A furry pink nest to incubate the fabulous dreams of youth

 

    Bean bag chairs. Remember those? Great vinyl sacks of styrofoam pellets, in banana yellow and candy apple green. The style originated in 1968 by a trio of Italian designers and called the Sacco chair and considered "one of the icons of the Italian anti-design movement." That original chair was more pear shaped, and considered haut decor enough to find itself into several museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art.

    By the early 1970s, it was shaped more like a squashed tomato, and available from Sears. I remember wanting one, vaguely, without ever going so far as to express that desire to my parents, whose tastes ran to Scandinavian design, for themselves, and ranch oak, for us children. They must have loved ranch oak — a dark style of wood. I had a ranch oak bed, dresser, desk. I hated it.

     I probably didn't want the chair so much as the lifestyle that went with it. My pals and I would recline on my bean bag chairs, listening to Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer and be cool.  I think I was too cool to even want the bongs that went along with that.
    That thought came back to me as I was walking Kitty one morning last week, and came across this hot pink monstrosity set out for the trash. A quick Google image search identified it as a Himalayan Pink Faux-Fur Hang-A-Round Chair, available in the Teen section of Pottery Barn, which goes without saying. A 12-year-old girl's idea of what adult female elegance might be. My heart broke a little, seeing it, while admiring the damn-what-the-neighbors-think panache of whoever set it out. I'd be embarrassed.

    Because such novelties grow old. I never did own that beanbag chair, but those who did soon came to regret doing so. "The beanbag chair became a summary cliche of the 1960s. It was freedom in a brand-new bag — but it offered so much freedom it quickly led to stiff limbs and deadened buttocks," wrote Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov in their 2005 Blobjects and Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design. "In the end, the beanbag chair was a miniature parable on the limits of freedom."

     I hope somebody picked it up, and that it's embellishing the bedroom of some scrap dealer's 10-year-old daughter, like a promissory note from the adult world — someday, my dear, you will manifest your own style, and be fabulous and colorful and take your ease in wacky, furry chairs. 
     If you see it and just have to have one, well, bless your heart. Pottery Barn doesn't carry them anymore. But Walmart has a chair very much like it, the Mainstays Blair Plush Faux-Fur Kids Saucer Chair, for $32.98, which is a perfect price for furniture for that short period between the time kids are too energetic to arrange themselves into such a sling, to when they slink off to college and put away their childish things. It also comes in gray, peach and white.

     Those machines aren't ruling the world quite yet. The downside of using company web site for blog research is that achingly stupid store algorithms can't differentiate between momentary professional interest and actually being a potential customer.

     

Geese are smarter than people

 

     What do geese know that we don't?
     The value of organization, for one. While the structure of the United States government, built over centuries, is being torn apart in a matter of months, we can still look up and see those tight Vs in the spring sky as flocks of  Canada geese return north.
     Though many geese never leave the Chicago area. A pair showed up at my feeder last week. Most of the birds we get are "LBBs" — little brown birds, sparrows, wrens, finches — shamed by the occasional red cardinal. My feeder has also been visited by everything from ducks to hawks, which, of course, are not interested in the birdseed, per se, but the wildlife below — bunnies and squirrels — scavenging what falls from various beaks.
     The geese were nibbling at those paltry leavings when, big-hearted fool that I am, I went outside. The geese removed themselves to a safe distance and I grabbed a heaping scoopful of seed and tossed it on the ground. There. Bon appetit.
     Have you ever watched geese eat? I hadn't. One goose would plunge its face into the seeds, happily gobbling. The other wouldn't. It stood guard, head on a swivel, looking left, then right. This went on for several minutes. Then they'd switch.
     "Sentinel behavior," said Michael P. Ward, an expert in conservation and bird behavior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Trying to detect predators. A lot of things want to eat birds, and they're better working together, taking turns."
     Cooperation. Looking out for each other. Another practice that has fallen on hard times in the human world.
     One doesn't get a goose expert on the phone every day. I seized the opportunity.
     That flying V formation? I assume it's to keep the flock from getting separated.
     "No, it's actually aerodynamics," Ward said. "The wind goes around the lead bird. The bird in the very front of the V pays a cost."
     There is no designated head goose. They take turns at the point of the V. Again, sharing the burden.
     I suggested more geese are sticking around Chicago due to global warming.
     "That is definitely correct," Ward said. "Winters in Chicago have become more mild. Geese learned to take advantage of human food. Geese are hanging out on people's roofs. In Chicagoland, the majority of them are staying. Then you have birds that come down from farther north."
     The geese seem to weigh the chance of starving to death in Illinois — where snow can cover the fields they like to forage — against being shot by hunters in Kentucky.

