Going to Milwaukee

When I was in Milwaukee in June, I took exactly one photograph: this.

     I'm driving up to Milwaukee this afternoon to take in a Bucks game. Not a typical outing for me, but my brother-in-law is in town from California for Thanksgiving. He's a basketball fan and suggested going to the game, and I couldn't very well say no. It's been years since I've been to a basketball game; heck, with COVID, it sometimes feels like it's been years since I've been anywhere. They're playing the Cavaliers. Who knows? Maybe it'll be fun.
     Plus Milwaukee's only an hour away. Seventy miles due north. Thinking about the trip, I started assembling what I knew of the place. Milwaukee is the four-faced Allen-Bradley clock tower that announces you've arrived — usually, in my case, while passing through to some destination further north in Wisconsin, a state whose cheddar cheese friendliness has become curdled in recent years by all their red state nuttery. They don't fly flags declaring, "We've gone insane!" But the effect is the same.
     Not that I never stop in Milwaukee. I visited there for lunch in June, driving that new Porsche Taycan on a mad tour of charging stations. The Milwaukee Art Museum has this intricate, white, wing-like architecture that opens to greet the dawn, and 11 Georgia O'Keeffe's. My wife organized a visit there, as a sort of family field trip, maybe a decade ago. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember their display had an unmistakable Badger State slant, presenting O'Keeffe as a Wisconsin artist who grew up on a farm in Sun Prairie and, later, also did some work in the Southwest. It's as if the Art Institute of Chicago colored her as a Chicago artist because she went to school here for a year.
     Otherwise, we did once drive up to tour Marquette for our younger boy, which I think was some kind of homage on his part to Bulls star Jimmy Butler, who went there. I have the vaguest memory of red brick buildings, an urban school, and an immediate sense that this wasn't the place for him. Sports fandom must skip generations.
     And at some point — I think it was for the pranks book, which would make it the early 1990s, I drove up to use the library, and remember parking downtown on the strangely unpopulated main drag thinking, "It's so easy," and later meeting a former colleague from the Green Bay Press Gazette, where I interned during college, at some vast, empty German restaurant.     

    That's about it.

     The odd thing about Milwaukee is, despite having lived, if not quite in its shadow, then in close proximity, for the past 45 years, is how neutral I feel toward the place. I don't mind going, but also wouldn't feel bereft if I never went back. There's no sense of competition — Milwaukee has a quarter the population of Chicago — but also none of that automatic desire to tease a rustic hamlet. I don't have a lot of associations with Milwaukee — big for beer in the 19th century and, I suppose, still, and while I am a particular fan of Pabst NA in those blue cans — it tastes just as bad as regular Pabst — it isn't like I want to tour the plant and see them make the stuff.

     This has to reflect lack of initiative on my part. Maybe next year it would be worthwhile trying to get to know Milwaukee better, establish a sort of virtual Sun-Times Milwaukee Bureau and cable back some reports next summer. Who knows? There must be more to the place that I'm missing.

      

      

Birthday lunch

Judge Martin Moltz

     Certain readers have written to me so consistently for so long, I feel as if I know them, even when we've never met. It helps to have a distinctive name, like Royal Berg, which sounds like a character out of Tolkien, but is actually an attorney in the Loop specializing in immigration law.       He said he had bought two copies of my new book, and would it be possible to swing by and sign them? I said sure, and we arranged to meet downtown Monday. He said there was a luncheon of the Phi Alpha Delta law fraternity, honoring the birthday of a judge at Delmonico Restaurant, across from City Hall. Why don't I come as his guest?
     Putting those data points together — law fraternity, a judge, a restaurant called Delmonico's — what would you expect? I pictured the Union League Club, men in Brioni suits murmuring over their folded copies of the Wall Street Journal. I wore a jacket and a tie to fit in.
     The first surprise was Delmonico's. That's the name of perhaps the most famous New York restaurant of the 19th century. In the 21st century Chicago version, it was a nondescript interior room in the lobby 111 W. Washington, with steam tables and a cash register but no windows looking out into the street. I blew past it the first time, trucking through the lobby, not perceiving it as a restaurant, and had to ask directions, literally while standing directly in front of the place.
     I was directed to the buffet, selected a slice of Yankee pot roast and some broccoli and put them on my sectioned styrofoam plate — that seemed safe. There were eight or 10 people gathered to celebrate the 78th birthday of Judge Martin Moltz. Sixteen years on the bench. How's that going?

