On big words

     Regular readers know I sometimes deploy big words. Usually it's a natural process. When comparing two diverse elements, I call it a "juxtaposition." Happy chance is "serendipity." 

     Sometimes it's a little forced. When I was writing about the arrogant, the-truth-delivered-from-on-high air that Corning used in response to last Monday's column, I referred to their tone as "ex cathedra," Latin for "from the chair" — i.e., issuing from the pope on his throne in Rome. The word dredged from my deep knowledge of Latin, achieved from years of scholarship and study.
     Kidding. I was reading "Cave Canem: A Miscellany of Latin Words & Phrases" by Lorna Robinson while in the john, happened upon the word a few hours before writing the column, decided it was apt, and tucked it in.
    Writers are encouraged to avoid using big words. Hemingway sure didn't, to great effect. "The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for." (A good refutation to those who suggest a sentence must never end with a proposition, even better than Churchill's apocryphal "Nonsense like this up with which I will not put."). 

     But there are three reasons to permit fancy terms to creep into your prose, in order of importance: 1) because no other word serves as well; 2) to show off your erudition; 3) to educate people. 

     Sometimes a longer word should be used because you've already described a certain thing in shorter words and you fear falling into grating repetition. After calling something "magic" a few times, "conjuring" or "prestidigitation" or even "legerdemain" are allowed to creep in. 

     Sometimes a word is too good not to share — "defenestration." The act of throwing someone out a window. Not the most useful word, outside of Putin's Russia, but still fascinating — to some of us — to know exists.

     Trying to impress people might be slightly shameful, but it does have value. Sometimes they are impressed, and think better of the author, which helps, I suppose, building brand loyalty. Look I'm smart! Hang around me!

      And there is true pleasure in learning new words — I think that's the best reason. Readers invariably like them — they write in to say they enjoyed looking up a recondite (difficult to understand) term. I don't think I've ever had someone write in, "Fuck you Steinberg with all your fancy words."  Which is significant, since I get reprimanded for about everything else (a reader complained that I had bragged about getting free pizza, an exchange so delicious I might post it next week).

     Though the other day, I did snatch back a sesquipedalia verba ("words a foot-and-a-half long.") Another term plucked out my deep knowledge and study of ... okay, also from "Cave Canum." Horace coined it to upbraid fellow poets who lard their verse with "verbose, obscure, lengthy words that didn't add anything to the poem."
     I was having fun, writing about Lou Malnati's hot honey pizza, and mentioned Burt's in Morton Grove, which is truly my absolute favorite pizza. I eat Lou Malnati's more, because it's excellent and there's a take-out place two blocks from my house. But Burt's is more of ... an occasion. You have to eat it there — the pie is best seconds from the oven. When the family went to Alinea, one of the best restaurants in the world, to celebrate the boys' graduations from college (the younger boy blew through school in three years so they graduated a month apart) my birthday came four days later, and we went to Burt's, which held its own against the 3-star Michelin experience.
     In describing the Burt's pie, I initially called it the "unspeakable tetragrammaton of pizzas." But "unspeakable," I immediately realized, has a quality of "so horrible you can't describe it," so I changed the word to "unsayable." Thus in the process of alteration, I considered that second word? The tetragrammaton is the unsayable four-letter name of God, יהוה‎, or YHVH in English. Pronouncing the Hebrew letters sounds like "yud hey vuv hey," which is where the rasta "Jah" comes from.
     Maybe I was feeling a certain loss of confidence. Over the weekend I typed in a 40-year-old column as a post — itself a step back from the high quality original journalism I like to present here — but neglected to read over my work, and so posted it with something like 20 typos in the text. I fixed it about 7 a.m., but 100 readers got the mangled version. It was embarrassing, particularly because only two thought this enough of a departure to complain. The others just shrugged and silently said to themselves, "Steinberg is slipping." So not quite in the position of authority to blithely unleash "tetragrammaton."
     I changed it to "pinnacle." Which isn't nearly as fun. When I mentioned the original to my wife, she laughed out loud, and I felt a pang that I had denied a chuckle to the dozens of readers who'd know what the word meant. My apologies for that. Some other time.*

* Actually, been there, done that. Five years ago I not only used it, but did so initially by making a pun on the word, which makes me worry that I'm writing this thing mostly for my own amusement. Which sounds about right, now that I think of it.

Waaaaah! Your existence spoils my party!!!!