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"People see geese as this dumb bird that gets in my way, but if you actually start studying them, they make decisions and have strategies," Ward said.

Just hold it in your lap.

Ema in Glenview

     "Let me be surrounded by luxury," Oscar Wilde said, "I can do without the necessities!"

     And generally that serves. But every now and then the lack of a particular necessity catches you off guard.

     Sunday night the kids took us out to dinner to thank us for throwing their baby shower. We went to Ema, a hip new Mediterranean spot in Glenview, and while usually I go casual almost everywhere, my daughter-in-law wore such a lovely plum-colored dress, I rose to the challenge and put on a gray sport coat, gray dress shirt and black jeans. 

      It was raining, hard, so my Burberry raincoat and fedora completed the ensemble. 

      We'd been to Ema twice before  — a lovely room with big plants and interesting wicker light fixtures. There is a curved window as you walk in that I thought was a coat check, but was actually a station for take-out. As maitre d' showed us to our table, I asked her if there was somewhere I could put my hat and coat.

     "We don't have a coat check," she said. 

     "Do you have a coat hook?" I countered.

     "No," she said. 

     So I draped my coat over my chair, and set the hat down by the wall. 

     Which worked fine. Although Ema is a sprawling place, and it struck me they could designate a corner to hang coats. Tuck a hat rack next to one of those plants. Georgie V's, a far less ostentatious establishment, manages a line of coat hooks by the bathroom.  They come in handy. I used one Monday.

    Ema does have a family bathroom, beautifully outfitted with a granite sink and golden lighting, which I appreciated when I excused myself for insulin injection purposes. It seemed odd that they would go to the trouble and expense to create and decorate this lavish little extra room, but fall down on the job in the coat hook department. And Ema is a Lettuce Entertain You Restaurant, which are normally so detail-oriented, down to the Italian conversation they used to pipe into the bathrooms at the old Scoozi on Huron. 

Ema honey layer cake

      Oh well, a small thing. The appetizer spreads are excellent — better than the main courses — paired with warm soft pita bread. We were too full to indulge in dessert, but the honey layer cake we had before is memorable enough to make me regret that. The service is excellent, the coat policy notwithstanding. Our dinner was festive, and while I can't imagine it'll replace Prairie Grass as "our place" — unless I can go back in time and meet the chef 26 years ago — we'll definitely be back as circumstances dictate. Though I'll leave the coat in the car when we do. If a guest asks, "Is there somewhere I can put my coat?" the answer can't be "No." It isn't hospitable. Maybe they could use the nonspecific 3 percent surcharge they tack on the bill because they can to buy a few hooks.

'Secret History of the Rape Kit' reveals past, future

Photo by Jaclyn Nash, courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History

