Works in progress: Gene Weingarten

     Gene Weingarten is a humorist at heart, and as such is profoundly in touch with the inherent tragedy of life.  As a longtime columnist at the Washington Post, he won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for "The Fiddler in the Subway," where he put world class violinist Joshua Bell into the Washington Metro with his case open for change. What would have been a stunt in the hands of a lesser writer, like me, turned into a profound meditation on beauty, time and how we choose to live our lives. If you haven't read his collection, "The Fiddler in the Subway," you should buy it right now here.  The book contains some of the best-rendered, most heartbreaking, thought-provoking and worthwhile columns ever written. Reading it is awe-inspiring, like looking at the stars at night. I could never come anywhere close, but it made me proud to belong to the same profession, to be part of the same cosmos.       

     Besides being a professional inspiration second only to, perhaps, John McPhee, Gene has lately been a cautionary tale that has steeled me to meet whatever professional doom is hurtling toward me.  At the end of 2021, he tripped over his humor — fall-out from an offhand joke he made about Indian food that ran afoul of our exquisite cultural sensitivities. The Washington Post unceremoniously showed him the gate, a shocking coda that sadly encapsulates our moment in professional journalism.  Though it brought me both sadness and a strange kind of reassurance, almost comfort: if Gene Weingarten could be cashiered over a crack about curry, then I can be burnt at the stake and have no reason to complain nor feel fate had been unusually severe to me. In fact, I will lower my head, accepting my due, thanks to him. If he can take it, so can I.
     Not that Weingarten has surrendered quietly. Not his way. He launched a vibrant substack, "The Gene Pool." I signed up, and hope you do too. I asked him to tell us a little about it, and he honored EGD by agreeing to say a few words. Take it away, Gene:

     On my 21st birthday, when I was just out of college, where I was editor of the newspaper, I began my first day on the job as city hall reporter for a small afternoon daily in Albany, New York. The newsroom was dingy, the manual typewriters ancient and balky. The walls of the city room were faded to a wan yellow-orangish-green color that resembled the interior of one of those 1950s movie hotel rooms with a blinking neon sign outside the window ("Eats"), peopled by unshaven men in ribbed undershirts chain smoking unfiltered cigarettes down to the smallest stub, and looking nervously toward the street. Let's call the color "you'll-never-take-me-alive copper"
     Then the city editor told me what I was going to make: Just $72 a week. My jaw dropped. I was gobsmacked. These idiots were going to actually pay me for something I would have done for free.
     The Earth wheeled fifty times around the sun. I began earning a lot more money with jobs that had a lot more prestige at a succession of larger newspapers, until I arrived at The Washington Post in 1991 and nailed a great gig that gave me international prestige and rewarded me with significant prizes. And then, last year, when I turned 70, they jettisoned me.
     It's not easy getting a new position at 70;. A book proposal went nowhere. But the folks at Substack, a new online site that delivers publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure. Would I be interested in starting a newsletter? It's a grueling endeavor that usually is not terribly lucrative.
     "Yes," I said, immediately. And I did. It's a blog-like thing and reader interactive chat called "The Gene Pool." It's doing pretty well. It has subscribers in 49 states and 72 countries. I am earning about a third of what I did at The Post. People have asked me why I did it. Why not just take a victory lap and retire? Here's why:
     These Substack idiots are going to actually pay me for doing something I'd have done for free.

Backlash over eyeliner just more anti-‘woke’ folly

     Myself, I’m proud to live in the state of Illinois. A hardworking, mind-your-own business kind of place. We wake up, do our various things, whatever they are, whether parking cars or assembling them, without constantly looking over our shoulders, worried about what everybody else is doing.

     Why are we so blessed? A legacy of freedom, I suppose, walking the same soil trod by Abraham Lincoln. Sure, there are dissenters, those downstaters who wish our wise and benevolent Gov. J.B. Pritzker had just allowed them to quietly die of COVID — honestly, sometimes I find myself agreeing with them, before the better angels of my nature object.
     Which brings us to other parts of the country, not as far along the Noble Eightfold Path as Illinois. Places to the south and west that seem a permanent carnival of anxiety over anyone unlike themselves.
     From a distance, it can seem simply nuts. Places like Florida, where they passed a law designed to gag school teachers from discussing sexual orientation, because parents are so good at that. The Walt Disney Co., burned by the backlash to the $250,000 it donated to backers of the bill, cleared its throat, raised an index finger and quietly objected. Setting Gov. Ron DeSantis on a mad, endless vendetta against Disney — using the full power of the state to punish the Magic Kingdom, Florida’s largest employer, which is now suing in federal court, trying to make them stop. You’ve probably read about it.
    The Bud Light tempest is even weirder. Every beer company has an endless amount of promotions and sponsorships. Hundreds — minor league ball teams, stock cars, barn dances, you name it. But let Bud send one custom can to one trans influencer, a certain Dylan Mulvaney, and red states have mounted one of the rare boycotts that actually works — sales of Bud Light are down 17%.

