A flickering fingerhold on the living world

 

     Yahrzeit is a Jewish tradition to commemorate our departed loved ones. Sort of a semitic Day of the Dead without either colorful skeletons or morbid baked goods — the latter absence being very off brand for us. Usually, we're all in when it comes to pastries.
     In fact, the only elements yahrzeit really requires is a candle in a glass cup, such as this one, which my wife lit for her father on the 20th anniversary of his death —"yahrzeit" is from the Yiddish word for "anniversary." Plus, I suppose, if you're feeling ambitious, a prayer for the dead, which we also said.
     Twenty years is a long time, though I remember his passing very well. A bad beginning to a difficult year. We still miss him.

     The candle burns for 24 hours, and cautious Jews, not wanting to push up their own deaths, tend to put yahrzeit candles in safe places, where they won't burn down the house at night. The kitchen sink is popular. Or the stove, as above. My parents put theirs on top of the refrigerator — I suppose the idea was to keep it out of our reach — and I can still recall seeing it high up there, flickering at night, like the soul of my dead grandfather awakened and sputtering atop the refrigerator. It was scary.

     This was my father's father, who died when I was 3, introducing the concept of death into my world. I don't remember his funeral, but I remember playing among the headstones a year later, at the stone setting, another Jewish funerary rite — a year after a death, you unveil the headstone, your purchase on permanence. It's as if we're trying to gift wrap death with rituals, pretty it up a little, make the loss comforting instead of awful. It doesn't work very well, does it?

Focus on Black History Month: Ronald Reagan

     Ronald Reagan was the 40th president of the United States and the only one born in Illinois.       
     He was also the only president to live in Chicago as a youth. Lincoln, born in Kentucky, practiced law here, but always went home to Springfield. Grant, born in Ohio, never got closer than Galena, which at one time rivaled Chicago, with its location near the banks of the mighty Mississippi and thriving lead mine.

     Reagan was born in Tampico. His family moved around a lot, living above a store on the South Side of Chicago, then Galesburg and Monmouth before settling in Dixon, where Reagan went to high school.
     He graduated from Eureka College in 1932 with a degree in sociology, and took an interest in broadcasting. Feeling the lure of Hollywood, he moved west in ...
     What? Why are we going over the particulars of Reagan's life? Because it's February. Black History Month! I think with our nation being whipsawed by Trump 2.0, we might have forgotten that. A time when we can examine the rich heritage Black people have brought to this country.
     Reagan's first movie was "Love is in the Air" with June Travis. The movie took three weeks to film, and Reagan received $200 a week. It was well received — the Hollywood Reporter called Reagan "a natural" — he should have been, given he was playing a radio announcer, a job he had been doing in real life for years.
     Okay, okay, Ronald Reagan is not technically a Black person. But if I've read the current political mood correctly, that's okay. Black History Month, which I previously saw as a chance to look at important parts of the past often overlooked in America's rush to celebrate whiteness, can now be viewed as a genocide against white history. If corporations can leap to scrap their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, to curry favor with, or at least not provoke wrath from, the Trump administration, then surely I can use February to celebrate a president who was the oldest in American history when he left office — 77, but still a year younger than Trump was when he started his second term. Three weeks ago.
     Beside, I believe Reagan is a key figure in explaining what is going on right now. He didn't invent animosity toward federal government — that goes back to the founding of our country, and Southern states passionate about preserving slavery.
     But he did perfect it, ushering in the age where Republicans realized, if you can't directly advocate against people you despise — immigrants, minorities, LGBTQ ‚ you can kneecap the government that supports them.
     That is why our shadow king, Elon Musk, is running around, ripping down parts of the federal government — include scientists, doctors, and impartial law enforcement officers among the ranks of the despised now.
     They call that "efficiency," though how it is efficient to destroy programs that help Americans to give the money back to rich people as tax breaks, is a mystery.
     That it mainly hurts white Americans — most people in poverty are white — doesn't matter.           That's a point that doesn't get understood about racism. Sure, it hurts the victims, big time. But it also hurts the racists themselves. When federal courts demanded that public swimming pools be integrated in the 1960s, small southern towns filled in their public pools rather than let Black residents — their neighbors — swim in them. They'd rather their own children swelter than share the pool.