     "I love it," he said. "I enjoy it way too much. I'm so happy to do it at my age."

     I know the feeling. Judge Moltz, and the others gathered, some from the city law department, had a certain low-key, salt-of-the-earth quality — the German word heimlich comes to mind: familiar, agreeable. Not law as practiced by Ed Burke. There was no pretense, no aloofness. We traded stories. They all seemed to have read the Sun-Times for their entire lives and were pleased to meet me. Everybody was relaxed. Nobody was in a rush — I had to remind Judge Moltz to blow out his candles. Otherwise they might have just burned down to the frosting.

     Judge Moltz was appointed an associate judge of the Cook County First Municipal Circuit Court in 2007. In case you assume, as I did, that his canary yellow jacket was a birthday indulgence, it's not. The Chicago Lawyer published a photo of his closet: suits of purple, orange, aqua, salmon. 

     This is not to say he doesn't have legal chops. As Deputy Director of the State Appellate Prosecutor's office, he argued 1 ,700 cases before the appellate and state supreme Courts, a record that will probably never be broken.

     Soon we were happily discussing ... roller coasters. He grew up going to Riverview, remained an enthusiast all his life, and has ridden every roller coaster in the United States. And Canada. And England. And Wales.

     But that isn't the incredible part. The incredible part is that he didn't mention that personal achievement. I dug it up later. Accomplished and modest.

     Perhaps all that swooping and hurtling has primed him for Illinois politics. He had no reluctant last year to declare in open court that J.B. Pritzker's eviction moratorium is "utter idiocy," which it was, as much a stab at the rule of law as any MAGA machination. Landlords have to make a living too.

     It's Thanksgiving, so I should leave it at that and let you get back to preparations. I worried for a moment that I was setting some precedent, pointing out that I had agreed to meet a reader for lunch just because he'd purchased two books. But it's worse than that. I sometimes go to lunch with readers just because they ask, no books involved. Though I should flog the product: if you buy two books, I'll meet up with you and sign them, and we might as well have lunch while we're doing so. It certainly worked in this case; pleasant, distinctive company and the great inert stone of my publishing career moved two inches forward. Happy Thanksgiving.

Are you ready for Thanksgiving?

 

