What just happened?

     At 1:18 p.m. Wednesday, I heard my wife's phone sound downstairs then, a moment later, mine buzzed.
     The national alert we had been told about. I'd noticed online reports about nutbag conspiracy theories — that the alert will somehow activate "nanoparticles" in people's bloodstream, injected along with the COVID vaccine, causing Marburg virus to manifest itself. Crazy stuff; hard for me to believe anybody believes that. But apparently some do, unless it's somebody's plea for attention.

     For me, the alert evoked memories of that  horrendous grating noise they used to play periodically over the radio as a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.

     I always wondered why the tone had to sound so awful, like Satan clearing his throat. Why couldn't it be something neutral, a gong, say, or even soothing. A harp glissando. With a disaster potentially bearing down on us; isn't comfort in order?

     I read the message, took a screenshot, and wondered two things:
     First, what conceivable emergency would require the entire nation to be notified at once? The United States is almost 2,900 miles across at its widest point. No weather, no natural disaster affects more than a part of it. Any attack would be localized. So what are we practicing for? 
     Reading up, I quickly realized that though the test is nationwide, the alerts are typically used in one region or another, to alert an area to an advancing hurricane or raging wildfire. There are practical applications to this, not merely improbable doomsday scenarios.

     You have to wonder what the practical result of ringings tens of millions of phones — I wonder how many car accidents resulted, for instance.
     Leading to my second question: how do they alert everyone at once? By what process? Turns out to be quite complicated. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has a system it calls Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, or IPAWS. 
   They explain it this way:

     IPAWS allows Alerting Authorities to write their own message using commercially available software that is Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) compliant. The message is then delivered to the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, Open Platform for Emergency Networks (IPAWS OPEN), where it is authenticated and then delivered simultaneously through multiple communication pathways. Through IPAWS, one message is created to reach as many people as possible to save lives and protect property.

     That's heavy sledding — as best I can figure it is, the government sends service providers a signal, and then every cell tower in their network scattershots out a pre-ordained message to every phone on the system. There is a chart that may or may not help.

    It's sort of an amazing thing, even if you only hazily understand the process — count me among you. Even for those of us muddy on the system, I think it's important to always ask, to make an effort to understand how a particular thing happens. Otherwise, we get into the habit of not bothering to even try to wrap our heads around a system, and risk shrugging off our technology as unknowable magic.

Banned any good books lately?

 

   It’s Banned Books Week, again? Well, Happy Banned Books Week! Wait, do you say that? Or is that like “Happy Yom Kippur”?
     I shouldn’t joke — Banned Books Week is important, bringing attention to the plight of schools and libraries being forced to yank books off their shelves, perhaps pressured by glittery-eyed religious zealots and prudish church ladies (Look, the mice are nekkid!”).
     Not that we need reminding. With thousands of efforts across the country, it seems every week is Banned Books Week. Banning efforts are on the rise. Pen America records 3,362 attempts to ban books across the country, a third more than the year before. Librarians who defend their collections are harassed.
     At least nobody is piling the books in the Operalplatz and burning them. Yet.
     We in Illinois of course can be proud to be the only state that passed a law against book banning — starting next year, any library that pulls books for “partisanal or doctrinal” reasons can become ineligible for state funds.
     I’m sure some folks consider that oppression. What about their religion and their right to impose it on everybody else? Book banning is attractive because it doesn’t seem, at first glance, to be the same as, oh, demanding everybody in class be baptized. But that’s exactly what it is. Puff away all the underlined prurient passages and imaginary harm that book banners focus on, and what they’re doing is insisting everybody view the world through their keyhole.
     What I want to know is, where are the victims of these dangerous books? The children plunged into emotional turmoil after reading a Judy Blume book? If only parents wildly indignant about edgy books could manage to get equally worked up about real problems that result in actual damage — school shootings come to mind. How come the same parents who shrug off the very real prospect of their kids being murdered at school line up at board meetings to scream about “Gender Queer”? It’s a puzzlement.

