A cautionary tale

Metropolitan Museum of Art

     "Ouch!" I said, aloud, reaching for a fork at lunch a week ago Friday.
     A stabbing pain on the tip of my left index finger. I knew the reason: my project. Our front steps, replaced more than 20 years ago, are now rotting around the edges. I'd been chiseling rotten wood away, custom-making new pieces of trim, doing lots of sanding, and got a splinter in my fingertip from an old board I'd pulled out of the scrap pile. I yanked the splinter out — I thought — and kept working. But obviously some piece of it remained, embedded.

     This is what is known in literary circles as "foreshadowing."
     No biggie. Finished lunch, upstairs to the bathroom, sterilized a tweezers with rubbing alcohol, and began digging. It was a tenacious little bugger, emphasis on "little" — it was like trying to grab the period at the end of this sentence with ice tongs. I finally invoked a higher power — asked my wife to help me. She took a look, and went to find a needle. Thus inspired, I concentrated my efforts and got it out myself.
     Flash to evening.
     When I went to sleep, my eye was watering. I flushed it with Refresh eye drops, and went to bed. The next day, the problem was there, particularly when I looked at the computer. Tears streamed down my face. Maybe eyestrain, I thought — I am on the computer a lot. The weekend passed, sanding and pressing plastic wood into gaps. Then there was the 3,000-word magazine piece to read, and I read it.

     Monday, my eye was still watering, and my wife suggested maybe the problem was COVID. That's sometimes a symptom. I took one of our stack of tests. No COVID. 

     "You should have an eye doctor see it," my wife said. I phoned an opthamologist we had seen last year for our prescriptions. Her examining room was dusty and her staff shrugged the fact off when my wife pointed it out. So we weren't ever going back. But ... any port in a storm. I talked to her nurse — the next available appointment was in August, she said, recommending Refresh Gel drops to tide me over until then. 

     So off to Walgreens to get the high octane, $21 gel eye drops. They helped. The problem seemed to be going away. Then it didn't. Tuesday I phoned my primary care doctor, Dr. Gregory Wallman. His nurse was aghast when I told her about the "See you in August" reaction from the dusty optometrist's office. 

     "A doctor needs to look at that eye!" she said in a tone that made me listen to her. She gave me the name of a glaucoma center in Glenview. I phoned. It was a FAX line. It whirred, and I figured, don't bother. That was Wednesday.
     Thursday I was I was stretched out on the couch, and pressed on my eye. It hurt. That couldn't be good. I found the actual number for the Glencoe eye care center — a digit off from the FAX line. I phoned. They'd see me in two hours.
     I arrived. Lots of questions. First a form. Then a quick eye exam with a technician. I waited for nearly an hour, flipping idly through old copies of Rolling Stone. I don't know any musical celebrities anymore. This ... is a waste of time, I thought.
     Right up until the moment the opthamologist had me put my chin on a device and looked in eye. The examination took all of three seconds.
     "You have a foreign body impacted in your eye," she said, matter-of-factly. The information arrived like a fire bell.
     Oh. In all candor, some weisenheimer subsystem considered making a play on words with "foreign body." But I thought better of it. She numbed my eye and showed me a little hair's thickness cannula she intended to flick the piece of grit or splinter of whatever it was out. If that didn't work — and she didn't seem optimitic — we'd have to consider sterner measures.

     I told her I'd probably be babbling the whole time she did it — I tend to talk when medical procedures are being done to me. She said it might work better if we both were silent, and I took her hint.
     Removing the splinter took another three seconds. Done. I expressed my deep gratitude for her and went directly to Walgreens to get the two types of antibiotic drops she prescribed. Friday I stayed off the computer and gardened and the eye felt better.
     Which leads us to the moral of the story. Check stuff out. Don't wait. And be your own medical advocate. Don't spend nearly a week with a splinter in your eye. If I had been discouraged by the first opthamologist who'd have me wait until August I'd still have that crap in my eye, with scar tissue already forming around it, the doctor who actually saw me said. So all hail Dr. Wallman's nurse, whose tone in that "A doctor needs to look at that eye!" was the kick in the ass that propelled me forward. And all hail my wife, who told me to make the call. Several times. Those of us who have access to health care ought to use it when we need it, and everyone should have access to health care. It's astounding that we live in a society where they don't. And where there are people who do have both access and need but are still too inert and stupid to use it as quickly as they ought to.

Wait, what did you say about ‘well-regulated’?

