Beth from electronics takes a hike.

Beth McGrath I

     Amazing how memories can sleep for years, decades even, only to be suddenly unlocked.
     I was mindlessly scrolling through Twitter Christmas Day, manfully digesting mounds of homemade cookies so I could go eat more, and there was a video of a Walmart clerk in a pink neon vest talking over an intercom.
     "Attention Walmart shoppers and associates," she begins. "My name is Beth from electronics. I've been working at Walmart for over five years and I can say that everyone here is overworked and underpaid. The attendance policy is bullshit. We are treated by customers and management poorly every day. Whenever we have a problem with it, we're told we are replaceable."
     A classic take-this-job-and-shove-it moment. Posted Dec. 23, it had three million views two days later. Why not? Who hasn't dreamed of quitting a job in dramatic, public fashion? In the years when I was on the night shift at the paper, slumped over on my desk waiting to be sent out to cover the next apartment fire, nursing a raft of slights both real and imagined, I passed the time conjuring up a Scottish band. They would show up toward day's end, while there were still lots of people around. A drum major in a bearskin headpiece carrying a mace, a guy pounding on a bass drum, and a couple of bagpipers. They would arrive, start to play, all eyes upon them. I would leap onto a chair, make a quick speech of resignation, condemning my bosses and all involved, then lead them out, stepping high, to "Scotland the Brave." I'm not sure why a Scottish band and music — I suppose there's something very "fuck you" baked into the soul of Scotland.

Beth McGrath II

     In other variations I'd be down on the river, sailing on some kind of elaborate party barge, decked out like King Herod on a throne, being fanned by palm fronds, surrounded by bathing beauties and flags, and harangue the managing editor through a bullhorn. "Dennis Britton!!! I'm talking to YOU!!!"
     Those memories seemed the natural stopping point. But here is the odd thing — and on social media, if you haven't found an odd thing, you probably haven't looked hard enough. When I tried to find out more about the video, the backstory, as it were, I quickly discovered that the one caught on Twitter isn't the original. A video of the same speech, but being given by a white employee, Beth McGrath of LaFayette, Louisiana, was posted on YouTube over a year ago. Looking back, though the clerk in the recent Twitter video punctuated the "five years" by holding out five fingers, the camera soon cuts away to customer reaction and stayed there. You hardly see the faux Beth speaking. It smacks of falsity, in retrospect.
     So either the false resignation was staged, to synch with the audio, or a benign video was made to match with the audio. I was wondering why, approached Jazzie654, the person (with 175,000 followers) who tweeted the second video, followed them and was followed back. "Hey, thanks for the follow," I wrote. "I'm a news columnist with the Chicago Sun-Times, and I thought I'd write a post on that Beth from Walmart video you tweeted. It seems that the audio was put over a video of a completely different person. Did you do that? Any insight into what happened? Thanks."

    Jazzie654 replied, rather cryptically: "Greetings Neil, although this did happen, it's not the original video." And then, a dozen minutes later, "Quitting Wal-Mart over the intercom has turned into a thing."

     That didn't add much clarity.

     "Yes, but what's it a video of?" I persisted. "Someone else quitting? Why use the old audio? I'm confused."

     "I think it was changed to be more effective, since the original person that quit hid her face," said Jazzie. "I'm only guessing since I didn't record it, I wasn't aware of the original version until after I posted."
      Which is a reminder that with the growth of deep fakes, even a video apparently showing something can't be taken at face value online anymore. The record of one person quitting can be re-staged to show an entirely different person pretending to quit. Does that matter? I bet it will, more and more.
 

Chicago Christmas, 1945

Chicago Daily News, Dec. 24, 1945

     The story I originally tell for Dec. 25 in my new book, "Every Goddamn Day," takes place in 1973, when a 350-pound slab of marble detached itself from the newly-constructed Standard Oil Building and fell onto the roof of the Prudential building next door. The opening salvo of a shower of chunks of stone falling over the next decade. Leading to, in the early 1990s, the entire skin — 43,000 slabs of white carrara marble — being replaced with granite at about half the cost of originally constructing the building itself.
     I love that story. In a city that reveres architects, it's good to remember that sometimes they just don't think things through — the guys building Big Stan obviously believed they were building a skyscraper in Miami, and hadn't properly considered the expansion and contraction that comes with the 100 degree shift between summer and winter in Chicago.
     But I had overlooked something key myself, a lapse my wife neatly summarized when I mentioned the falling stone story to her.

     "It's CHRISTMAS!" she said, or words to that effect. "Can't you find something a little, oh, Christmasy?"