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"More beer and bosoms"

 

     Attention is addictive, as addictive as any drug. As the years go by, and I see what a bit of notoriety does to people who receive even the slightest taste, I've come to view obscurity — so dreaded in my younger years — as my lance and shield. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself. The lauded destroy themselves, or become parody of themselves, or grow regal. Their fame lights up the sky for a moment, then dulls. I look up from tending my potatoes in my lonely midwestern field, note the flash, then return to tapping my hoe on the loamy soil. 
     That said, I do smile when something I've written years ago actually resonates with someone, despite having been written by me. Reader Lee Goodman, who I've mentioned here from time to time, wrote to me a few days back:

           Neil,

I hope you didn't miss that you were quoted in the recent Smithsonian
article on Renaissance Fairs:

"Writing in 2007, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg perhaps
summarized Renaissance festivals’ appeal best: “If theme parks, with
their pasteboard main streets, reek of a bland, safe, homogenized,
white-bread America, the Renaissance fair is at the other end of the
social spectrum, a whiff of the occult, a flash of danger and a hint of
the erotic. Here, they let you throw axes. Here are more beer and bosoms
than you’ll find in all of Disney World.”

     And he provides a link to the story, here.
     I did miss it; between The New Yorker and The Economist and Consumer Reports, plus writing this stuff, I never get to the Smithsonian. I could be on the cover and I wouldn't know it unless somebody told me.
     Thanks Lee. Good line. You can read the original piece here. I haven't been to the Bristol Ren Faire in years — a pal who participates in it tells me it's gone downhill, so I don't feel as if I'm missing much.

 

A penny for your thoughts

     It costs 2 cents for the United States Mint to manufacture a Lincoln cent. In 2021, the government struck 7.1 billion of them. Two-thirds never circulate. They clutter up banks. Yet we keep minting them.
     Whenever the nation’s “greatness” is bandied about, by those who imagine greatness is a quality that can be self-assigned, a little voice says, “Yeah, we can’t even get rid of the penny.”
     Australia managed. In 1990. Canada, too — a decade ago. Also Brazil, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Israel — quite a list. Are they “greater” than we are? Certainly pennywise.
     Enough prelude. It was a shameful weekend for the country, even though the federal government didn’t shut down, as it seemed about to. A good thing.
     But avoiding disaster should never be confused with triumph — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called the stopgap bill “a victory for the American people.” No, a victory for the American people would be a smoothly functioning government that can’t be hijacked by any cadre of extremists who feel so inclined.
     This is a good moment to step back and understand what is going on, big picture. The United States is a majoritarian democracy. In theory. Meaning the will of the people is expressed through elections, naming representatives who make laws and decide policies.
     People who find themselves in the minority, like the MAGA extremists who almost shut down the government, are not happy with this, because this representative world doesn’t revolve around their precious selves.
     So they try to achieve their ends — slashing Social Security and Medicaid, blocking immigration, cutting aid to Ukraine — by cheating. Procedural tricks. Refusing to fund the government. Holding their breath and throwing tantrums.

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75 years covering race in Chicago: A newspaper for a diverse city

Fletcher Martin

    Since February, I've been doing deep dives into the history of the Sun-Times to mark its 75th anniversary as a daily paper. I've written how we covered major disasters, and City Hall.  A prudent man would not have attempted to encapsulate as broad and fraught topic as our coverage of race over 75 years into one 3,000 word story. But I am not a prudent man. And yes, there was hesitation over whether I was the right person to tell this story, and I pointed out that if Jonathan Eig can write the definitive biography of Martin Luther King, then I can do this, or try to. It could easily have been three times as long and gone all sorts of other places. But this is where it went with the space I had.