     Traditionally, columnists ran letters from readers as a way to take the day off. You never see those anymore — anyone lucky enough to still have a newspaper column is also smart enough to write it themselves.
     However. This reader makes an excellent point and, rather than just take his suggestion and repackage it as a genius divination of my own, I thought it made more sense for me to just let him say it. The only edits are where he starts citing case law, which I thought was going into the weeds for the average reader.
     Our current irresponsible, almost insane gun situation is not part of the fabric of this country, but a recent interpretation of those who hate the idea of government and authority. They shout louder, but that doesn’t mean softer, more sensible voices can’t also have their say:

Mr. Steinberg:
     I am a digital subscriber to the Sun-Times and read your column regularly. Since I read your thoughts, I decided to share a thought I had about the right to bear arms with you.
     As I am sure you are aware the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

     People who cite the Second Amendment ignore the first part that refers to a well-regulated Militia. The Amendment should be interpreted in context. This means that the right to bear arms is linked to a well-regulated Militia. Just as the state can regulate the practice of medicine it can regulate the militia, or as it is now constituted, the National Guard.
     A person seeking to obtain a weapon, especially a weapon such as an AR-15, should be registered for possible call-up and service in the National Guard. This would allow tracking of these individuals and subject them to being regulated by the authorities. Also, as a potential member of the National Guard they could be subject to a medical examination, which would include a mental health examination. If they fail the physical or mental health portion of the medical examination, they would not be eligible to be a member of the National Guard. This would take them outside the context of the Second Amendment.
     While the Second Amendment states that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed it does not define what an infringement would be. The wording of this amendment also contrasts with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution that states that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
     Even though “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech,” a person is not allowed to yell “fire” in a theatre.

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Victory over COVID! Nation jubilant!

Kamehachi Restaurant, 12:30 p.m., March 16, 2020, the day before J.B. Pritzker ordered all
Illinois restaurants closed.  "I'm going to kill myself for a negi-hamachi roll."

     Well, THAT’S over. Finally. Thank God.
     The national COVID emergency is officially ending. At least according to the government, which should know. Finito. Done. As of midnight Thursday.
     Still. Our old Uncle Sam is a little slow on the uptake, is he not? COVID ended for most people a long time ago, when the vaccines were rolled out and the public got two or three doses and didn’t have to worry that some bug clinging to a box of Cheerios would kill us. Frankly, when I heard that the government decided to stick a fork in it, I thought: “About time.”
     It’s certainly over for the 1.1 million COVID dead in America, who no longer have to worry about the pandemic or anything else. Though it isn’t nearly over for their surviving loved ones. And then there are the up to 23 million Americans who might have “long COVID,” whatever that is — unpleasant symptoms that medical science is still getting its head around. And the thousand-plus Americans who keep dying of COVID every week — it’s real enough for them, I suppose.
     The national reaction to the million-plus COVID dead will always be a mystery to me. Almost 20 times the Americans killed in the Vietnam War. Yet our soldiers get a black granite gash of a monument in Washington DC. While the COVID dead get ... what? A quick cough into the collective national fist? No ceremony. Nobody even plays taps.
     How come? Because they’re old? Meaning ... their lives are worthless? Maybe because I’m well on my way to being old myself, assuming I’m not there already, but that doesn’t quite wash. Thomas Jefferson was old when he died — 83, really old for 1826 — and he got that lovely domed memorial surrounded by cherry trees.
     Maybe the problem was that too many Americans balked at the low-level, sensible steps necessary to avoid killing grandma. Wear a cotton mask when you go into 7-Eleven for a Big Gulp. Take remote classes. Hot to cast themselves as victims, they painted these sensible precautions as oppression. So recognizing the real death toll of COVID would be like grasping that the leading cause of death for children in the United States is gun violence. To recognize the toll is a step toward doing something about it, and to certain folks that’s unimaginable. We don’t need to solve a problem we won’t face.

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More Trump misdeeds to add to the pile

By Tara Donovan (Corcoran Gallery)

     For a habitual liar, former president Donald Trump can be amazingly candid. He will, occasionally, interrupt his countless falsehoods with astounding moments of candor. Such as when he said, with spot-on accuracy, at a campaign stop in Sioux City, Iowa early in 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”
     Yes, it is. Incredible. And commenting on him nonstop since June, of 2015, when he descended that escalator in the gaudy salmon glitz of Trump Tower, to pronounce immigrant Mexicans as criminals and rapists, I have yet to get my head around the missing piece that Trump provides for his supporters.
     Permission, I suppose, to be as vile and perpetually injured as they obviously want to be. A TV star, descending from the Mount Olympus of gaudy wealth and tabloid celebrity, to bestow blanket permission on anyone who will pledge their unwavering loyalty, to assure lumpen red state America that they are the true victims of history, that every life that is not straight, white, Christian is an offense against them, one they can battle with all their energy, guiltless and unrepentant.
     Thus his being judged Tuesday by a New York jury as having defamed and sexually molested writer E. Jean Carroll — an assault, which, in another moment of absolute honesty, Trump copped to, on tape, as doing habitually to women who stumbled into his grasp — is added to his being impeached, twice, not to forget his continued delusional denial of an American presidential election. Plus his fomenting of an insurrection against the Capitol that led to the deaths of several law enforcement officers — if you can ignore that, what is a civil case that goes against him? Toss it onto the enormous steaming pile of Trump’s previous wrongdoings.
     As I’ve said many times before, once you get into the habit of ignoring reality, the specifics of the reality being ignored hardly matter. Reality itself has been discarded by millions of Americans as being a mere fraud, a practice so imbedded now in the Republican Party that Trump could vanish tomorrow — no sign of that happening, alas — and his acolytes and imitators would proceed along his blazed path.

