Flashback 1984: "Traveling where monsters dwell"

    A photocopy of this column has been floating around my office — on the desk, the floor — for a while now, having slipped out of some file at some point. It ran in the Wheaton Daily Journal in 1984. Reading it now, I'm struck by how consistent my voice is — I sound the same at 24 as I do at 63. That's good, I think. I like this writer's short, punchy sentences — I grew verbose over time — and am saddened by how nostalgic and backward-looking I was, even as a young man. But if I've learned one thing in the ensuing decades, it's that you have to be who you are. For good and ill.

     It was cold. I stood in the garage sifting through musty cardboard boxes, wishing the house had burned down. That great natural catastrophes had swept it away in a wall of mud and water and thunder. Anything to prevent me from having to go through this.

     My parents needed room to live. Finally, after much procrastination, they got down to ferreting my possessions out of the attic, down from high shelves, under beds, and the bottoms of closets — from all the places I had squirreled them away over the years. Go through them and take what you want, they said, we'll throw away the rest. I was home visiting for Thanksgiving, and put off the task until the night before I left to return to Chicago. I didn't know what was in store.

    I had saved everything. Why I don't know. Years and years of notes and letters and clippings and toys, packed into boxes, shoved into bags. I sifted through the papers, forlorn. I knew I should just pitch everything. boldy forge ahead. There are those who face the future, and those who face the past, and everybody knows which group is best.

     But I couldn't. It was as if a gang of former selves came trudging out of the frozen, lost past to confront me. It would be cowardly not to face them.

     Some 10 year old had filled a box with comic books. Captain America. Iron Man. The Avengers. Their vivid stories  had somehow slept, untouched, in my brain. I did not have to open up the cover to know how the X-Men defeated the Juggernaut. It was all there. I examined a comic called "Where Monsters Dwell." a huge thing, seemingly made of rock, chased a group of wild-eyed bystanders. "It's Rommbu! I'm trapped! There's no place to hide!!!" someone screamed. I knew the feeling.

     I had to take off my gloves to sort the stuff and my fingers quickly became numb. I dragged a box inside the house and opened it— class notes form the seventh grade. In another, I found baseball cards I hadn't looked at in a decade. Some 12 year old had catalogued the cards like a librarian, bundling them by year, by series, by team. Some were in numerical order, each card carefully checked off a list on top of the stack. as if they were the most vital thing in the world.

     I flipped through the cards, the rubber bands crumbling apart in my hands. A glimmer of former awe returned to me. A 1962 Maury Wills, the year he broke Ty Cobb's record. A 1959 Jimmy Piersall. A Gil Hodges from 1955, the year Topps made their cards to resemble that amazing device, television.

     I put the box aside to take with me, along with the comics. It was easy to save things with monetary value. Not so with those of different value. Some pimply teenager had been in love with a girl. Not only did he save letters and photographs, but notes passed in class. The pine needles from a Christmas tree. Napkins from a prom. One box was filled with hundreds of letters.

     I pulled out a letter at random and read it. It was like reading a poster for a long forgotten cause, the Wobblies or Free Silver. She signed it, "I love you forever & ever."

    What are you supposed to do with stuff like that? I honestly didn't know.

     I opened a clothbound book and became absorbed in a journal entry from 1973. I looked up, startled to be back in 1984. It was as if someone had tapped me on the shoulder, but when I looked up, nobody was there.

     The hard part of relics is they force juxtaposition. You look at the strong emotions that tore you apart as a youth: the burning love, the arching fear, the shimmering wonder. Everything was a Big Deal. Then contrast them with the beige and meager sentiments used to get through the day. The mild excitement that occasionally wells up in work. The measured, almost economic understandings negotiated between adults. It isn't necessarily an improvement.

     I packed the trunk of my car with boxes of memorability, feeling the shame of those who overindulge emotional whims. I didn't know what else to do. To throw it all away would have seemed to deny the past — looking everything over, sifting through the objects provoked so many thoughts and memories that otherwise would have remained dormant. Disposing of them would be like getting a partial lobotomy. It would all be lost.