Janice Sackett, from left, Edie Steinberg and Alan Goldberg

   Three turkeys. One roasted. One fried. One smoked. Which is a lot of turkey. But I have help. My brother- and sister-in-law, Jay and Janice, do the deep frying honors, in our driveway. My other brother-in-law, Alan, smokes another turkey at his house. And my wife roasts the third.
     Did you notice the sleight of hand above? I said, “I have help ...” but actually I’m not preparing any of the three turkeys. My role is to buy two ... OK, I don’t do that either. My wife does. But I did lift them, when requested, transferring the birds from supermarket case to cart.
     And I’ll carve one, inexpertly, a hack job that will be greeted with indulgence. If you get nothing else from this column, take away the idea that this Thanksgiving you will be kind, especially to those who do something wrong. And double kind to anybody spilling anything. Especially a child. Because such moments linger. I know a parent who once yelled at a child who spilled soda at Thanksgiving, and that yell echoes across the years — it was mentioned a few days ago. You can’t unring a bell, as the lawyers say, nor can you suck back a yell. Keep paper towels handy.
     Things spill. Things go wrong. The bad is as much part of Thanksgiving as the good. Maybe more. The ritual trundling out of terrible moments and Thanksgiving disasters. One year my Grandma Sarah didn’t pan fry the celery before she put it in her stuffing, and it was crunchy. I, a child, hated that. Crunchy seemed antithetical to the soft comfort of stuffing. I reminded her every year, for the rest of her life: “Grandma. Make sure the celery isn’t crunchy.” It’s all I remember of those long-ago feasts, what I think of when I’m poking a wooden spoon at the sizzling celery. Sorry, Grandma. Children can be cruel.
     Three turkeys for 23 people. A lot of people, but not as many as in years past, when we could serve three dozen. Neither boy is coming home. I’ve generally drawn the veil on their lives, as they are now professional adults who don’t want their private doings chronicled in a newspaper. But that leads some readers to imagine they’re still toddlers, and I don’t think I’m spilling the beans to say they’re both away, kicking the tires of their girlfriends’ families. I practically clamped my hand over my mouth, trying not to give advice on that front. “Make sure you ...” Shutting up is an art form. Although I’m secretly worried, not that these visits will go poorly, but too well. They’ll like what they see so much, we’ll never get them back. Our house will become the thatched roof hut of the old sod, cherished in memory but never returned to. If not exactly cherished, then remembered fondly. Or at least remembered. I hope. That’s the trick of being a parent: you wind their propellers then let them fly, holding your breath, scanning the skies for their return. It’s like being in a cargo cult. Maybe next year. Maybe not.

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That's a lot of Cheerios.

 
     "I'm sorry," I said, pausing the quickstep to my car in the windy Costco parking lot as evening fell last week. "But I have to ask..."
     One of the beauties doing my job for the past third of a century: I can intrude into the lives of other people, autmatically, without hesitation or embarrassment, I didn't break step, tossing out my remark as I vectored past.
      The man loading dozens of bright yellow jumbo boxes of Cheerios into the back of his car paused and looked at me.
    "You must really like Cheerios," I continued, half statement, half question.

    I stopped and introduced myself. He said he is Moha Bouacha, a member of the Winnetka/Northfield Rotary Club, and they're putting Thanksgiving food baskets together to donate to Good News Partners in Chicago. 

     "Rotary is all about service," he said, and immediately snagged me to speak. I told him I've spoken downtown at Rotary/One — so designated because it was the first chapter, founded in Chicago by a homesick New Englander on Feb. 23, 1905. 

Preparing food baskets

     That merited a page in my new quotidian city history book,"Every Goddamn Day." 

     Their motto is "Service above self," such as feeding the needy at the holidays, a practice I'm in awe of, being essentially a self above service kind of guy. I feel charitable enough providing table space for 23 relatives at Thanksgiving.

     Rotary is not all self-sacrifice, however. It is also about making beneficial connections. Research for the Rotary vignette in my book  led to my reading "Babbitt," which contains a group modeled on the Rotary, and three other Sinclair Lewis novels, and writing about them in the newspaper. You follow a thread, it can lead unexpected places. Bouacha was wearing a purple NU sweatshirt, and I asked out that too. Turns out, he was associated with Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.

Delivering food baskets

     "Hail to purple, hail to white," I said, my standard greeting when meeting a fellow Wildcat. He looked me quizzically and, pressing forward, I explained that I've started writing for Rotary magazine, published in Evanston. My first piece, about recovery, ran in the September issue, and now I'm working on a cover story about, well, I probably shouldn't say. A serious subject of national importance, one that I feel proud to tackle. Lives will be saved. More on that another day.

     I should point out that by tucking Cheerios into their food baskets, the Rotary is giving out the most popular cereal in the country — almost half of American households regularly purchase Cheerios, or one of its numerous variants and brand extension flavors. Ours is one of them; my wife enjoys them dry, as a snack. Delving into the corporate history, I see there is the echo of a lawsuit baked into the name. Originally the half-inch wide life preservers were called "Cheerioats." But Quaker Oats brazenly claimed it had exclusive rights to the word "oats"— quite cheeky for a company that appropriated the reputation of a religious sect, against their will — so General Mills switched the name to "Cheerios" in July, 1945.