     “Copy!”
     The way newspapering worked in 1951 was, when a reporter got to the end of the page he was pounding out on his Royal manual typewriter, he would zip out the copybook — a thick bundle of newsprint and carbon paper — from under the typewriter platen, remove one beige sheet and yell “Copy!” or “Boy!” Immediately, a copy boy, who by then was sometimes a girl, would run over and rush the page over to the city desk.
     Only nobody came running when Fletcher Martin called “copy” at the Chicago Sun-Times newsroom at 211 W. Wacker Dr. in 1951. He sat there, arm out, waving a page over his head. The copy boys ringing the room gazed determinedly into space.
     Martin was a former World War II correspondent who had been city editor of the Louisville Defender. He spent a year at Harvard as a Nieman Fellow — the first Black person to hold a Nieman Fellowship, then the first Black reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times.
     Hence the problem. Copy boys were the lowest form of life in a newsroom yet felt entitled to simply ignore Martin — until a white assistant city editor saw what was happening, stepped in and read the nearest copy boy the riot act.
     “Boy,” he said, according to a reminiscence published years later. “Go over, and get that copy. It’s hot copy, and his is as important as anyone else’s.”
     Or more. Martin brought a perspective that would serve the paper well in the 1950s as it tried to pivot into the civil rights era. The Sun-Times sent him to cover the NAACP convention in California in July 1956, and he wrote about two figures who were transforming America. His story began:
     “SAN FRANCISCO — Two widely dissimilar men have captured the imagination of the NAACP convention here and may emerge as the new Negro leaders. They are Thurgood Marshall, special counsel of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.”
     Marshall would become the first Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice. And King ... well, he needs no explanation, one hopes.
     As the Sun-Times looks back during its 75th year of continual daily publication, race is a key lens through which to understand the newspaper’s history. Race is often referred to as “the third rail” of Chicago politics — in both the “provides animating power” and the “touch it and you die” senses.
     A fraught topic. But ignoring it isn’t an option. Race is too huge a subject to tackle thoroughly, too important to be sidestepped.
     The Sun-Times played a dual role regarding race. First as a news source reflecting the enormous changes — and lack of change — that have affected the city since the daily paper began in 1948, from the impact of Black vets returning home, their eyes opened to the possibilities of life, to the struggles over housing, redlining, the riots to Latino migration and the rise of the Asian community as an outspoken force. In the early 1950s, thousands of white Chicagoans would rampage in the streets if a Black family moved where they thought they didn’t belong.
     And second as an employer of Black, Latino and Asian writers, editors, photographers, columnists, executives. Martin was the first of a string of talented journalists who would distinguish the paper, such as Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers John H. White and John J. Kim.

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Signature signs off

    

     I'm a restaurant kind of guy, as you know all too well, and have chowed down at Chicago culinary landmarks from the Bakery to the Berghoff, the Blackhawk to Blackbird, and those are just the Bs. All long gone*, alas.
     Add to the roll of the departed the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the building formerly known as the John Hancock Center (at the moment calling itself "875 N. Michigan," if you're keeping track. No need to memorize that; if history is any judge it'll be called something else in three years). The Signature Room abruptly announced it was closing down Thursday due to "severe economic hardship."

     That is sad. Nobody likes to see a business fail. Particularly a Chicago institution such as the Signature Room.

     And yet ... at the news, I felt ... nothing. Zero. Just as certain deaths —  former Sun-Times publisher Jim Hoge comes to mind — inspire a nearly indignant, "He was still alive?" so my reaction to hearing that the Signature Room closed would be the same as if I got an email from the Snuggery announcing it was cancelling Disco Thursdays. "Really? It's still in business? That is surprising." I would not have blinked if, instead of reading about the restaurant abruptly closing, I'd seen a story containing the line, "the building recently called 875 N. Michigan, formerly home to the Signature Room, which closed permanently after a kitchen fire in 2004, will now market itself under the name "41.8/-87.6," which are its latitude and longitude coordinates..."
     I think I went to the bar on the 96th floor once, had a Heineken and left, but can't be sure — it was back in the day. I have the residual memory of a kind of insidery smugness, knowing you can pay $5 for a beer and gaze out from the 96th floor, or $15 for admission and no beer two floors below. I know my wife and I never ate there, for the simple reason that the Signature Room seemed one of those places where people who never go out to dinner go out to dinner. High school students went to the Signature Room after prom. It was the sort of place where couples from Peoria who ... 
     Actually, you know what? No, I'm not doing this. I'm not crapping on 30 years worth of memories for nice people who had their special moment at the Signature Room. I'm sure it was wonderful. I know whenever someone slags one my favorite places, whenever somebody informs me that Gene & Georgetti feels like the dank basement rumpus room of your mobbed up uncle in River Forest, or that Diana's Opaa was not particularly clean, I'd become indignant. ("Clean? Clean? It's not supposed to be clean!?! It's got Petros!!!") Despite the validity of the criticism. 
     So if you went to the Signature Room in 1996 and had a bottle of Lancer's Rose with your chicken kiev and he popped the question and your heart was going like mad and yes you said yes I will Yes, then God bless you. Why would I dream of sneering at that? Particularly to a place I'd never been, though I noticed the two page spread in the Sun-Times mentioned the view, repeatedly, but never said a word about the food. 
     That's okay. With certain places, the food is incidental. You went to Chicago Cut (I'm using the past tense because I have no idea what's been going on the past three years) for the networking and the view. The fact you had to eat their steak, well, that's the price you paid or, rather, somebody else paid.