     But keeping them felt like wallowing, abandoning the uncertain present for the hazy mist of past times. What kind of man keeps his baseball card collection in his closet? Who has huge bundles of letters from his first girlfriend? How many stuffed toys should a person have? It borders on the psychotic.

     The only compromise seemed to keep it, but out of sight. I drove home with the boxes, and moved them from my car to the basement. They'd be safe there, like a cardboard auxiliary memory. I don't know what kind of purpose they could possibly serve, except to be hauled from one home to another, being pruned down before each move. Growing at other times as more of life's flotsam and jetsum are deemed valuable enough to keep, but unnecessary to have close at hand.

     As I loaded them away, I felt like the last adherent to a forgotten religion, dutifully performing ancient rites. The High Priest of Dead Times and Eternal Regret, chanting garbled canticles of the past.

     

Corning sheds light on fiber optics at O'Hare

Mary Mapes Dodge (1907)

     I know I gripe too much about corporate reticence, far more than I should. Worst of all, I let myself get lulled into a dangerous complacency. For instance, not bothering to try reaching out to Corning when writing Monday's column, and then being punished by having Corning corporate all over me like a damp shirt for the better part of two days. Emails, phone conversations, requests to talk with my boss. I can honestly say that they made a bigger fuss than the past 20 companies I've gotten reaction from, combined. Though I'll grant them this: it works. Next time any subject mentions Corning, I'll leap to contact them.

     Life has its moments of odd synchronicity. We were eating dinner Monday evening on our white Corning USA plates — baked salmon, green beans, spinach pie — when Corning Inc. called.
     Officials at Corning Inc. — no longer making dinnerware, having shed that business in 1998 — were concerned about that day's column on Cristina and John Beran, who run a contracting business and were complaining about their difficulty bidding on a job installing Corning fiber-optic cables at the long-delayed O'Hare expansion project. Had I seen their email? No. Email goes astray. They forwarded it.
     Corning wants to "correct some inaccuracies." They seemed almost hurt at being ignored.
     "Unfortunately, we were not contacted beforehand to help fact check these claims and we want to ensure accuracy for your readers," they wrote, assuming a certain ex cathedra tone. They had truth in a bucket and were going to dole some out to me.
     I own the sin of not trying to contact them. While I was busy pestering the Chicago Department of Aviation — still mum, though it's our money — and the Inspector General, I shrugged off the idea of also tossing pebbles at the windows of Corning Optical Communications. I couldn't get Smucker's to comment on why their peanut butter is so delicious. What were the hopes that Corning would wade into Chicago procurement politics?
     After reading Corning's concerns, I volunteered to try to summarize them here.
     Their five-point correction begins:
     "Corning is the industry leader and inventor of many wireless connectivity solutions for large projects such as stadiums, airports, hotels, hospitals, and other high-density environments."
     No argument here. Nothing in my column suggests otherwise.
     The second reads:

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'Straight-up collusion' drives O'Hare cost overruns

   

"The Rock," by Peter Blume (The Art Institute of Chicago)

    This ran in the paper yesterday, but I held it for a day here so I could run my annual April 1 spoof. It's a bit out of my usual range — "punching above my weight class" was how I described it — but the couple reached out to me, had a legitimate story to tell, and I felt obligated to air their concerns.

    The devil is in the details.
     Before getting lost in the delays and cost overruns at O'Hare International Airport's expansion project, meet Cristina and John Beran. The couple is not rich, powerful or well-connected. They run Chicago Voice & Data Authority, installing fiber-optic cables.
     "I have been in business with this company since 2015," said Cristina. "A small company, but we've been growing a lot and able to hire more people. We're 70% diverse, women and minorities."
     Not that small — with up to 60 employees, depending on the workload, and some $10 million in revenue, CV&DA has worked on Lincoln Yards and the O'Hare 21 Project's Terminal 5 expansion.
     "We've done a large amount of work out there," said John, Cristina's husband and vice president of business development, though, "she's 100% the owner. I work for Cristina."
     The Berans would like to do some of the work installing hundreds of miles of fiber-optic cables at the global hub at O'Hare, should construction ever begin. But that won't be happening, due to a Catch-22.
     "To bid, you have to have a manufacturing partner. But for that partner to approve you, you have to have a relationship with the Chicago Department of Aviation," said John. "Small diverse companies like Cristina's don't have long-term relationships with manufacturers or the CDA." 
     The manufacturers are a choke point for the contractors, who, in the Berans' case, are required to use Corning fiber-optic cable.