     Not being entirely without sense, I saw her point. The question was then, "Which Christmas?" I figured the one immediately after World War II would have stories, and I was right.

Dec. 25, 1945

     The soldiers have been mustering out for months. But that barely dents the 12 million Americans in uniform. The arrival of the first peacetime Christmas in five years only intensifies the rush to get them home as quickly as possible.
     There are so many, and they keep coming. Today alone, 20 troopships arrive in eastern ports, and on the West Coast, California has 150,000 demobilized troops waiting for rides. The trains are full—the Southern Railroad estimates that 94 percent of passengers are military vets. Hundreds of civilians simply give up their reservations for veterans. Chicago train officials say Christmas breaks a passenger record. Though some trains are eight hours late, they all depart, eventually. Six marines grab a cab in San Diego and hire it to take them to New York City. Illinois servicemen who borrowed a furniture van in Denver are spending today snowbound in Kansas City. As the nation’s rail hub, Chicago hosts an occupying army of stranded vets. The city’s four Service Men centers host 132,000 uniformed soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen for the holidays. One sees boxer Joe Louis arrive at Municipal Airport, on his way to visit his daughter, ill at Children’s Memorial Hospital. In asking for an autograph, the vet explains he’s been marooned at the airport for two days. The champ reaches into his pocket, removes a Chicago–to–New York ticket, and gives it to the soldier. “Here, take this,” he says. “And have a merry Christmas with your folks.”
     Those who can’t go home phone instead. Bell Telephone reports that all its long-distance operators are on duty, a first. In part, because the pricy calls are being given away. One thousand wounded vets recovering at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital each get a five-minute call home, paid for by the Phone Home Fund, financed by readers of the Chicago Times.
     Compounding the chaos, Chicago, like much of the Midwest, is glazed by ice, the worst since records have been kept. A navy plane carrying nine sailors east lands at Municipal Airport but can’t take off again.
     Dale Drew and June Kemper, two young ticket agents for Consolidated Airlines, see the Pacific vets sulking around the airport this morning. They phone their mothers, who are already preparing Christmas dinners for 11 and eight, respectively. What’s a few more? The sailors are split up and sent to their homes, where presents materialize under the trees. After dinner, they gather at the Drew home, where friends of the two agents arrive. The carpets are rolled back, and there is dancing and singing.
Before they leave, the nine sailors draw up a resolution: “This has been a wonderful Christmas for us,” it reads. “One just like you read about in books or see in the movies. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.” They all sign.

Northshore Notes: Common air

    I tend to be linear, to err on the side of structure, clarity. But that is only one way to roll. Today's post by EGD's Northshore bureau chief Caren Jeskey is more freeform, more of a koan, a mystery to unwrap, circling in on itself. I'm not sure I get it, but then, it isn't for me. It's for you. Enjoy.

By Caren Jeskey

”These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.”
              — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

     We sometimes hurt the ones we love, but we don’t have to. We can use our incredible brains with more finesse.
     Here are seven basic communication tips from retired Gary Noesner, the former chief of the F.B.I. Crisis Negotiation Unit, that might come in handy. You can write them down on a piece of paper and keep it in your pocket to remind you, along with a smooth stone to ground you, or perhaps a doll to poke with needles under the table if you must.
     Nod and say “yep. Yep. Yep.”
     Paraphrase, letting them know what you heard them say to be sure you got it right.
     Use Emotional Labeling, such as “it seems as though…” to learn more.
     Use Mirroring, repeating the last few words of their sentence. This breeds comfort, which leads to bonding.

     Ask open-ended questions to better understand. Stay curious.
     The tried and true favorite, “I” statements. “What I heard is…”.
    Allow for effective pauses. "'Eventually, even the most overwrought people will find it difficult to sustain a one-sided argument and will return to meaningful dialogue.'"
     I’m not saying I don’t need to be talked down sometimes, because I do. Sadly, I had the first brief row in many years with my brother this past week. We will repair, and I'll be sure to pre-game by reviewing active listening skills next time. We snap at others as if we have buttons they can push when our frustration tolerance is low. One way to improve in this area is to cultivate our thoughts and emotions into the direction of harmony rather than discord. There are countless guided meditations on my favorite (free/donation based) app that you can also stream online, Insight Timer.
     What we think of as focused, undivided attention in the west is akin to — but not quite the same as — to what’s considered to be meditation elsewhere. In that vein, I've found that spending focused hours on clients, playing music, reading and writing, and getting out for walks relieves intrusive thoughts, and fears and worries disappear. I don't have time to hold a grudge or worry about the planet if I'm immersed in something captivating.
     The big trick is taking serenity out into the world with other people.