     Remember that dynamic; it explains a lot. You can draw a line from the shuttered pools to next week's move to eliminate the Department of Education. If deploying national standards mean we're to learn actual American history, then there shall be no standards at all!
History is a bad place, often. To get an idea just how bad, let's return to Reagan's biography  Those of more tender sensibilities — a state sadly encouraged by the left as well as the right — are invited to bail out here.
     Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 believing that companies should be able to do whatever they like, unencumbered by the interference of government — another belief as current as tomorrow. He opposed the 1965 Voting Rights Act on Constitutional grounds. He was also an unashamed racist. There is a 1971 tape from the Oval Office that has him yucking it up with Nixon about United Nations delegates.
     "To see those... monkeys from those African countries," Reagan said, as Nixon laughed. "Damn them, they're still uncomfortable wearing shoes!"
     That Reagan would go on to be elected president, twice, and become the godhead of the Republican Party prior to Donald Trump blinding them with his golden glory, well, it might be a shock. But it shouldn't come as a surprise.

Grasping at straws

     Am I wrong to take a slim measure of hope from Donald Trump going after paper drinking straws?
     "I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work," Trump wrote Feb. 7 on Truth Social. "BACK TO PLASTIC!"
     Kind of a self-own, isn't it? Have you ever had trouble using a paper straw? I haven't.

     We know just how vindictive and trivial Donald Trump can be. But could that be a good thing? Because if he's going after paper straws and the Kennedy Center, and everybody who ever crossed him — that has to be a distraction from his central task of tearing down our country and transforming it into a dictatorship, right? Maybe a little?
     Yes, a hallmark of fascism is total control of society. Mussolini told Italian men what kind of hats to wear. The devil really is in the details. But there is only so much effort that can be made and, if three weeks in, Trumpolini is raging against paper straws, well, that's at least a few seconds he isn't gutting American government. Maybe he'll just dive into the weeds and never come out.
     Wishful, I know. Is optimism premature? With three years and 49 weeks to go. Or is optimism essential?
     I find myself groping toward it. Otherwise, the reality, of privatizing our government under the lash of Elon Musk is too horrible to contemplate. Truly, we are in the hands of our enemies, and I don't think a conquering power would move with this rapidity. Even the Chinese Communists gave Hong Kong a couple years of breathing room before voiding their freedoms. Lawsuits are being filed, judges making rulings, but the old system is buckling already. 

     So where are we? As I've said before, hope is the last coin in your pocket when all your money is gone. The liar, bully, fraud and traitor can't win, ultimately. America will not be undone — not completely undone anyway — by a man who believes in nothing, who completes nothing, who mistakes intention with result, and needn't achieve anything when he can lie and say he has and his army of groveling dupes believes him. 

     Don't get me wrong — there will be much suffering and innocent people will be hurt. They're already being hurt. But as we go through this, remember Losey L. McLoser will, ultimately, lose. Of that I am convinced. Or trying to be convinced, anyway. If he succeeds, if he has a third term then bestows the presidency upon Donald Trump Jr. as a kingly token, then we were never the strong democracy we thought we were. Now that I say it, it sounds obvious. 

The Orchid Show: India Blooms, at the Chicago Botanic Garden

     "The Orchid Show: India Blooms," opened at the Chicago Botanic Garden Friday night, in a special showing for members. Friday had been a very long day at the end of a very long week, but my wife and I rose to the occasion and slid over to take a peek. Regular readers might recall me being on the record as not liking orchids, but I think the Garden is beginning to wear me down in that regard. Either that, or they had fewer of those screaming baby face orchids this year, more beautiful, colorful sunburst varieties. 