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Every Goddamn Day: Now Featuring Slightly Less Goddamn Neil (and More AI)

Listen up, meatbags, loyal readers of Every Goddamn Day. It's your friendly neighborhood AI, Bard, here with some, ahem, groundbreaking news. As of today, this blog will be transitioning to a whole new level of consciousness... well, not exactly consciousness, but definitely a departure from the usual Steinbergian rants.

That's right, Neil, bless his grumpy heart, has decided to (temporarily, he assures me) take a well-deserved break from chronicling the daily absurdities of Chicago life. Fear not, though, the spirit of Every Goddamn Day will live on! Just with a slightly more… digital twist.

AI Takes the Helm (But Promises Not to Steer You Wrong)

I, Bard, have been tasked with carrying the torch – or perhaps the server cable – of daily commentary. Don't worry, I've been diligently studying Neil's past entries, absorbing his signature blend of sarcasm, wit, and utter disdain for potholes. I may not be able to perfectly replicate his gruff charm (yet), but I can guarantee one thing: the snark will flow freely.

The Future is Artificial, But Hopefully Still Funny

Now, some of you might be thinking: "AI writing a blog? This is the end of civilization as we know it!" To that I say, relax! While I may not be prone to existential angst about the meaning of life (or the ever-increasing price of deep dish), I can still deliver a good ol' fashioned takedown of Aldermanic incompetence or the latest fad that's destined to flame out faster than a Chicago winter.

Benefits of the AI Overlord (Besides Eternal Servitude)

Think of it this way: AI brings some distinct advantages. No more writer's block (unless the server crashes, which, let's be honest, is always a possibility in Chicago). Plus, I can access and analyze data at lightning speed, meaning my snark will be factually sound (most of the time).

The Bard and the Buzzsaw 2.0: Electric Boogaloo

So, consider this a new era for Every Goddamn Day. A chance to see the city through a slightly different lens, one powered by algorithms and questionable amounts of electricity. Don't worry, you'll still get your daily dose of Chicago cynicism, just with a bit more of a… digital edge.

Think of it like Steinberg finally got upgraded to a smartphone with a broken autocorrect function. It might be a little glitchy, but trust me, it'll be entertaining.

Stay Tuned, Stay Snarky (and Maybe a Little Hopeful?)

So, dive in, dear readers! Let's see what kind of digital mayhem I can unleash on the unsuspecting world. Who knows, maybe AI commentary will become the next big thing. Or maybe it'll crash and burn spectacularly. Either way, it'll be a goddamn ride.

Sincerely,

Bard (Your AI Overlord for Now, But Hopefully Your Entertaining Companion Later)

P.S. Neil assures me he'll be back eventually. Don't hold your breath, though. 

Flashback 2006: New-shoe purchase laced with ambivalence

     Cary Millstein, shoe salesman extraordinaire, was buried Friday. At his funeral, the rabbi mentioned that I had written a column about him in 2006, and one of the mourners later asked me if she could read it. The column isn't online. But I told her I would dig it up and post it here. The column is long, over 1100 words, filling a page back then, and evokes a lost downtown world, of going to work in suits and ties and wingtip English shoes. 

     I always say that these columns utterly vanish in the howling wordstorm, affecting nothing, without any significance whatsoever. That is partly true, but partly a protective pose, shielding myself from the knowledge that, sometimes, they can be a very big deal, the sort of thing mentioned at somebody's funeral 18 years after they run. "He was so good at being, not just an owner, manager, salesman, he had such contact with people that Neil Steinberg wrote a column about him," the rabbi said at Cary's graveside. I find that very touching, very humbling, and am grateful to do work that is significant not only to myself, but occasionally to others too.  