     As some of you know from my recent Saturday posts, I end up at the lake often, and my new hobby of rock gathering ensues.* I was out at a beach in Evanston for three hours this past Wednesday a sunny day with a windchill that was under 20 degrees. It was glorious. I got lost staring at the water, engulfed in the sound of waves, and searching for morsels. I ran around and jumped and stomped my feet here and there. I sang Go Tell It On The Mountain for some reason. (Raised Catholic). I was a kid again. I found about a cup of lake glass that day — some smooth and frosty, some that I call half-baked, and some still with sharper edges.
     Friends who live on islands, whom I consider ecologically-minded beach experts — have told me to throw the last kind back into the water so they can have more time to soften into the glass most people cherish. I stepped into a heap of trouble yesterday, when I posted the images of my finds (and my plan to return some shards to the lake) on a Great Lakes rock fanatic group, online. I was called dumb and ignorant and harassed for being an idiot who would even think of throwing glass into the lake. A litterer. My favorite? “Gee, thanks for the bloodletting garbage.”
     I responded calmly for the most part, clearing up the confusion. I let the name-callers know that I felt hurt and uncomfortable, which the moderators don't allow. One man gave a heartfelt apology. I reported the gif with a bunch of men labeled "The Group" surrounding a person labeled “You” who cowered in the middle of a circle while everyone else flipped them/me the bird. Oy vey. This is how folks spend their vacations. (This is why Neil cautioned me not to read the vitriol I noticed on his Twitter thread once. He doesn't. Wise).
     I turned the volume down on the haters, and focused on those who kindly taught me the right way (in their eyes) to handle the unbaked glass. I will keep it as is, or tumble it. .
     Happy last week of December to you! May you be the calm in the storm if there's a storm. If not, may you have the good fortune of having a hostage negotiator nearby.

* The rocks I put in the tumbler 2 weeks ago will be changed out today, and I'll share the progress another day.

Christmas in Catalonia

     Christmas is Sunday, but I have an early present for you. Maybe something that can warm this frigid holiday weekend a little.
     Back in October, my wife and I visited Barcelona — it was supposed to be a 30th anniversary gift to ourselves, but COVID. But after a couple of years, we realized the pandemic is never going away, so we steeled ourselves and flew overseas.

     I was vaguely aware that Barcelona is a city in Spain, important during the Spanish Civil War, having read George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia.” That’s about it. My wife stepped up, as she always does, and picked what we’d do: at night, eat magnificent tapas dinners at crowded cafes; during the day, visit sites designed by the city’s star architect, Antoni Gaudi.
     We picnicked at Park Güell, the rambling high-end housing development turned pleasure compound. We took a night tour of La Pedrera, the curvy apartment building Gaudi designed and lived in, where from the roof we first glimpsed that capstone of our visit, the Basilica de la Sagrada Família, Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece, an enormous cathedral begun in 1882 and set to be completed in 2026, maybe.
     Trying to describe Sagrada Família in words and pictures is something of a fool’s errand. It can’t be conveyed. But given this is Christmas, a season of wonder, with the Three Magi setting out to witness a birth in a manger somewhere in Bethlehem, this seems a time for boldly venturing forth. Were you to go, you’d exit the subway station and first see this mountainous mass — it looks almost organic, a series of pointed conical towers wrapped in protective netting, rising from a mound of mud, with construction cranes jutting out at odd angles.
     “Looking for all the world like a cluster of gigantic stone termites’ nests, a colossal vegetable patch,” wrote architectural critic Jonathan Glancey. “A gingerbread house baked by the wickedest witch of all or perhaps a petrified forest.”

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My conversation with Janice Taylor.

Mask Masked by Gillian Wearing

     Having a book published can drive you a little nuts. Me anyway. After going through all the hard work required to paddle yourself to the center of this vast ocean of publishing, you now bob there, scanning the empty horizon,  ready to hail any distant sail.  
     That might be one reason why, after a person who instantly struck me as a Facebook scammer dangled her bait by inquiring about my book, I didn't do the smart thing and immediately block her. Instead I replied sincerely.