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Flashback 2010: New green looks pretty old-school

  

       With "The Cherry Orchard" marking the end of Bob Falls reign as artistic director at the Goodman Theatre, I've been in a Chekhovian frame of mind. I wrote this recent column on the play, and was looking back at my takes on previous productions, I couldn't help but share this. Though not directed by Falls, how can I not be proud of managing to combine "Uncle Vanya" and the Home and Housewares Show?  

     'There's no such thing as a simple, honest love of nature," Dr. Astrov complains, in the excellent, Russian-language production of Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" on stage this weekend only at Navy Pier's Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
     Among the modern surprises in the 1899 masterpiece is a dose of environmentalism — no, our era didn't invent it — in the form of Astrov, who plants trees and studies animal population trends, boring the heck out of his companions.
     "The goats are gone?" exclaims Elena, arranging her features into a parody of pained alarm.
     Astrov is right. We've got recycling down pat, but it often seems oddly uncoupled from actual love of the outdoors — of hiking, birding, gardening. It's become a nonsecular ritual, a kind of ecological kosher.
     Not to suggest that "Uncle Vanya" is an ecology pageant — I might just be green-minded, having earlier this week spent hours at the enormous 2010 International Home and Housewares Show at McCormick Place, tagging alongside my pal, Lise Schleicher of BasketWorks.
     Commerce, like life, pulls us in opposite directions, as illustrated by two objects tucked into the big bag of swag I gathered at the show.
     One is a piece of "Comboware," a cornflower blue plastic plate with a knife and fork molded out of the same blue plastic, attached to either side. Thus, standing at a buffet, you need not dedicate a hand to holding plastic utensils, but can access them with a quick twist.
     The other item is a small hunter green cloth napkin from Litter Free Lunch, a company set up by a pair of Naperville moms, Megan Wojtyla and Felice Farran, whose children attend Prairie Elementary in that famously family-friendly town.
    "I couldn't find cloth napkins that were the right size for a lunch box," explained Farran. "I wanted to have a zero-waste lunch."
     Don't we all?
     The Comboware is designed to be thrown away — whoops, recycled. The LFL napkin is to be used again and again, as we conserve our way toward the New Jerusalem.
     The napkin — literally green — is in perfect harmony with the zeitgeist of this year's show, a festival of the eco-friendly and earth-aware, the recyclable and recycled, the reusable and renewable. There were dozens of brands of high-tech lunch sacks, countless types of stainless steel water bottles.
     Companies like Back to Basics, CynerGreen, Green Smart, Greenair, Fertile Earth, Reduce, Preserve, all performed the rather neat mental gymnastic of using conservation as a prod to encourage more consumption.
     (If you disagree with my hunch that much environmental friendliness is corporate hype, I want you to rinse out an old soda bottle and use THAT to tote your water for a week — it works fine — then get back to me)
     Contemplating the LFL cloth napkin raised a question: How is the used napkin to be returned home for laundering?
     Our Environmental Eden will involve a lot of washing, apparently, with much toting of soiled napkins.
     In addition to cloth napkins, Litter Free Lunch also sells fold-over cloth bags for sandwiches, which means that the young environmentalist would also bring home a bag that had held a sloppy tuna fish sandwich for mom (or dad) to wash.
     It's as if homemakers, having spent 50 years freeing themselves from the drudgery of scrubbing lunch boxes, are now working their way back. Next, we'll be replacing energy-hungry washing machines with corrugated metal washboards and galvanized steel tubs, all in the name of a need Chekhov grasped: the hunger to give life significance.
     "I know those moms," my wife said dryly, and at first I thought she meant actual familiarity with the Naperville pair, and then realized she meant weary knowledge of those who combat the soul-sucking demands of parenthood and the anodyne suburban grind by grasping at the pueblo lifestyle, building chicken coops in the back of their Land Rovers and cooking blue corn tortillas on a hot stone outside their million-dollar homes.
     "When you don't have a life, you dream," writes Chekhov. "It's better than nothing."
     Or is that cynical? My favorite object in the show was a bright orange Spaceboy XL, a rocket-shaped garbage can with a chrome push front made by the German firm Wesco, which has a flair bordering on genius for naming its trash cans — the Kickfox and the Wasteman, the Big Push and the Ashmaster.
     Not coincidentally, rocketship-shaped garbage cans reflect the hot trend of my youth, when we were all going to live on the moon someday in giant domes, and so products with vague connections to the space program — Tang, Space Food Sticks — sold despite the drawback of tasting awful.
     We reflect the eras that formed us, and the question is whether this zeal for environmentalism is another atom-burst wall clock — a passing consumer gimmick — or indeed is the flowering of a new eco-friendly age that has been building for 40 years.
     Maybe someday you wouldn't dream of using a toothbrush that ISN'T made from old yogurt cups, like the Preserve, which comes in its own "easy to Recycle postage-paid mailer" so you can send your used toothbrush back to Waltham, Mass., to begin its life anew.
     The uppercase, boldface "RECYCLE" is theirs. And now, I guess, ours too.
     It's a seductive dream.
     "If in a thousand years, men are happy," Dr. Astrov says, defending his odd tree-planting behavior, "it will be in part because of me."