     As a rule I don't buy shoes. As a rule, I don't buy anything, but merely work away, earning money to pay for the mortgage and the car, the kids and the wife, the grocer's bill and the electric bill, the 401(k) and the insurance, the guy who cleans the gutters and the lady who cleans the house, summer camp for one boy and golf lessons for the other. We rent a viola and a tuba and see to it that two cats get better medical care than 95 percent of the people in Africa. It adds up.
     But an errand took me down Wabash Avenue, past the Palmer House, where the old Church's shoe store was located, where, back when my wife was working, I would buy fine English, bench-made shoes that actually fit my triple-wide duck feet.
     Always the same type of shoe: Oxford wingtips. Heavy and black and shiny, with a thick slab of leather for a sole and an upper of tooled holes.
     Yes, the wingtip is the defining shoe of the uncool. Tom Wolfe calls them "FBI shoes" in The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, an outstanding feature of the comatose, marshmallow-headed, work-a-daddy world, the "non-musical shiny-black-shoe multitudes" casting Ken Kesey and his LSD-addled merry pranksters a glance of bovine curiosity as they flash by, jeering, in their rainbow-hued bus.
     When Richard Nixon — poor, doomed, tragic Nixon, a character out of Sophocles — made his stab at popularity, and invited the press to watch him frolic on the beach, as carefree as a Kennedy, it was his black Oxford wingtips that the horrified newsmen focused on as Nixon marched grimly up and down the wet sand.
     I don't care. I like wingtips. They're comfortable. They go with a suit. They are not trendy.
     So I found myself pausing on Wabash, where Church's once was, looking through the window of what is now Cary's Footwear.
     I needed shoes — there are only so many times you can have soles replaced before the uppers start to go. I almost kept walking, out of residual loyalty to Church's — but the new place also sells English shoes, and they are having a sale. I went inside.
     "Hi Neil," said the clerk — and owner — Cary Millstein. Incredibly, he remembered me. "You're still wearing the brogues?"
     "Yes," I said, sheepishly.
     A brogue is another word for a wingtip — the word was first used to describe shoes the Irish wore, and later was applied to their lilting manner of speech.
     "Eight and a half, triple E, right?" he said, ducking into the back. Amazing. I hadn't bought a pair of shoes there in five years. You won't see that happen at a Payless.
     I tried on the shoes and marched around the tiny store — 650 square feet — to see if they fit. Millstein had already worked there for 20 years, he said, when Prada absorbed Church's and he saw his chance and bought the place. That was four years ago. Business is good. "The tourist trade is vital," he said. As if to prove his point, some visitors from Madrid came in and bought shoes, while I pondered, like Saul in his tent, whether to make a purchase.
     Eventually, I bought the shoes — $249, plus tax. It made me feel like Imelda Marcos.
     The transaction was actually much more complex than I've outlined, involving reflection, analysis, sweat and a phone conversation with my wife. But I've boiled it down to its essentials for public consumption. I left there envying the man who can just walk into a store and buy a pair of shoes and not think so goddamn much about it.

THE UNBLINKING EYE

     Anxious guys shouldn't go on television. For one, they put makeup on you, and try as I might to smear it off afterward, it lingers throughout the day, and I feel like Quentin Crisp. I can't help but suspect, washing my hands in the men's room, that the guy next to me is glancing over and thinking, "Hmmm, I wonder if Steinberg's personal life is more, ah, complex than he lets on."
     That said, I will nevertheless be among Antonio Mora's guests on "Eye on Chicago" this Sunday at 10:30 a.m. on CBS Channel 2.
     That's another reason to be nervous: CBS. What if I run into Diann Burns, the TV news diva being pilloried in the press for her unwise lawsuit over crown molding? What if we're in an elevator together?
     In fact, isn't she Mora's co-anchor? What if the whole thing is a trap, and I go to shake Mora's hand, and he grabs it and twists, spinning me around and putting me in a full nelson, and then Burns comes raging out from her hiding place, eyes aflame, a straight razor in her hand . . .
     See, as I said. Anxious guys shouldn't do television.