     Mind you, I hadn't gone completely mad — I never thought this was anything other than some guy in a windowless basement boiler room pinging 50 prospective marks at a time, looking for the one who'd doesn't pause and ask himself why a cute 20-something would suddenly be interested in a worn out old boot like himself. But she did start off her pitch in an unusual fashion. And I did let the line play out for a couple days — I guess I felt I was the angler as much as the prey. I was bored, curious how she'd spring the trap. Our chat began like this:

     Honestly, I didn't think much about it, at first. People do ask about how to get the book, as if they've never bought a book before. I looked at her Facebook page. It had some Chicago references on it. We do live in a diverse city. Nineteen of my friends — all men — had already friended her. She could in theory be a legitimate young person unfamiliar with the book buying process. The daughter of some businessman perhaps. It's possible. 

    The idea to create a professional account ... that was also different. A very specific suggestion, not one that would benefit her. Not the standard claim of a suitcase of cash found in Afghanistan that needs a trustworthy person to help with its disposal. It was the day before my book signing at Atlas, and I figured, okay, if she wants the book, and is real, she can stop by and purchase one. 

    I had looked at our mutual friends. All white men in their 50s or 60s. That screams scam. Alleged women romance and flatter older men and ... I'm not sure what. Hit them up for money for plane tickets for their joyful meeting. Or if she is supposedly in Winnetka, for bail or ... I'm not sure what. One of her friends was Vincent P. Falk, the genius programmer/fashion plate. That also told me she wasn't real.  I just couldn't picture Vincent Falk chatting up Janice Taylor at a North Shore soiree.

     It does? We'd lapsed into almost normal, nice-to-meet-ya conversation.     

     Thus ended our first evening's relationship. She was there, waiting, the next morning. I almost replied to her opening salvo with a testy, "Don't toss platitudes at me." But that seemed unkind, even to someone whose end game was ripping me off. I settled on acerbity.

         

     I was annoyed to find her back, but also sitting in a coffee shop, killing time. What was the harm?

     "Chicago is one of the bustling cities in the United States" sounds like a direct translation from Korean Wikipedia. And that page of drawings was snagged from the Instagram feed of an actual young California fashion designer, Amiko Simonetti. You can see her signature on the page that Janice posted. That was enough for me to unfriend her — and figured it was time to move this charade along. Why not just block her? I guess I wanted to see her try to spring her trap.

    I told myself there was an element of altruism to extending the conversation.  I figured, while she's after me, she can't also be sweet-talking someone else who might actually fall into the trap.  Plus people are not exactly lining up to chat with me. There is definitely something pleasant in just talking to someone. Those AI chatbots being developed now are going to make a fortune someday.

    The sun doesn't set over Lake Michigan. It rises. Okay, ignore her. But she kept circling back.

     I found myself lulled by another weakness: my tendency to want to share my own writing with others.

   Yes, Kumamon isn't technically anime, but yuru kyara, a "loose character." Close enough.

     Are you getting bored yet? I was. But somehow just blocking her seemed ... rude. No doubt a guy in some godforsaken place. But what if she was actually what she appeared, some 23-year-old daughter of a Korean businessman based in Wilmette, stealing other people's fashion designs, trying to seem impressive? Why be mean to that person? She hadn't done anything yet, nothing but chat. 

    The dumplings looked too good to be true. A Google Image search didn't find a source; no stock shot I could find. But I worried this could go on forever, and wanted to press her and see what happened.

    

    If you've hung in so far, we're nearing the denouement. 

     And so our conversation ended. I thought. I planned to post this a week ago Wednesday. Then the night before, she phoned me, just as I was sitting down to dinner. I have no idea how she got the number. We exchanged a few words — she didn't seem to want anything in particular other than to call me. As soon as I got off the line, I blocked her, which is what I should have done at the start.

     Her calling, stepping out of the realm of Facebook and into the telephone, creeped me out enough to hold this. I didn't want to do anything to encourage her presence in my world. But a week has passed, and I figure the coast is clear. Besides, I need something for today. What's the worst that could happen?

    

Finding the fun in functional

Ben Graham, left, examines a jacket designed by Columbia College fashion students.

     Fashion is cool and fun, daring and young.
     You can see that just walking into Reyes Witt’s classroom at Columbia College Chicago and noticing what her students are wearing. The sleeveless cowl T-shirt on Adam Salame, 20. The off-the-shoulder black batwing blouse on Paige Bernby, 20. The black slip worn as a dress over a turtleneck on Sandra Walkowicz, 21. Not to overlook Madison Chain’s hot pink beret worn with a sequined miniskirt and white knee-high boots.
     But fashion can be functional as well as fun, geared toward seniors instead of kids, as evidenced by the course name, “Design Solutions for Fashion Design,” and by what Witt’s students have been up to for the last 15 weeks: creating clothing to be worn by those facing physical challenges, such as the mobility limitations of the elderly, or being in a wheelchair, wearing absorbent undergarments or requiring help to dress.
     Students conceived their designs while learning to use new 3D design software, then created prototype garments. Today the top three designs are being presented to Joe & Bella, a new Chicago company that designs and sells adaptive apparel for seniors and people with disabilities.
     Once the students are ready, that is.
     “Some people are still sewing,” says Witt, as the class begins.
     Ben Graham, vice president of marketing at Joe & Bella, arrives.
     “We’re going to pick one, pass it on to our design team to finish it,” he says. “Put it up on our website and sell it.”
     First up is a convertible unisex blue jacket with zip-off sleeves.
     “We had a few issues,” says Salame, pointing to the prototype on a seamstress dummy. “We used this material that we discussed last time.”