 

     Prejudice is a blend of ignorance and fear.
     That doesn't get said nearly enough.
     You're a stupid person, viewing the world through the keyhole of your own limited experience, and rather than assuage your terror at the unknown by learning something about it, you try to valorize your unease into a defining characteristic and lash out at the ooo-scary thing that's so frightening you.
     I just read "Biden’s Easter Day proclamation insults Christians while pandering to progressives" by Willie Wilson, the perennial mayoral candidate known for giving away free gasoline to poor Chicagoans. Like white right wingers, Wilson piles on President Joe Biden for issuing a proclamation recognizing International Transgender Day of Visibility, observed on March 31 for the past 15 years. Because this year, March 31 also happened to be Easter, and that day is owned by Christians and nobody else can do anything on it but observe their holiday.
     "Easter is about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and this day should be kept sacred," writes Wilson, adding: "Biden has a bully pulpit, and if he uses it to undercut Christianity, it could give citizens a license to move away from God. Any proclamation issued on Easter should be focused on strengthening the bond of our Judeo-Christian nation to God."
     This is bigotry on its face, and shame on the Chicago Tribune, or rather, its shell, for disseminating it. Not that Alden Capital will care. A ghoul who digs up corpses and sells the zinc extracted from them hardly cares how the body looks when they've finished. 
     Just in case it isn't plain, let's examine why Wilson's column is the definition of bigotry, in two important ways:
     First, his assumption that the loathed community is somehow corrupting the delicate sensibilities of regular normies. They are the spit that ruins the soup. They can't attend your school, live on your block. They wreck everything. You can't have a day acknowledging the existence of trans people fall on the Christian holy day because then the Christian holy day is ruined. It's an insult! The same reason gays couldn't marry — why, their doing it would destroy the very concept of marriage. Corruption by association. The notion Donald Trump is using to make political hay regarding the border: keep the animals out.

     Second, his assumption that everyone views Christianity as he does — as a club to take upside the head of those who stray from his very narrow definitions of conduct. When of course there are people who view Christianity as an occasion for acts of kindness. Not to forget trans people who are themselves Christian.
     The funny thing — funny ironic, not funny ha-ha — is the moment I read this, I thought of Willie Wilson walking into an Easter service at an all-white church in Montgomery, Alabama in 1959. The sudden silence. Those white Christian ladies gasping, then glowering under their bonnets, chattering harshly among themselves, regarding him with the same scorn and horror he unthinkingly extends towards the trans world, even as the men leap to give Willie the bum's rush to the street, perhaps delivering a quick beating with axe handles to remind him of his place in life: he didn't belong, not on this side of the tracks, not in this church. Because his presence ruined things. It's an insult.
     The idea that Christian love requires the church ladies to welcome Wilson as a human being never occurs to them. Not with his skin color. Just as it doesn't occur to Wilson, whose sentence "if he uses it to undercut Christianity, it could give citizens a license to move away from God" simply assumes that anything suggesting tolerance toward a wider spectrum of humanity is by definition anti-Christian. Not a man in a skirt. God scorns the part of His creation that troubles Willie Wilson, who of course presents himself as the zenith of heavenly perfection, twirling in glory as the Lord applauds.  As if God wants us all to be haters and fools.

Can hot honey pizza save Chicago?

     Why is everybody so worried? Getting people back downtown is easy. All you have to do is offer them deep-dish pizza drizzled with hot honey.
     Well, it worked for me. Wednesday I was more than happy to head out in a biting snow squall to Rush Street for Lou Malnati's debut of the latest twist on Chicago's beloved local dish.
     I actually had two goals.
     First, I wanted to taste it myself — pizza with hot honey? Intriguing. Second, I could share the news with a startled public. Lou's is debuting the dish Friday. I was ahead of the curve. I thought.
     Turns out, alas, I'm not in the vanguard. Nor is Lou's, for that matter: Pizza Hut rolled out its hot honey pizza last month.
      When I bragged to my older son, who lives in Jersey City, that I would be among the elite, invited to sample the new sensation, he advised me to immediately familiarize myself with Mike's Hot Honey, the very brand tying the knot with Lou's this week.
      "You're a little late," laughed Mike Kurtz, reached by phone.
     Kurtz was studying Portuguese in Brazil 20 years ago when he walked into a small pizza parlor that placed jars of honey infused with chili peppers on the tables. The taste stayed with him, and he experimented during his college years, which began at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He moved East and squirted hot honey on pizzas at the Brooklyn pizzeria where he worked.
     It's so obvious, now — you splash hot sauce on chicken; you pour honey. But it never occurred to me to combine the two. That's why some men run growing $40 million companies — Mike's Hot Honey is on the menu in 3,000 restaurants and sold in 30,000 retail establishments nationwide — and some are wage slaves jammed onto the No. 36 bus going up State Street, excited at the prospect of free pizza.
     "We created the category," said Kurtz, who began selling bottles of hot honey from the Brooklyn pizzeria in 2010. "It's kinda crazy. Two of nature's most unique and wonderful things coming together, chili peppers and honey. You'd think it would have been done before, but it hadn't been done."
     The Brooklyn angle worries me.
     "An instant classic on the New York pizza scene" Lou's boasts, perhaps unwisely. Chicagoans can be brutal when rejecting anything that suggests Gotham — Nathan's hot dogs, The Limelight, Howard Stern.
     With good reason. New York pizza is a large greasy slice flopping over a white styrofoam plate, eaten among strangers while walking along sidewalks piled with garbage. Chicago pizza is thick, superlative Lou Malnati's deep-dish, spinach and mushroom, uncut, with the butter crust, enjoyed in comfort with family and friends.

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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.