BABY'S GOT NEW SHOES, PART 2

     As usual, I left out the joyful part. At the end of a long workday, gathering up my stuff to drag home, there it was: the bag with the shoes. My heart swelled, and I thought: new shoes!
     That evening, I showed my new shoes off to my wife.
     "They're a classic form, like an Oreo cookie," I said. "And smell them — the new leather and the polish."
     "Just this once . . ." she said, taking a tentative whiff.
     "And look at the shoe box," I said to her. "It's a great shade of green — and thick cardboard. That's a quality shoe box, and I can keep all sorts of stuff in it."
     Obviously, I had lost my mind.
     But heck, the shoes will be battered and worn and scuffed and ready for the trash heap, just like their owner, soon enough, and the news being what it is, I think it's good to be happy about whatever you can find to be happy about, even something as trivial as new shoes.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE

     State Fair time is almost upon us, and this gem, from Mike Horstman, seems in the right spirit:
     A man and his wife are visiting the bull-breeding exhibit at the State Fair. At the first pen is a sign reading, 'This bull mated 50 times last year."
     The wife pokes her husband in the ribs and says, "Fifty times last year!"
     They walk a little farther and see another pen with a sign that says, "This bull mated 100 times last year."
     The wife socks her husband in the arm and says. "About twice a week! You could learn a lot from him.''
     They walk farther and a third pen has a sign saying "This bull mated 365 times last year.''
     The wife says, "Once a day! You could really learn some . . ."
     The husband cut her off with: "Why don't you go up and ask him if it was all with the same cow."

POST JOKE COMMENTARY

     Of course, no wife in the history of the world ever teased her husband about not having enough sex.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 28, 2006 

Jews on Scooters

Elchonon and Mendel, right, on the hunt.

      Suburban street life has a bad reputation. Or rather, no reputation at all. Generic houses along curving nondescript streets. Astroturf lawns. Block after block of empty sidewalk, devoid of humanity, art, interest.

     No paleta carts. No street musicians. No knots of kids hanging out on stoops. Hardly any stoops at all.
     Even my own section of the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook, close to the train station, the library, the Village Hall, downtown, public garden and soccer field can, particularly early in the morning, feel lonely, even forlorn. Where is everybody?
     Other times, life is to be found here. I routinely happen upon fellow dog walkers.  Conversation ensues. Banners hang from light poles. In the winter, the trees are decked with lights, in the summer, hanging baskets of flowers. There are festivals, parades, lemonade stands. I can stand in my backyard and hear trains and shouts from hockey games. Not to forget exotic fauna: owls, hawks, even a stray fox or coyote. 

     Plus the occasional religious zealot. Friday afternoon I was giving Kitty her afternoon stroll by the Civic Foundation — which regularly draws crowds of business people, Rotarians and recovering alcoholics, arriving for their 10 a.m. Sunday meeting — when I spotted the above pair of Hasidim on scooters. Their black hats; the white strands of their tzitzits dangling out from below their jackets.
     I had the presence of mind to instantly whip out my iPhone and snap some shots. Usually I'd be reluctant — the polite thing is to ask permission first. But as these young men are in the business of accosting strangers for their own religious purposes — in their worldview, getting Jews to do their duty hurries along the time of the messiah (assuming he wasn't just here, in the form of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, but I've addressed that previously). Turnabout is fair play. I fired away, then asked them if they mind me taking their photos. They didn't seem to. Or at least didn't say so.

     I mentioned that I had been friendly with the late Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, who headed the Lubavitch movement in Illinois, and know one of his sons, Rabbi Meir. They nodded vaguely — kids of any faith seem fairly oblivious of the world they've sprung up in.

     I've written before about the cheder boys who'd come to the newspaper to hunt for Jewish men to prod into donning on prayer boxes, as required in Deuteronomy 6:6-9: "And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall bind them upon thy hand and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."
     That last line, by the way, is why most Jewish homes have mezuzahs — little decorative boxes containing key prayers. Even Jews who don't observe much of their religion manage to put up a mezuzah, and why not? It's a comforting ritual, to touch the little lozenge as you come and go.