 

‘You are still left with doubts’

     Eric Snyder sat in silent contemplation before the massive carving of a human-headed winged bull. One guardian of the entrance to the throne room of King Sargon II in Assyria, the limestone creature is the foremost treasure of the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago.
     “It’s impressive,” said Snyder, visiting from Pennsylvania. A fork lift truck operator at a food plant, he naturally pondered the logistics of getting the 40-ton carving to Chicago.
     “Imagine what it took to bring it here,” he said then, without prompting, putting his finger on the issue that for decades has been roiling the world of archeology and museums. “Taking this from the place where it should be. Basically robbing it. In a word, stolen.”
     That’s perhaps putting it harshly. There is paperwork — in fact, the first artifact on display at ”Making Sense of Marbles: Roman Sculptures at the OI,” the museum’s exhibit of all nine of its Roman statues, is the export license related to their transfer here from Libya in 1957.
     “So much discussion today is about looting and repatriation and illegal acquisition,” said Kiersten Neumann, the Oriental Institute interim chief curator. “It’s very complicated.”

     From Greece thundering for the return of the Elgin Marbles — friezes pried from the Parthenon and spirited to the British Museum —to the Smithsonian last month giving a trove of Benin bronzes back to Nigeria, it’s hard to display a golden cup without conversations about how it got here and whether it should go back.
     That ambivalence extends all the way to the name of this small-but-potent museum. It’s still officially the “Oriental Institute,” though staffers’ shirts and press releases use “OI.” The name will officially change in February; Neumann won’t say to what.
     “Oriental” is considered a slur, not so much because it’s a direct insult but an anachronism, viewing Asian cultures as exotic, incense-shrouded mysteries, perspective encouraged by the West’s tendency to romanticize what it can’t understand, the same way hieroglyphics assumed to be supernatural incantations sometimes turned out to be grain inventories and recipes for beer.

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     Every morning, I do a bit of blog housework. Waiting until a decent hour, usually sunrise, when people are awake, I copy the link to that day's blog and post it on Facebook, then tweet it on Twitter. Shoving my work under reader's noses. In my dream world, that wouldn't be necessary — they'd seek out the blog on their own, no prompting necessary. No doubt some do. But I do not live in my dream world — no complaints; I imagine you don't either. Live in your own dream world that is. Or mine, for that matter.
     Sorry, start again. As you know, Elon Musk's bumbling mismanagement has decimated Twitter, and it leading many to fear the whole thing might just implode. So, before that happens, the prudent person packs a bag and tries to find new outlets. I joined Mastodon, which is kept on numerous servers. But it seems more like a tar pit, lethargic and lethal, that trapped those ancient mastodons, than the trumpeting beasts themselves Far more blunted and ineffective than Twitter, at least for me, which is really saying something. Barely worth the effort. Instagram held promise — I already had an account, and 720 followers — but you can't put live links in your posts. So people have to cut and paste that day's link, and it's hard enough to get them to click something. 
     My pal Charlie Meyerson, of Chicago Public Square, thinks I should send out a mass email. There are automatic email services, like Mailchimp, but when I look at those, I see something you need to pay money for, sooner than later, and I spend enough time putting out my hobby blog; I don't want to throw cash after it too. Paying for the privilege of doing this would be just one more reason to chuck it altogether, and I'm trying not to do that.
     So I thought I'd try sending out a daily blog link email. Charlie is the first recipient, but if you would like to be added to the list, email me your email address at dailysteinberg@gmail.com and I will put it in the database. Though if not enough people are interested after, oh, a month, I'll give it up. The email effort, that is. How many people are enough? Let's say 50. I'd drive to a library across town to speak to 50 people and consider it time well spent. So let's shoot for 50. That seems a modest goal. Which is fitting, since this is a modest enterprise.