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In defense of King Charles III

      There isn't as much room in the newspaper for letters as there used to be. So with this reader being disappointed that the Sun-Times wouldn't print his letter about how off-base he felt I was about King Charles, and with a yawning void labeled "Tuesday" sitting in front of me, waiting to be filled, I thought I would serve as a middle man and bring the two together. 

    Rob Hirsh writes:

     Good morning Neil. It is actually rare that I disagree with you; call it respect for your work that I feel duty bound to let you know when I do. Herewith my response to your column of last week, which I submitted to the paper but doesn’t appear will be published: Neil Steinberg’s disdain of the British monarchy in general and King Charles in particular is abundantly clear from his opening salvo that “there is something squinty and inbred about the man—his parents were third cousins, remember.”
     Wow, talk about a cheap shot—not to mention simply wrong. Third cousins share roughly 0.78% DNA, which hardly puts them in like company with the “Deliverance”-style sub-basics he suggests. As for the disastrous marriage between Charles and Diana, which Steinberg lays squarely at the feet of Charles, it is not that simple; in fact it was a union doomed from the start for reasons not all his fault. Most simply (although there was certainly other criteria), the non-virginal 33-year-old Camilla Parker Bowles — the woman the 32-year-old heir to the throne truly loved — was unsuitable to become the future Queen Consort of England. The 20-year-old, pretty Diana Spencer, virginal indeed, with perhaps as much blue-blood as Charles, was, in a word: perfect. The world got the fairy-tale marriage with glittery trappings it wanted; Charles and Diana, not so much.
     Yes, Charles cheated on his wife early on, and while that is certainly not to be defended, it wasn’t as if he’d snuck around looking for fresh action because he was randy, but because the institution he’d been born into with many of its cockamamie rules insisted he be miserable rather than marry his true soul mate. And let’s not forget that Diana cheated also; and while it always be conjecture whether she’d have done so had her husband not done so first, it certainly made it easier to escape, in whatever fashion she could, a marriage that seemed to be loveless from the get-go.
     Summation: had these two mismatched people not been pressured into a union neither seemed to truly want, Diana Spencer, who loved children, might have gone on to live a quiet life as a British school teacher, or perhaps owner of an antiques shop in the Cotswolds—and be very much alive.

The Ballad of Sherman Wu

     When Hsiu Huang Wu was a little boy in China, he and his older brother would dig holes in their backyard, trying to reach America.
     He would get here, eventually, in a big way — featured in Life magazine, lauded in song by Pete Seeger. But mostly forgotten today, which is why, this being Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I thought I would share the story.
     His father, K.C. Wu, was mayor of Shanghai after World War II, where he hosted visiting Chicago Tribune’s Robert McCormick on one of his round-the-world jaunts. An improbable friendship developed between the famously xenophobic publisher and the Chinese official.
     When it came time for Wu’s two daughters to go to college, McCormick suggested Northwestern, and the two teens lived with him while preparing for school. McCormick even threw Eileen Wu’s wedding at Cantigny and gave her away, standing in for the father of the bride, who had become governor of Formosa — now Taiwan.
     After falling out with the nationalists, the elder Wu and his wife Edith fled to America, settling in the Georgian Hotel at Hinman and Davis in Evanston. Only his younger son, Hsiu Huang, remained behind. Gov. Wu accused Chiang Kai Shek of holding the boy hostage.
     With McCormick’s help, the teen finally came here and began attending Evanston Township High School, where teachers so badly mangled pronunciation of “Hsiu Huang” that he decided to change his first name to “Sherman,” inspired by Sherman Avenue.
     In the fall of 1956, Wu began his freshman year at Northwestern and went through the fraternity rush process. Two frats offered him membership, Acacia and Psi Upsilon. He accepted Psi U.