      We remember feminism of the 1970s without also recalling exactly what women were being militant about: their voices being muffled, their power minimized, their issues ignored.
     Pagan Kennedy's new book, "The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story," is a disturbing journey back to the bad old days of Chicago a half century ago. And maybe, the way we're going, a glimpse into our future, too.
     The book begins with the sexual abuse of the author, trauma both specific and universal. "The warnings of sexual assault carried inside them an even more demoralizing and insidious message: This world is not for you."
     Then Kennedy settles into the story of Chicagoan Martha "Marty" Goddard, whose life changes after volunteering at a phone hotline for homeless teenagers.
     "I was just beside myself when I found the extent of the problem," Goddard said. "The runaways were pregnant, homeless, suicidal, strung out."
     She realized she had "stumbled upon a dark and terrible underworld."
     Police would arrest young women, for solicitation or vagrancy. The abuse that had sent them fleeing into the streets wasn't considered. "No one talked about the crimes that had driven those girls out of their homes."
     It was "a culture in which cops played pranks on victims, making them the butt of sick jokes. At least one officer persuaded a woman to strip naked, so that he could photograph her wounds as evidence. He then passed the photos around to his buddies, as if they were porn."
     Mayor Richard J. Daley deployed a taunt when the subject of corruption arose — "Where's your proof?" — that served double for rape victims. It was her word against his, and everybody knew who was trustworthy, who unreliable.
     The solution was to collect evidence immediately after these crimes, which led to the rape kit, a box filled with swabs, combs and other equipment designed to collect evidence after a woman — or man; 9% of rape victims are men — was assaulted.
     Goddard championed the kit for both its practical and ideological value: "It's true power came from a new set of ideas," Kennedy writes. Ideas starting with: What happens to women matters.
     The kit was named, not for Goddard, but for a Chicago police sergeant, Louis Vitullo, and unpacking that fact brings us back — and maybe forward — to a world where women carry less authority than men. Having a man's name made the kit more acceptable to law enforcement that, frankly, couldn't be bothered investigating sexual assault.

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Flashback 1999: Now's the time for him to chart his own course

    Today is the 38th anniversary of my joining the Sun-Times, a day I traditionally reach back into the files and highlight something from the archive. This column appealed to me because, to be honest, I write about myself so goddamn much, it's a relief to see me focusing on someone else for a change. 

     This column ran the summer I crossed the ocean with my dad for the book, "Don't Give Up the Ship." Our New Zealand press lord, Nigel Wade, would not give me time off — he was offended that I asked — so I had to file a column, three days a week, from the sea, using the molasses-dripping-off-a-stick-in-winter satellite modem in the radio room. Focusing on the ship's only Chicago cadet was a no-brainer. 

    The obvious question this column leaves us with is: what happened to Terry McCabe? My gut told me, as mentioned at the end, that the son, grandson and great-grandson of police officers has a strong chance of becoming a Chicago cop. But CPD, natch, did not respond to my inquiry, and a desultory online search came up empty. He'd be in his late 40s now. He seemed like a nice kid; I hope he's having a good life.