     The inclusion of the word "Room" in the name may be the tip-off. I can't think of a good restaurant that's a "Room." The Pump Room? I remember their eggs benedict, after a night spent at the Ambassador East, resembling an Egg McMuffin. The Walnut Room? Again, a nice space. I suppose it would come down to how much you like chicken pot pie. Is the Walnut Room even still open? If I had to bet the ranch ... I'd guess ... yes, it is still open, in Macy's. (Checking ... whew, yes, the house is safe; 116 years and counting. And host to ... not just one, but a series of drag brunches. That's the danger of coming to a topic from a place of ignorance. I might have to stop by for a pot pie, only $16. Maybe the food at the Signature Room was sublime. I doubt it; but it's possible).

     Okay, I think that's enough for today. I considered putting this in the paper, but had second thoughts, and figured, if only for harm reduction, it would be better served in the private garden of Every Goddamn Day (though not so private anymore — September was my first month breaking 300,000 views, though a lot of that has to be outraged Aldi fans visiting once, snarling something nasty and never returning, plus robo spiders in Singapore clonicly clicking for some purpose I shudder to imagine.  

* There is a restaurant currently operating in the space once occupied by the old Berghoff, which closed in 2006. It goes by the same name, but is some sort of brewpub, an ersatz imitation of itself — I wouldn't know the specifics, having never set a foot inside, being unable to bring myself to step around the enormous pile of human hearts, ripped from the chests of loyal Berghoff patrons in 2006 and left in a pile to rot in the entranceway. Hard to imaging slipping past that to eat.

As politics degrade, language does, too

Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary.

     Yeah, I watched the second Republican presidential debate Wednesday night. Seven dunces without a chance of success trying to talk over each other. Through the cacophony, certain words kept popping out, like “agenda,” “Chicago” and “elites.” Old words with new meanings. So I worked up a quick glossary to help bring us up to speed.

agenda n. 1) the program of items to be discussed at a meeting (now obscure); 2) anything you don’t want to happen. “Joe Biden’s Green New Deal agenda” — former Vice President Mike Pence; 3) efforts by a group you loathe, often the LGBTQ community, to participate in, and therefore ruin, life activities that are your exclusive domain, like marrying, raising children, or visiting a theme park. “Hold Disney accountable for abandoning its historic mission of providing wholesome entertainment to one that is dedicated to imposing the LGBT agenda on unsuspecting children.” — Brian S. Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage.

Chicago n. 1) an American city at the confluence of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, its organized crime a source of endless fascination and grudging national pride, when committed by white people 100 years ago (now rare); 2) a menacing mythical place ridden with random crime whose existence tacitly undermines the value of both racial minorities and Democratic leadership. “Inner cities like Chicago ... ” — South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

elites pl. n. 1) rich jerks other than oneself. “Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.” — billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, presumably not speaking about himself; 2) out-of-touch bureaucrats serving in a branch of government different than one’s own. “The reason why we’re in this mess is because elites in D.C. for far too long have chosen surrender over strength.” — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

hate n. the imagined impulse leading to a dire result, particularly for former President Donald Trump. By pretending, for instance, legal prosecution is the result of malice, and not due to laws being enforced, it is possible, if not persuasive, to pretend that the just desserts of one’s misdeeds are due to a conspiracy of irrational hostility and not the neutral administration of justice. “Never before have I seen such hatred toward one person by a judge.” — Eric Trump, on the ruling that his father’s business empire is based on fraud.

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