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 19, 2010

Apple to avoid the cobalt blues

           Before it was vital for the production of batteries, cobalt was primarily used to produce a                                         vibrant color known as “cobalt blue,” such as in this glass pitcher set.

     “Do they recycle cobalt?”
     Leave it to my wife to cut through the clutter.
     “Umm ...” I replied.
     Dozens of reader emails last week focused on the me-me-me flea circus drama of my column about backing out of a humanitarian trip to Congo. (For the record, my wife supported both when I was going — “You’re helping people,” she said, plainly and with a touch of wonder — and when I wasn’t. “Smart,” she concluded).
     Her follow-up reaction, in trademark fashion, zeroed in on the moral issue — children mining cobalt by hand in the Democratic Republic of Congo, source of 70% of the world’s supply of an element essential in the production of rechargeable lithium batteries.
     A few readers airily wished something could be done (the “but of course it can’t!” breathed in a Scarlett O’Hara sigh while collapsing on a mental chaise lounge of resignation was implied), while my wife identified the solution: Recycle the cobalt. She then posed the relevant question: Can it be done?
     I consulted Prof. Google. Why yes, it can.
     Turns out not only can the cobalt in lithium batteries be recycled, but a certain Apple Inc., a few days earlier, had pounded its corporate fist on its global desk and announced that, by God, it would do just that, in an April 13 press release titled: “Apple will use 100 percent recycled cobalt in batteries by 2025.”

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A nice library if you can get in

 

                                      Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress 

     National Library Week already? And here I am, without a gift. Though there is this, one of my favorite library vignettes, from my memoir "You Were Never in Chicago."  The only additions I remember, 20 years after the incident, are that the book I was working on was "Hatless Jack," we were staying at The Willard, a grand old DC hotel a block from the White House, and that night I took a sheet of their deluxe Willard stationery and wrote Mrs. Creighton a letter, telling her how my son wanted to drop her name as his library clout.

     The value of knowing people, the grease that connections can provide, is central to the Chicago experience — we learn it without being taught. I didn't have to lecture the boys on the importance of contacts; it's instinctual, inborn. The family was in Washington, DC, on vacation, and for an afternoon I slipped away to do some research at the Library of Congress while Edie and the boys saw the sights. When they came to meet up with me, at the end of the day, I wanted to show Ross the Main Reading Room — it was so beautiful, a gilded dome, a marvel of arches and stained glass, a Victorian glory of murals and friezes and statuary, and Ross is such a lover of books, I knew he would be delighted to see it. So I took him up to the guard — you have to be a registered researcher to enter the Library of Congress, which I was. Ross wasn't, but I figured: the kid's seven years old.
     "Can I slip this boy in for a moment to look at the Reading Room?" I asked, nodding hopefully, displaying my Library of Congress ID card. I'm sorry, the guard said, only researchers are allowed in the reading room. "But I am a researcher!" insisted Ross, thumping his chest and stepping up to this rent-a-cop. "I'm researching James Monroe. And I always take good care of my books and papers." The guard, of course, didn't budge, and as we turned away, Ross said to me, in a whisper, "Dad, do you think it would help if we told him I'm friends with Mrs. Creighton?"
     Mrs. Creighton was the librarian at Greenbriar Elementary School in Northbrook.