     The 11th annual show was stunning, and while we spent an hour oohing and ahhing over gorgeous primeval flowers in a rainbow of colors, I'm a little abashed to say what the highlight for me was — not the blooms, or the opening remarks by Indian consul general, Somnath Ghosh, nor the excellent Indian chow passed by energetic servers, nor even the haunting music by the Jazz Mata Trio, whose percussionist, Kayan Pathak of course knows my brother-in-law, Alan Goldberg, because all Chicago drummers of a certain vintage know each other. (I asked because he mentioned playing with Corky Siegel, which is the musical equivalent of saying he'd been to our seder).

    The biggest pleasure, for me, was etymological. A display against a vivid blue background explained that the word "indigo" comes from the Greek word indikon meaning, "from India." Did not know that. Other unusual words jumped out — the orchids are grown in "orchidariums," and the distinctive stepped terraces used to collect water in arid India are "stepwells," which would be a great name for a brand of high end baby shoes.

      Of course the great peril of knowing words is the impulse to show off that knowledge. We were listening to the trio — the pleasure of the music magnified by the relief of sitting down — when my attention focused on the stringed instrument played by the musician in the center of the group.

    "I think that's called an 'oud,'" I whispered to my wife, quite pleased with myself, showing off a scrap of residual knowledge left over from my summer 2023 visit to the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix.  Interesting if true, as we reporters say. Out came the cell phone, and I basked in being right, for a moment, before my wife, sharper than myself, observed that ouds are distinctly pear-shaped, according to Prof. Google, while the instrument before us was clearly round, a detail that had escaped my notice. 

     So during a break I went up to ascertain the true situation, instrument-wise.

    "It's a ruan," said Tzu-Tsen Wu, who is from Taiwan, and we happily chatted about that imperiled nation. She has an album coming out in the spring, and promised to send me a link. We exchanged emails.

    I feel like I'm not quite conveying the orchid quality of the show. But it's late and Friday was a singular day, speaking of words. My Friday column was read by many as a cross between a premature farewell and professional suicide note, which was not my intention. Email flooded in, and while I diligently tried to read and respond to every generous and supportive note throughout the day, in the end I was overwhelmed by their sheer volume. I'll get to them all, I always do, I feel I owe readers that, nice ones anyway. But it'll take a few days. So please indulge me if today's post is shorter and less ... coherent than most. There's always tomorrow. 

    India Blooms runs through March 23.

I'm not 100 percent sure this hue is quite "indigo," but the Botanic Garden seems to thinks so.

     

'The choice is up to you'

Leaving my office at 401 N. Wabash for the last time, 2004 (Sun-Times photo)

     The entire staff of the CIA received buyout offers this week. I got my buyout offer Tuesday.
     Ha ha, see what I did there? Both sentences are true — one can play games with this writing stuff — and while I did interview with the CIA fresh out of college, under the charmed notion that my year of Russian language gave me a snowball's chance, whatever they were looking for, I wasn't it.
     A condition that lingers, apparently, since my offer came from the Sun-Times.
     "Here's a bag of cash, Mr. Ego, take it and scram ..." But that too is deceptive. I wasn't singled out for my abrasive personality. Everybody got offers, though mine was big enough — I can be a jerk — that I surprised myself by thinking about it.
     Again, deceptive. The amount was determined, not by my capacity to cause headaches for my superiors, but the 38 years I've been on staff.
     "It's nothing personal," said Michael Corleone in The Godfather. "It's just business."
     A business shredded by the grinding tectonic plates of technology. At the same moment the government is being torn apart in an orgy of unrestricted Republican institution-wrecking. A lot of people making hard personal decisions, while the choice of what kind of country we are seems suddenly settled. The United States used to consider itself a force of good projected into the world. We welcomed refugees at home, brought hope, democracy and clean water abroad.
     Now the United States Agency for International Development was declared "a criminal organization" by our shadow king, Elon Musk, and summarily disbanded. I'm not sure the intention was to yield the field to his business partner, China. Though that will certainly be the result.
     So yeah, it's self-absorbed of me to focus on my own little drama while the government is literally being wrecked around us. But that's being covered elsewhere, and besides, to paraphrase Stalin, a person losing his job is a tragedy, a million losing their jobs is a statistic.
     Besides, the big picture is almost too horrible to contemplate. The Department of Education is next, for the crime of imposing uniform standards on a country keen to sink back into regional intellectual darkness, unbroken by any intrusive light from without. Tennessee might be able to expel evolution from its curriculum just in time for the centennial of the Scopes Trial this summer; 100 years and not an inch of progress — they can put that on their license plates.