     ABOARD THE EMPIRE STATE — So how does a 21-year-old South Side Irish kid end up aboard a ship, 300 miles due north of Puerto Rico, steaming toward Barbados at a brisk clip of 17 knots?
     "I like water," offers Terry McCabe, the only Chicagoan attending the State of New York Maritime College, the oldest of the nation's six colleges teaching young people the honorable and endangered art of navigating the high seas. Every summer, 400 underclassmen and -women set sail for eight weeks aboard the Empire State — a 37-year-old cargo ship converted to carry trainees — cruising from the Bronx and heading, on this summer's voyage, to Charleston, Barbados, Naples and Wales.
     I suggest to the 1996 graduate of Mount Carmel High School that while many people like water, few sail the seas. He digs for a better explanation.
     "I was a lifeguard at Rainbow Beach, at 79th and Lake Street — also at Kennedy Park," he says. "This is what came to me, I guess."
     It is gratifying to see your city well-represented, and McCabe, as Maritime's lone Chicagoan, does just that. He was vice president of the student council, president of the 50-member Emerald Society, and wrestled at 171 pounds. The cadets have their nicknames embroidered on the pockets of their blue boiler suits, and McCabe's "Scrappy" is a remnant from his days on Maritime's now-defunct rugby team. Five-foot-eight "on a good day," he made up the difference between himself and the typical rugby behemoth with pure grit. Maritime prides itself on a certain quasi-military discipline, and so disbanded its rugby team after realizing that rugby placed its cadets in the general vicinity of other collegiate rugby teams, and thus such venerable rugby traditions as the Naked Beer Slide.*
     Probably just as well. While McCabe's older sister is a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, his blood is not navy but Chicago Police Department blue. His great-grandfather, Peter McCabe, was a Chicago cop, as was his grandfather, John McCabe, as was his father, also John McCabe, who just retired as a detective at Area 2 violent crimes after 30 years on the force. His brother, named — and you saw this coming — John McCabe Jr., is a fourth-generation Chicago cop, currently on leave.
     Despite that long tradition, McCabe — who took and passed the police exam last March — is in no rush to settle down at 11th and State, certainly not before seeing the world. And he has already seen much more than the typical 21-year-old from Mount Greenwood. This is his third cruise_the past two summers took him, among other places, to Spain, Portugal, Germany, Bermuda, England and his ancestral Ireland.
      He wasn't overly impressed. Asked his assessment of the countries he's seen, McCabe replies: "They're all the same." Pressed for something more profound, McCabe, who plays bagpipes in the Chicago Stockyards Kilty Band, admits "Ireland was actually pretty cool."
     McCabe has reasons to be nonplused. Not only is he from Chicago, but the Maritime College is not your run-of-the-mill state institution either. Tucked on the very northeast tip of New York City, where the East River flows into Long Island Sound, the college is built around Fort Schuyler, an 1830s pentagon of stone with formal parade grounds and slit gun ports and enough nautical memorabilia scattered about to quicken even a Midwesterner's dusty heart, such as a massive bronze five-bladed propeller salvaged off that greyhound of the seas, the SS United States, and displayed as if it were sculpture.
     "(The campus) is one of the things I like most about it," says McCabe. "It's hard to believe it's in the Bronx."
     It is, but we're not. Not anymore. The Bronx is 10 days and 1,300 miles behind us. Shipboard life for cadets falls into routine. "You're either on watch, or working or in class," says McCabe, a 1st class boatswain — sort of like a handyman on the ship. They need a handyman, given that the vessel is basically 12,000 tons of pumps, blowers, winches, watertight doors, condensers, conduits and wildcats that haul up 12,900-pound anchors on massive chains with links 14 inches long.
     "You don't usually use heavy machinery in college," McCabe notes.
     The news about the maritime industry typically sounds so grim — all those 400,000-ton Japanese supertankers with crews of a dozen or two — but McCabe, entering his senior year, doesn't think he has spent the last three years training for a dwindling profession.
     "I have more options than (I would at) any other college," he says. "I'll graduate with a degree in marine transportation and I'll also have my U.S. Coast Guard license for unlimited tonnage. So they gave me the best of both worlds here. You can ship out, you can work on land. And my degree is so inclusive, you can do anything and everything, from maritime law to maritime insurance."
     He doesn't add "to being a cop" but that's where I'd bet my money. The lure of the sea is mighty, but it drains away compared to 100 years of family tradition. And besides: How many police officers can figure out where they are with a sextant and a starry night sky? We could use one, someday. But Terry McCabe is in no rush. He has those supreme luxuries of youth: time and a world awaiting.

      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 6, 1999

* Something I knew about because I had witnessed it first hand at a Big 10 rugby party held at Northwestern Apartments in 1979.

"Please consider it could save a life"

     Occasionally someone will ask me if there are any columns I regret writing. And the honest answer is no.

     Well okay, a few touch a nerve, and lead to a couple unpleasant days. Sometimes emails take a week to tail off, even two. That column where the editor sent me to buy an assault rifle that vectored off into the Fox News reality distortion field. The one about the First and Second Amendments where I used "child porn" in the headline, not realizing how that term excites Red Staters. Those lingered, unpleasantly.
     But most ripples pass. There is one, however, whose repercussions roll on through the years.
     It was Aug. 29, 2018, and I was cutting through Daley Plaza — back when people walked around the Loop, going places. I came across a protest held by "targeted individuals" — people who believe they are the center of vast conspiracies. I accepted a flyer, took a photo, and left, and later talked to their spokesman and wrote a column.         

      As I try to do when writing about the troubled, I strove for a gentle touch and to respect their point of view. 

     It began: 

     "Strangers are following you. Teams of them, coordinating their surveillance. Recording you. Attacking you with sonic devices. Maybe burning you with lasers. Maybe implanting grain-sized trackers inside your body. You can feel the hard bumps under your skin.

