicago’s past. The ambition of the project and the tidy economy of each one or two-page vignette means he packs a lot of Chicago into one book. It goes way beyond the clichés of pizza, Al Capone and Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. Like a civic Scheherazade, Steinberg offers a vast variety of tales...

     "Odd" gave me pause. Uh oh, I thought. Here it comes. But the book is odd, unusual — what's the point of writing an ordinary book? And then she proceeded to do what every writer of books wants done: understand what I was trying to do.

      I don't want to seize her work. You can read the rest by clicking here.
     If nobody else says another word about the book, I'll be able to tell myself that at least it was comprehensible, that someone was able to grasp what I was doing. And yes, I was lucky to draw Mary, who is accomplished writer herself, who wrote "Algren: A Life," an acclaimed biography of Nelson Algren.
     All told, off to a good start. There's the Sandburg Awards dinner Wednesday, and the official book launch party next Monday. Writing books is a largely private endeavor — not entirely, particularly in this case, where the impetus for the book came from my friends at the University of Chicago Press. But beyond occasional suggestions and course corrections, you work by yourself, pretty much, plodding toward your own solitary star, for years. Then suddenly the thing tumbles out into the public, for a few days or weeks. I'll keep you apprised and, of course, if you want to see what the fuss is about yourself, you can order the book here.

Happy birthday to us!

     I’ve been away a couple weeks. In Spain. Didja miss me? No? Not even a little?
     Sigh.
     Can’t say I’m surprised. We exist in such a howling media pandemonium nowadays, a continual cacophony of bugles and brasses blaring all the time. Who can even notice if a particular tin horn drops out or joins in?
     Did I miss anything? Of course I did. A city like Chicago is a Niagara of news, a never-ending cataract of information roaring past. Blink and you overlook something important.
     So what did I miss? Let’s see ... the past two weeks ... Lori Lightfoot? Fact-finding in Mexico! People being shot? Already covered like a damp shirt. For the record: It’s bad.
     There was the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Sun-Times — actually the Sunday Sun and Times, the hyphen came five months later — on Oct. 5, 1947. That could be viewed as a big deal, at least by people who work here. The folks still left at the Tribune certainly felt their 175th birthday was an occasion worthy of note, with a six-week celebration last spring penned by my pal Rick Kogan, the ghost in their increasingly stripped-down machine.
     I like that image. The once mighty Trib sets up circus tents and holds a month-and-a-half-long jamboree to mark its anniversary. While here at the scrappy Sun-Times, some crusty oddball who’s been wandering around, blinking in the Iberian sun, his absence at home unnoticed, comes scurrying back, drops his luggage, raises a finger and trills, “Umm, sorry, we, ah, missed that ...”
     Though my timing is perfect. (It’s better to be lucky than good.) Because just last week the Sun-Times announced a big change in our business model. Instead of covering your eyes until you cough up for an online subscription, our online content is now free, thanks to voluntary contributions, the way it works with our bosses, whoops, partners, at WBEZ.
     This is a perfect time to remember the newspaper’s founding, because it took place for exactly the same reason: to survive and maybe thrive in a changing media landscape. To glance at how Mr. Sun wed Miss Times 75 years ago is to see ad hoc adaptation at its finest. Department store scion Marshall Field III had created the Sun in 1941 with the sole purpose of pushing back against the isolationist, xenophobic, Hitler-canoodling Chicago Tribune. The first issue was published Dec. 4, 1941. Three days later, its entire reason for existence vanished after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and America entered the war. We came into a world mooted, with darkness setting in and two strikes against us.
     But we came out swinging.
     By 1947, the morning Sun had never made a penny of profit, and Field, obviously slow on the uptake, had purchased a second newspaper, the afternoon Times. A grubby sports-fixated photo tabloid founded in 1929, out of the ashes of the Chicago Journal (a paper begun in 1844, which is why you sometimes see claims that our roots pre-date the Trib. It’s a stretch).
     In its first issue, Sept. 3, 1929, the Times ran a manifesto describing its average reader, who of course was assumed to be a man, and a semi-literate man at that:
     “He wants the news at a glance, because his life is crowded and he hasn’t much time to waste on words.”
     Hasn’t ... much time ... to waste ... on words. Ouch, that stings. It’s like they saw Instagram almost a century before it appeared.

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