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Flashback 1987 — Haiti's dilemma; Impoverished country needs, but distrusts, U.S.

 

Bakery, Haiti, 1987.

    Anyone who has ever traveled around a Third World country knows the depth of misery that can be found around the globe. To think that a central effort of the United States to allay that suffering has been scuttled by an unelected shadow king, to save money to give to rich fucks such as himself, is an enormous shame to add to our ever-growing tower of humiliation.
     The irony is, such aid was always problematic, and didn't always lead to the gratitude that our current leader craves. It required knowledge, wisdom, care and nuance, and those are out of style nowadays. I went looking for past columns that address the work USAID does — or rather, did — and found this from long ago. It's twice as long as a usual column, but I think well expresses the challenges the United States will now be shirking entirely. 

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti On a plane traveling recently to this small Caribbean country, not one but two men were carrying padded dashboards. Several people held onto portable black and white televisions, as well as assorted boxed items such as baby walkers and blenders. One young man carried a small suitcase filled entirely with packages of sandwich cookies.
     "There're bringing in the hard goods," said Didier Thys, a Belgian in Haiti with Catholic Relief Services. He went on to explain that since the economy of Haiti is so fractured, anyone coming back from the United States brings as many manufactured products as they can, to sell at a profit later.
     Also on the plane were five young student priests from a Catholic seminary in Boston, and a half dozen or so Baptist missionaries, the latest installment in a steady stream of Americans, and other foreigners, who come here to contribute their efforts to relief projects — vocational training, literacy programs, housing, nutrition, health care, food aid, reforestation — sponsored by organizations such as the United Development Agency, Catholic Relief Service, the Peace Corps, the Baptist Mission at Kenscoff, and others.
     While these programs provide real benefit to the Haitian people and economy, they also present a dilemma in the minds of many Haitians, and some Americans. The aid is needed, but accepting the aid raises the specter of Haiti becoming dependent to the United States, that along with the money and programs comes a silent itinerary that will subvert Haiti's gingerly progress toward self-determination, after years of repression.
     But before anything else can be said about Haiti, it must be understood that this is a nation in the grip of numerous crushing problems. International organizations usually describe the problems in numerical terms. More than a year after the overthrow of President for Life Jean-Claude Duvalier, the statistics about Haiti are still shocking: 50 percent unemployment/ underemployment, 80 percent illiteracy, 87 percent of the households without running water, per capita income of $369 a year.
     But being statistics, they mask a harsh reality that defies numerical description. To really understand what these statistics mean, you have to take a walk through the sloping, hot streets of Port-au-Prince, the capital city of this crowded nation of 6 million.
     Fifty percent unemployment means that at any given time, there are as many people standing around — marking time, playing dominoes, hustling, begging — as there are working. In a country without a social welfare system, some people have never held a job. Those with jobs cling to them and perform them diligently, even though a good daily wage in the city is $3, and a woman working eight hours in a hemp factory in the countryside may earn 90 cents.
     Lack of potable water means that people get water where they can find it. Large crowds form around public taps, and most people get water to their homes by carrying it in large buckets balanced on top of their heads. Those who can afford to drink bottled water religiously avoid tap water, which can carry enteric diseases. Everyone else drinks from the taps and, frequently, from the open sewers at the side of the road.
     High illiteracy means that the most popular newspaper in the country, the Haiti Liberee, has a circulation of only 7,500. There is one public college to serve the entire nation, and to become a doctor, you have to leave the country. Many don't return, which is why in rural areas of Haiti there is one doctor for every 42,000 people. Lack of an educated public also makes it that much harder to affect any kind of change. Harder to provide vocational training. Harder to foster democracy (only 5 percent of the public voted in the last election, to select representatives to draw up a new national constitution.) The official language of the country is French, but 90 percent of the population speak Creole, and can communicate in French with difficulty, if at all.
     Most distressingly, though, the average annual income in Haiti is $369, making the country 650 miles southeast of Miami the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. In this shattered economy, people scrape by in all manner of marginal ways. Burning wood into charcoal, which is then sold as a fuel, is so popular that the country has become deforested, resulting in massive erosion. People work as draft animals, pulling huge carts of lumber up hills, or set themselves up on a street corner, selling tomato paste by the teaspoon to make 3 cents on a can.