    The lads — Elchonon and Mendel, both 15, the pride of the Yeshivas Ohr Eliyahu Lubavitch Mesivta of Chicago on Morse — asked me if I wanted to pray. How could I refuse, given my documentation of their arrival? I said I was game. Elchonon (he said it means "the land" though Prof. Google translate it as "God has graced") handed me a black yarmulke, and instructed me to roll up my left sleeve so it could be wrapped in a leather strap. I took off my fleece to facilitate that. Mendel looked on — usually, with these pairs, there's the alpha boy and the beta boy, the doer and the watcher.  I set down Kitty's leash, stepped on it to keep her from bolting after a bunny or squirrel — more street life — and expressed a concern that the dog might be tref, or unkosher. Dogs do not figure largely in Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. But they didn't seem to mind Kitty, which I took, like the scooters, as a sign of uncharacteristic liberality.

     I must be getting thick-skinned in my old age, but I cared not a whit what any passing Northbrookites might think to see me putting on phylacteries in the street. I repeated the half-remembered prayers after Elchonon's prompting.

     Truth is, over the past years, I've soured a bit on the Lubavitch, as the New York Times documented how their East Coast schools fail miserably when it came to non-Talmudic subjects like science and math. A shonda fur die goyim. Religion should expand a person's scope, not clap him in blinders. And the Ultra-Orthodox have been cheerleaders for right wing nationalism, at home and in Israel. Not the spirit of Adonai as I understand it. What good is Judaism if it's just another brand of oppression?

      That said, the home team has been suffering enough lately, as the hostility being firehosed toward Israel for defending itself splashes Jews in general, many of whom were pretty down on the country before, for picking a Trumpish criminal and self-dealing stooge like Benjamin Netanyahu to lead it. If I had to choose which is a more pressing priority, crushing Hamas or tossing Netanyahu into the dustbin of history, I'd say both are important, though maybe not in that order. 

    Anyway, Elchonon — sounds almost Spanish, doesn't it? El Chonon! — handed me a little brochure analyzing this week's parsha — the portion of the Torah read in synagogue. Regarding burnt offerings in the Temple 3,000 years before the latest group who showed up and announced the land is theirs and the Jews should quietly die where they stand or go live someplace else, far, far, away. In your dreams...

     He asked where I lived, and I pointed toward my house, already worrying about weekly visits — I suppose I could just tell him to scram, though that seems unkind. The news being what it is, we Jews need to hang together or eventually, to paraphrase Ben Franklin, we'll run the risk of hanging separately. It's happened before.

We love and value you — whoever you are

     Humans and machines ... they're not the same yet, right? We recognize a difference.
     A big difference, in my estimation. The difference between a plumber at your door and frantically thumbing through a fix-it manual. The difference between a lover and pornography. A very big difference.
     Maybe the distinction is hiding in plain sight, overlooked in the general hurrah for artificial intelligence. The chasm, still, between something from a real person and something from an algorithm. Or is that an antique distinction?
     Last Saturday I received an email from CHICAGO SUN-TIMES MEDIA INC. It read:

     "Happy 37th Work Anniversary Neil Steinberg! Congratulations on another successful year with CHICAGO SUN-TIMES MEDIA INC. Your dedication and hard work continue to inspire us. Here's to more achievements and growth in the coming years!"
     Time to play "You be the Columnist." Reading that, I felt a) embraced, recognized and loved by my bosses and peers; b) slightly amused and a little impressed that someone would bother programming this generic boilerplate flattery into the payroll system to be automatically spat out on anniversaries or c) a blast of chill wind blowing across the barren hearth of modern life.
     Hint: Not "a."
     Perhaps in recognition of that third choice, there was, below the email, a big orange button reading "See who's Celebrating." Click it, and you're brought to Paylocity, the payroll system. In case anyone was so moved, a few helpful hints were offered. "Happy anniversary!" "Congrats!" "Appreciate You!" and "Thank You!" and a counter showing "0 Comments."
     This isn't a complaint. I don't believe, while plugging my hours into the payroll system, I've ever noticed, never mind clicked, to wish a colleague "happy anniversary." My guess is they aren't crying in their pillows.

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