     "You are alarmed, naturally, and turn for help to those you trust: your family and friends. Maybe law enforcement. Only they don’t believe you. They might even act like you’re the problem. Like you’re crazy.
     "Welcome to the world of Targeted Individuals, a loose confederation of those, in their words, subject to the “growing crimes of organized stalking, surveillance, abuse and electronic harassment.”

     Later in the piece, I quote a psychologist who says, in essence, that these people are disturbed.
What I did not realize was that targeted individuals, reading this, would miss that nuance, and take me for a kindred spirit. 

     On Wednesday, I received an email beginning:

      "Hi my name is Sharon and I have videos of hours of similar events that you have shared in this recent post. I have actual videos of strange events happening for more than 4 years now. I would very much like to meet you and share my experiences on this matter because I believe that if enough light is shed on this story more people who can provide some kind of proof, then maybe our laws will change to protect people with mental illness..."     

     Concision here seemed my friend. "No,"I replied, "thank you."

     That drew a second email:

     "Hi Mr. Steinberg. I just saw your response to the recent email that I sent to you earlier this morning. I can guess why you’re saying no and I understand. I would like to, however, share this with you. I’m 53 years old and I’m being tortured into insanity and I can’t take it anymore. I have had to abandon the state where I was born in because they ran me out from torturing me so bad.
     "My family members want nothing to do with me and my only child is about to lose her mother because I can’t mentally take it anymore and my body, mind, and soul just wants peace now.
      "Please reconsider it could save my life. I was supposed to end it today then I read your article.Thank you for your time and for reading and responding to my email."

     What to say to that? "Tortured into insanity." The presence of the child made ignoring it impossible, at least for me. When you deal with such people, it's best to get them to talk. I fired off questions designed to ascertain how she views her situation, and perhaps say something to plug life:

     "Let me ask you a few questions: 1) Who is torturing you? 2) How are they torturing you? 3) Why ... why you, and not somebody else? 4) Have you explored the possibility that this might be due to something else? 5) How old is your child?
     "We only know two things about this life for certain: 1) death is permanent. 2) However long we are alive, we are dead for far, far longer.

     That didn't work. She wrote:

     "Mr. Steinberg I’m not trying to get into a battle of wits with you. I’m not that smart.
      "Second, everyone always ask those exact same questions. My daughter is 33.
     'I’m not good with the back-and-forth thing I asked you and you said no I asked you to reconsider and we’re doing this back-and-forth thing and I’m not good at that.
     "I really think you should take a look at some of my videos. I really think you should reconsider and take a moment to actually meet with me face-to-face and sit down and talk to me. You won’t be disappointed and you won’t regret it.
     "I can’t answer your questions of who is doing it because I don’t know who. I can only tell you that I am zapped in places on my body day and night 24 hours a day seven days a week, 365 days out of the year and it’s painful....

      There's more, but you get the idea. I called her number and left a message saying, in essence, "I'm sorry, I don't have the skills to help you but I encourage you to find somebody who does." I expected it to end there. But I got a text:

     "Hi Neil, thank you for calling me. I didn't realize that you had called me. I'm hanging in there. I decided to fight last night. I started posting any video that I could find that showed what I was talking about to TikTok, Twitter, Facebook ... It's horrible to be kept awake for more than 24 hours for no apparent reason just because someone can. I've been up for four days. I'm still functioning, but I'm grateful because if you hadn't said no, and I hadn't gotten desperate enough to reach out and hear you say no I don't think I would've fought back ... Please with me the best. I wish you the best. Thank you, you're a kind soul."

      I asked her if she minded my posting our exchange. She didn't, adding, "I was afraid and now I'm a fighter."

     Which is about as good an outcome, for now, as I can imagine. 