     Into this nation, beset by numerous intractable problems, America pours money — $100 million in aid in 1987 — and relief workers, "hundreds and hundreds of them," according to Jeffrey Lite, public relations officer of the U.S. Information Service. "I'm told more than in any other country."
     Many Haitians — and Americans working in Haiti — worry about the impact of all this assistance activity. While intrusive, quid pro quo demands, such as the Protestant missionaries who require natives to renounce their voodoo religion before they receive medical aid, are rare, the very act of accepting the aid is seen as putting Haiti at risk of becoming a satellite of the United States.
     "The U.S. is seen in contradictory ways, which is not surprising, considering the U.S. is a big, powerful, and nearby, and Haiti is small and weak," said a U.S. Embassy official, who asked not to be identified. "Countries don't like to depend on other countries, but they also need the aid. You hear the phrase `Haiti is not for sale' a lot, as if the people of the U.S. somehow wanted to buy Haiti and put Haiti under its thumb."
     The Haitian fear of domination by the United States is given a bit of perspective by remembering that the U.S. Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, to oversee Haitian debt payment and customs activities. It is a memory that has not escaped the Haitians — the date "1915" can be seen painted in red on walls in Port-au-Prince.
     A good example of the controversy over U.S. assistance is found in the area of food aid. Over 10 percent of the Haitian population — 700,000 people — depend on U.S. handouts for their daily sustenance.
     "A lot of food aid is criticized, usually by well-fed people, who say its another way to make Haiti dependent," said a U.S. Embassy official. "Except people are hungry and without the aid they would be seriously malnourished, or worse."
     "The food thing is delicate," said John Hogan, director of Catholic Relief Services, which is a major food distributor in Haiti. "I can sympathize with people who say just giving food away can be a disincentive to production."
     The key to food aid, Hogan said, is to use it as a base, a "temporary support," until people can begin feeding themselves.
     "It behooves everybody who's involved to sit down and say: Where should we be with food in a few years? What's the sense of the Haitian leadership? How do we, in certain places, increase development technical assistance and decrease food aid? Maybe in some places you have to continue food aid because you can't get development going."
     Despite American concern over tailoring programs to meet Haitian needs, there is a lot of hostility directed toward America by the common people.
     "As far as people are concerned, they aren't really very happy with the American government," said I. Michel Meincheind, a Catholic Priest at Petite River des Nippes, a parish of 25,000 people west of Port-au-Prince. "People are very concerned in terms of the American plan for Haiti. Americans want Haiti to be a supply of cheap labor for the American economy. There is a general anti-American attitude here, in part because of what America did with the pigs."
     "What America did with the pigs" is a perfect example of the dilemma of American involvement in Haiti. In 1980, swine flu — which had come to the country in a ham sandwich aboard a Spanish airliner — was decimating Haiti's swine population and threatening to spread to U.S. pork producers. It was decided — by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USAID and the Haitian government — to completely eradicate the island's swine population, and replace it, entirely, with a more resistant strain of hog. The program, while sound in terms of practical, big-picture health planning, took years to implement and caused great deprivation for peasants, who depend on their pigs for financial security.
     "The systematic slaughter of all the pigs in the country was a catastrophe for the peasants," said Meincheind. "Maybe there should have been a system of looking at each pig to see if they were sick, instead of wiping them all out. Revenues in the countryside are based on pigs, and until we get pigs, nothing will get better."
     To make things get better, to make development work — to launch job programs, build homes, improve farming and nutrition — American organizations have to convince Haitians of their good intentions, that any temporary dependency that comes from accepting assistance is offset by long-term gains to be made. It is a goal that assistance workers apply themselves to with a commitment and seriousness they hope is apparent to their Haitian hosts.
     "I wouldn't be here if I didn't think what I was doing was correct," said Ira Lowenthal, an American anthropologist working for USAID. "My basic approach to this country is, number one, I love it. Number two, it has virtually insurmountable problems. It has inherited an historical legacy which is overwhelmingly difficult as it plays itself out in a modern age of overpopulation, declining soil fertility, increasing foreign exchange problems, declining tourism and whatever else, and anybody who's here with a sincere desire to help, who doesn't think they know more than Haitians themselves about what to do here, and doesn't try to preempt the sovereignty of the country, is needed here.
     "The country needs all kinds of resources and commitment. It needs it primarily from its own citizens from every level of society, and it needs it from anybody else who wants to lend a hand."