     That attitude — I know people, I'm in with all the librarians, cut me some slack — is a very Chicago attitude, and reassured me that while my sons had not been born within the borders of the city, and might be growing up in the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook, but they were becoming Chicagoans nonetheless.

Time to explore all of Chicago

Shermann Dilla Thomas

      “This is example one of why everything dope about America comes from Chicago,” said Shermann Dilla Thomas, delivering his trademark buzz phrase to a busload of tourists on a recent Saturday at the west edge of the Midway Plaisance. “This is my main man, Lorado Taft’s ‘Fountain of Time.’”
     I’d been to the fountain before. Even written about it. But never grasped why it’s here. Thomas filled us in.
     “It was made in honor of the 100 years of peace between Great Britain and the United States,” he said. “Let’s see: Raise your hand if you know why the White House is painted white? I can help you with that.” 

     Maybe something to do with the British setting it on fire? I almost said that but kept my hand down. Shutting up is an art form, and I didn’t want to intrude. Smart, since I could never have explained it with half the panache that Thomas did:
     “In 1812, we tried to jack Canada from Great Britain,” he began. “It didn’t really work out in our favor. In fact, any time you sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ you are talking about when Great Britain was kicking our butts in Baltimore with the ‘rockets red glare.’ During the War of 1812, they also burned down the presidential residence. We didn’t call the place where the president lived ‘The White House’ in 1812.
     “After the redcoats burned it down — sadly, chattel slavery was still going on. So they went up to the enslaved Americans and said, ‘Hey yo, y’all gotta rebuild this crib.’ They were like, ‘Damn, OK.’ So they rebuilt it.
     “And then when someone walked around to do the inspection, they were like, ‘Hey man, there are still some char marks from the fire. You gotta clean that off.’ So they tried, they tried, they tried, they couldn’t get the char marks off.
     “Then finally, some dude was like, ‘Hey, just paint the whole thing white!’ It’s been painted white ever since. That’s why we call it the White House.”

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Mail bag

National Postal Museum

     The reaction after my column on not going to the Congo was overwhelmingly positive. In fact, there was only one negative email, this one, a prime example of what I think of as "You-suck-can-I-have-a-dollar?" letters from readers who simultaneously complain and request, which is not the most effective mix. Enjoy:

Mr Steinberg,

     I've just read your April 16 article.
     I suppose you mean well, but this piece will do nothing for the people of eastern DRC or to bring awareness to westerners who are unwittingly exploiting them.
     I am a Canadian.
     My son is a World Vision International senior director who leads their humanitarian efforts in the eastern DRC based in Goma. He has lived there with his wife and two small boys for two years and leads a team of over 300 employees and volunteers. They are trying to look after the needs of the vast community and 200,000 refugees in an environment with kidnappings, murders, guerrilla warfare, massive displacement, earthquakes and an active volcano. He has led similar projects in South Sudan, Zimbabwe, the CAR, and the Middle East. He doesn't have time to be afraid.
     If you want to continue to shine a light on this conflict zone (Heaven knows, it needs it), I could give you his email address. I'm sure you could get it through World Vision as well.
     Sincerely,
     Ron M.

     I try to be kind but firm in replying to such letters.

Dear Mr. M.:

     While I disagree with your belief that my column did nothing to alert people in Chicago to the situation in Congo — I have received dozens of emails that suggest otherwise — I'd be happy to correspond with your son and put his thoughts in the paper. Perhaps they will resonate more than my own meager efforts.
     I've worked for Canadians and am familiar with their weird blend of aggression and entreaty. So your mixed message — your column was pointless, maybe you'd like to write another about my son — was not as off-putting to me as perhaps it should have been. Please do send his email, if he's interested; it might make for a nice follow-up. Besides, I have two sons of my own; they're far better men than me, and one can hope yours is also a marked improvement on his sorta tactless dad. Thanks for writing.

NS

     I detected a distinct tone shift in his reply.

     My goodness. Thank you for the prompt response.
     I'll reach out to David to see if that works for him.
     He has done lots of media, but I didn't seek his permission.
     

      Ron M.

     I didn't have to respond to this, but did, bringing an end to the exchange. Of course I will never hear back, for reasons alluded to in my final comment.

      Thanks. My experience is that most people who are recommended for stories by third parties decline the opportunity. But perhaps he will be an exception.

     NS