Sun-Times takes a hit, but keep on ticking

     

                                                       Photo by Jessica Koscielniak

     As a rule, you're not supposed to draw attention to what isn't in the newspaper. The idea is, you've got everything right here, in your hands. All the news you need to know today, plus a horoscope, comics and tomorrow's weather. Anything that isn't here doesn't matter.
      But the key rule about newspapers is: There is no rule that can't be scrapped as circumstances dictate. Sometimes the stylebook gets set aside. Sometimes the loss is too big to ignore. When iconic movie reviewer Roger Ebert died in 2013, we didn't go back to running reviews that were bare synopses under jokey pseudonyms like Mae Tinee.
     We honored the man, recognized the loss, then moved forward, as best we could. The 35 staffers — including 23 in the Sun-Times newsroom — who took the Chicago Public Media buyout and are mostly leaving Friday are too important for the paper to cough into its fist and hope you don't notice. First, because they made a sacrifice, saving $4.2 million a year in costs to help the newspaper survive. That's news, and our job is to report the news. Second, you will notice. Their loss will be felt.
     I'm feeling it now. For me, it's personal, starting with John O'Neill, who has been the primary editor on this column. He's saved me from a thousand gaffes and probably a few career-ending misfires. He's my friend, as is his wife, Suzanne McBride, who often edits this on Sundays. I've been to their house, and they to mine. They were at my younger son's wedding, and I know their children, Jack and Grace.
     Richard Roeper is the biggest name to go. He is a star in his own right, holding his own with Ebert after he replaced Gene Siskel on his TV show in 2000. The author of seven books, Richard is a fearsome poker player and — what mattered to me most — a really good writer. We were good friends in our salad days — he was at my wedding — before I disappeared into marriage and parenthood, two snares that Richard neatly sidestepped.
     I will miss another friend in Rick Telander, who was the king at Sports Illustrated when the paper snagged him. He played football for Northwestern, and when he was drafted by Kansas City, Rick and a buddy drove straight north until they hit Lake Superior, where he bought 30 acres of land. Eight autumns have been highlighted with visits to his compound, to breathe the crisp air, smoke cigars, eat big steaks and plunge from the sauna into the gelid cold lake. He let me hang around even though I sometimes admit that I don't follow sports. While he played one-on-one with Michael Jordan, I once almost asked Jordan his name, because to me he was just another player in the Bulls locker room. Yet somehow Rick and I got along.
     Rick Morrissey is another vital sports columnist who is going, plus Bears beat writer Mark Potash and White Sox writer Daryl Van Schouwen. When I heard Annie Costabile is leaving too, I went looking for a text she sent me years ago. I had written something rounding up Chicago sports, and at the last minute cut out the Sky, for space — "how could I?" she demanded. She cared deeply about what she did — a defining characteristic of people who work at the Sun-Times, and was sincerely indignant, as befits someone who changed the way Chicagoans view the WNBA and women's sports.
     We lost most of our editorial board, and the future of editorials at the paper is uncertain. Lorraine Forte headed the board, running a staff not half as large as what was required to do the same job at the Tribune. Tom Frisbie left —soft-spoken, he edited my work when I joined the Sun-Times school guide as a freelancer in 1984, his quiet calm a counterpoint to my frantic, gerbil-on-a-wheel ambition. Back when we did endorsements, every trustee from every small town from Addison to Zion traipsed through the editorial board room, a process that was saved from devolving into pure confusion by the organizational skill and good cheer of Marlen Garcia.
     Our features department was mostly Miriam Di Nunzio and Darel Jevens, who edited Roeper and whose clever headlines for Dear Abby have been seen by millions of readers. With them leaving (although we are grateful Di Nunzio has agreed to stick around for a few months), I don't know who's going to try to step into their shoes, but I'm sure glad it won't be me. They did yeoman's work.
     Every election night about 5 p.m. the staff would gather in the newsroom to hammer out a game plan. We were looking at a long seven hours hours of pinballing around the city until drinks at the Billy Goat, and we all took our marching orders from Scott Fornek, decked out in the election night sweater vest he wore for luck. He had joined the Sun-Times when the Chicago Daily News folded in 1978, and carried that special cachet that Daily News alumni enjoyed, having worked at the same paper as Carl Sandburg and Ben Hecht.

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