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How can we miss Elon Musk if he won't go away?

     Hunkering down is a survival skill. There are times to fight, and times to flee, and times to keep your head low and wait.
     That last option seemed the only thing to do when Tesla mogul and Space X founder Elon Musk rode into town as the new boss of Twitter in late October. Yes, I began ballyhooing my stuff on Mastodon, or whatever they call their imitation of tweets ("PUBLISH!" the purple button says). But the service is even more random and ineffectual than Twitter, which is saying a lot, given how little traction my work gets there. Mastodon seems more like storing a few gallon jugs of water stashed in the basement — a symbolic gesture that won't really help much should  disaster occur.
     Besides, whatever change Musk was fomenting — inviting antisemites out of their holes to strut around in the light of day, banning a few journalists who had the temerity to write stories about him — didn't affect me in any direct sense. Twitter has always been a free-fire zone of malice and 99.999 percent of the stuff flying around I never see anyway. It's a breeze upon which to send my little balloons of writing wafting off into the aether.
     Honestly, I wouldn't have noticed a change except that I lost about 400 followers. I was closing in on 10,000, which is nothing in the larger picture, but a milestone in my dusty corner of the Sunset League. Now I've sunk below 9,500 and falling steadily, though I can't tell whether those are people more moral than myself fleeing the service, or robot followers being evaporated by some more efficient purging system put in place by the new regime.

    Now Musk has done one of his spurious polls to see whether he should step down as the head of Twitter, and the answer was a resounding "yes"—57 percent of 17 million voters said, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass, Elon." Never mind that those polls can easily be manipulated by the spambots and web robots that supposedly proliferated after the people in charge of getting rid of them were fired, or quit, when half the staff left upon Musk's arrival. It seems as if Musk will ignore the result anyway, in classic MAGA it's-only-fair-if-I-win style.
Last week I did ask myself if, by staying, I'm passively enabling evil, the good German sweeping his front step and not looking at the smoke coming from the crematorium. But all human systems are freighted with bad, and tweeting once a day doesn't seem like participating in wrongdoing any more than paying taxes or buying products. Leave reaching for moral purity to the vegans. Donald Trump was president for four years and I didn't go anywhere; how is this different?
     Musk has said he will abide by the people's choice, and maybe he will. Hard to tell when you're dealing with such an established hypocrite and liar. He could always bring in some even bigger asshat to run the thing. One hopes he goes back to running Tesla's, whose stock cratered in his absence, losing a third of its value over the past six months (including the 5 percent leap for joy it did Monday on learning Musk might stop spending his days sniping at people on Twitter).
     The poll strikes me as a fig leaf. With both Twitter and Tesla hemorrhaging value, the farce is bound to end sooner than later, as adults nudge Musk aside to a setting better suited to his ranting and preening.

     There's a reason children are warehoused in schools and not put in positions of authority. Ego is poison, attention an addictive drug, and people without the moderating influence of humility, maturity and good sense should avoid flailing around in public. Elon Musk spent $44 billion — most of it other people's money, of course — to cement his reputation as a bully with the impulse control of a toddler. From the public point of view, that might be a service, long term. Now we know. At least he was born in South Africa, and so can't be elected president of the United States. It's happened before.
     And then Trump went away. Or at least is in the painful, protracted process of going away. Waiting works. I've worked for my share of bad bosses before. They tend to move on down the pike if you just are patient. They arrive, manifest their inability, flail around, and then head off to explore new horizons while those behind heave a grateful sigh. The model I used was a previous classic business disaster, when Quaker Oats bought Snapple for $1.7 billion in November, 1994, twice its actual market value, ran the brand into the ground, and sold it for $300 million, half its actual worth, in March 1997. The entire fiasco didn't take three years to unfold, start to finish. I can't imagine Musk lasting that long. Heck, at this rate, he'll be gone by springtime.