Northshore Notes: Emotional Safety

     I typically include a headshot of my Northshore bureau chief Caren Jeskey atop her Saturday essay, to help remind readers who is writing this. But she looked out of place amongst the fire-breathing men I created using the Dall-E AI program, so we're doing without it this week. I'm hoping, after two years, most readers have gotten with the program. Me, six days a week; Caren on Saturdays.

By Caren Jeskey

Created by Dall-E

     We cannot always avoid difficult people. They cut us off and rage on the roads. They go postal. They take the parking spot we were patiently waiting for. Since we cannot change them, what do we do? How do we make our communities safer? The health of a community, after all, depends on its individual members.
     On all of us. The change isn't something we need permission to make. First of all, I am sure I’ve cut someone off without realizing it. I've also gone too slow in the fast lane before being able to merge. I always remind myself, when annoyed with strangers, that no one is perfect. It’s better to let it go than sacrifice my nervous system balance. (Plus these days I might get shot if I react at all). A pick-up owner I know in Austin used to say "accidents are the fault of the slow drivers. Not the tailgaters." Hard not to let that one piss me off, but over time I tried to see her perspective. She's right, but what's the use of fighting when she was not open to hearing my take on it?

     We can be around difficult people and react less. You aren't responsible for what they do, but you are for how you respond to it. I practice particular meditations, often called Metta or Loving Kindness, that help me think good thoughts towards others. All others. With practice, it becomes easier. When on a crowded train I stay calm and alert, and if I’m feeling irritated I remember that we all have beating hearts within a cage of bone. Realizing their precarious human form helps me move out of anger more quickly. I remind myself that adults are kids in grown up suits, and we are all marching towards death in our very short lives.

     I still have the urge to talk shit about MAGA maniacs. I have been actively trying to cut it out. I can better spend that energy helping campaign for more mature, wise, and intelligent politicians. I can focus on my own self-growth and keep the finger pointing down. Those we rail against generally don't care. In my brief martial arts training I learned that directing vitriol towards others weakens us. Push-ups don't. With loved ones we are on a more intimate journey, and sometimes there are opportunities to talk. This short video about how to talk to MAGA friends and family (yep, I know some) more effectively is helpful. I also have "safe topics" with some folks so that we can avoid arguing about something that one of us cannot seem to have a conversation about.  Sure, there's also the selfish piece where I don't want to accidentally get shot with a hunting rifle by an anti-feminist.

     Granted, it's hard to live amongst those we feel are a threat to democracy. "Looks like the U.S. will never separate church and state. I had a man call me a “wacko” just this week, for being a trans ally. It smarted for a bit. Then I realized it's best to simply move on. It's not his fault that he did not mature past elementary school. It's partly the fault of our society. Tolerance and compassion must be taught at home, and in schools more often. We must teach ourselves to raise our emotional IQs over time throughout life, and model this intelligence. It's considered to be more important than IQ, even in excelling academically."

     This topic came up for me today, Friday, because I attended a talk based in Austin, Texas (via Zoom). We learned more about how to protect the liberties of Texan residents and therapists that are being stripped away by those in a Trans (and any other form of "other") Panic. Those of us who hold equal rights for all in high regard are being threatened in this bizarre period of time, a throwback to less-enlightened ages. I also had the pleasure of spending 90 minutes or so in a group on Zoom with Reverend Ward Ewing this past week. He’s a non-alcoholic chairperson of Alcoholic Anonymous' General Service Board, who said “... the greatest difficulty I have with the institutional church is with the claim of knowing the truth. Anyone who has studied theology knows that ‘truth’ has changed dramatically over the ages. This claim to know the truth plays a central role in the churches’ developing a view of us versus them. At its worst it has led to witch hunts, inquisitions and persecutions; at its best it leads to hypocrisy and arrogance. I believe it is this claim that encourages within religion the desire to control and the spirit of perfectionism.” 

   As long as those who believe in heaven more than practicing the golden rule on earth- and as long as we have people in the world who do not see the value of all human life - have any degree of power, our world will continue to be broken.