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Bruce McCall's enormous world

  

     "It's like working in a Bruce McCall illustration," thought the master of the obscure reference, waiting for a tour of the new Sun-Times space at the Old Post Office to begin last October.         
     For those who weren't raised on the National Lampoon in the 1970s, McCall, a Canadian-born artist who died Friday, built his oeuvre upon the inherent humor of the enormous — vast interior spaces, stupidly huge 1950s cars, Brobdingnagian ocean liners. He created "The Battling Buses of World War II," a parody of the bomber adventure worship popular at the time. 

     McCall moved up from the Lampoon to the empyrean of The New Yorker, where his covers are masterpieces of the marriage of the monstrous and the detailed.  

     They reward careful examination. As does the Old Post Office. The lobby is gigantic, the hallways disappearing to the horizon. But upstairs, you look at your feet and the little square tiles are perfect. The walls are regularly graced with either historic mail photographs, or animal shots, all artful black and white. Nothing is slipshod. Someone spent a fortune. I was utterly charmed with the lux renovation of what once seemed a permanent white elephant. A corporate Xanadu, with countless grottos, niches, pool tables, bars, coffee shops, a health club, a rooftop deck. EGD glimpsed it when I visited Ferrara candy in April, but the tour was a closer look. Or maybe I just realized I get to come here whenever I like.

     "Will I?" I wondered. It seems a bit ass-backward for there to be this place where there's a great health club and rooftop chaise lounges and bars with pool tables and bocce ball and, oh yes, a fairly spartan room filled with computers where you can also go and work. Last time I visited, a few weeks back, I stayed for an hour, and was utterly alone. I can't imagine this arrangement lasting very long.

     There were upsides. As much as I think synergy is a myth made up by real estate folks trying to sell radioactive downtown office space, the fact remains that, on my tour, I got to talking to a new WBEZ colleague I'd never met, and within five minutes we were planning newspaper events and brainstorming possible ideas.

     Which came to absolutely nothing, as such bursts tend to do. But for a moment it seemed like progress was being made.

     Speaking of which. After I conjured up McCall, I tried to interview him. I'd read his memoir, "Thin Ice: Coming of Age in Canada," and found it both well-done and disappointing. Well-done in that it had moments that resonated — he finds a crumple package of American cigarettes on the side of the road, and picks it up, yearning toward the boundless, appealing, frenetic country that seems just down the road.  

McCall's 83rd New Yorker cover

     And disappointing in that he never got to the National Lampoon part of his life, never mind The New Yorker part. It was like reading a book about Michelangelo as a child, before he picked up a chisel. Only after I reached out to McCall, last October, did I realize he had written a second memoir, "How Did I Get Here?" Didn't do my due diligence. So I read that while going back and forth with his people. He had people, which struck me as unusual for an elderly artist, and I sent them questions. 

     Reading the second memoir took the air out of my desire to talk to McCall. He'd worked on "Saturday Night Live" at its heyday. He drew more than 80 New Yorker covers. And yet ... it did not make him happy. Pretty miserable in fact. Bruce McCall reminded me that success can be overrated. Excellence and achievement can be no more sources of satisfaction than mediocrity and oblivion are. It's all in the interpretation. Or rather, to flip open "Paradise Lost" and quote John Milton: “The mind is its own place and, in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.”

     These are the questions I sent to Bruce McCall last fall and he never answered. Looking at them now, and given his death, half a year away, I'm not surprised he didn't bother. Still, I think they're good questions, and I would have liked to hear his replies:

1. Throughout history, enormous buildings and interior spaces were associated with grandeur, or the divine. You discovered big also can be funny. How did that come about? Why are huge things funny? It seems to me you are mocking the unrestrained ambitions of the past, the desire to have too much of everything. Are you?

2. It's been years since I read "Thin Ice," but the image of you gazing in longing at that American cigarette pack at the side of the road has stayed with me. To what degree is your artistic perspective influenced by being Canadian?

3. I noticed that even though you said that Parkinson's has "ruined" your ability to draw and paint two years ago, you have had several covers printed — are these covers that were already in the New Yorker's pipeline, or do you manage to continue despite the disease? Is this a struggle you'd feel comfortable describing? Are there more on their way? Steig's style changed markedly as he aged. Have you considered factoring the deprecations of Parkinson's into future art, the way some artists have?

4. If you can't create artwork yourself, have you considered sharing ideas with other artists and having them render your concept?

5. How many covers have you done? Were you serious about being disappointed about not reaching William Steig's record. Many New York cartoonists can't manage a single cover — you've had about 80. That must be very satisfying. What makes a great cover? Any suggestions for those trying to sell their first?

6. We are in something of a golden age of appreciating illustration. Who were your heroes growing up? Who do you most admire now?

7. Have you made provisions for your work? Do you see it being donated to a museum, or is it all sold?

8. Are you familiar with AI image generators like DALL-E? They're garbage now, but hold out the potential to cut into the already shrinking market for illustration. Is that a cause of concern?