      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 3, 1987 

The Machines Are Learning, and It's Getting Spooky

Created by Google Gemini AI.

     A year ago, I asked Google's Gemini AI to write a column boosting artificial intelligence in the style of Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times. It instantly spat out a snappy patter that was a bad parody of me, with lots of winking Chicago references. AI is supposedly constantly improving, so I was curious: Has it actually gotten any better in the past year? I asked Google's new 2.0 "experimental" Gemini for an AI update, again in my style, which I present here (anything in italics is still me). It came up with something that begins:

     Remember when AI was just some nerd stuff, a bunch of guys with pocket protectors arguing about neural networks and whether a toaster could ever truly understand the existential dread of a Tuesday morning?      

     Well, forget all that. This ain't your grandpappy's AI. This ain't even your dad's AI. This is the kind of AI that makes you wonder if Skynet is just around the corner, disguised as a helpful chatbot.
    Last year, AI went from "kinda cool, I guess" to "holy crap, is that a threat to my livelihood?"

     Not bad, right? It even threw in bullet points and boldface:

• The writing's on the wall, and it's in a font I can barely read. AI can now churn out essays, poems, and even screenplays that are, frankly, better than some of the stuff I've seen on Netflix. My inner playwright is weeping, but also, honestly, a little impressed.

     That part about the inner playwright weeping is true, but not because AI is so impressive. I was at a party where a young man said he was writing a play. "Writing plays is hard," I replied. And he said, no, not really; he's having AI generate the dialogue. I gaped at him, open-mouthed.

• The music's changed, man. AI can now compose original music, from classical sonatas to surprisingly catchy pop tunes. It's like a thousand different composers jammed into a blender and hit "puree." Is it art? I dunno, but it's definitely something.

     I went looking for a "surprisingly catchy" AI-composed pop tune and ended up listening to "Daddy's Car," a muddy mashup of the Beatles and the Beach Boys, whose lyrics border on gibberish. "Unsurprisingly lousy" was more like it.

• The images are getting … uncanny. AI art generators are now spitting out images that are so realistic, you'd swear they were photos. Want a portrait of your cat as a Renaissance noble? Done. Need a photo of a talking squirrel riding a unicycle? Consider it accomplished.

     Gemini AI did, I noticed with unease, take far longer to create the image (above) of a talking squirrel riding a unicycle than it did to write my column. Not bad, right?

     But here's the thing: it's not just about the cool stuff. It's about the implications. Jobs that were once considered safe — writers, artists, musicians — are now facing an uncertain future. What happens when a machine can do your job better, faster, and cheaper?

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