Remembering John F. Kennedy Jr.

      Has it really been 15 years since John F. Kennedy Jr. died? I remember it well because July 17, 1999 was a Saturday, and the newspaper called me in to write his obituary even as the frantic search was still going on. Poring over the clips, I realized that he was born in the period between the time when his father was elected president, and when he was inaugurated—the only child ever born to an American president-elect. Every coo and gurgle was breathlessly reported. My opening sentence was, "He entered the world already famous." When I saw the other, purely laudatory obits, I was proud that mine passingly mentioned the struggles that even Kennedy had, the "Hunk flunks" headlines as he tried to pass his bar exams. I've always believed that obituaries should recount a person's life, not just blanket him in weepy praise. I'd reprint the obit, but our always-harried library staff doesn't seem to have transferred it to Nexis.
     I met the man, once, in August, 1996. He was throwing a huge party at the Art Institute for his new political magazine, George. Quite the glittering East Coast event for lumpy midwestern Chicago. Norman Mailer was there—that was a thrill, to meet him. Both Mikes were in attendance, Jordan and Royko. All sorts of stars—Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, Billy Baldwin. That's where I first met Esquire's Bill Zehme, who would become a good friend. 
     Kennedy was late in arriving, of course, and I remember the packed room surged in his direction. I instinctively fled the other way, to avoid the jam, but a young woman of my acquaintance hooked her arm in mine and spun me around, ordering me to introduce her to Kennedy.
     So I did.
     I walked up, introduced myself, we shook hands, and I asked him something banal about his impressions of Chicago. Somebody snapped a photo, which I can still see in my mind's eye. One the right, John F. Kennedy Jr. in profile, chiseled, handsome—handsomer than his father, even, by far. And me, also in profile well, let's say, less handsome, a profile like a potato with a nose. The contrast was jarring, at least to me.
    I gave the photograph to the young woman, who was also in the picture, and whose name I can't recall. 
     Anyway, if I can track down the obituary I'll post it here. Until then, here's a column I wrote about the search for his missing plane:

Treating our stars well makes us look good too

     Originally published in the Chicago Sun Times, July 25, 1999

     During the endless time-filling and tap-dancing performed by network news shows as the search for John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane dragged on, there was a moment that says something about who we are.

     I only caught it in passing, from one of the TVs bolted to the ceiling over the city desk. On the screen, a reporter was grilling a government official about the search. Would all this effort be expended, she wanted to know, for a non-celebrity? If Joe Average's small plane went down, would all these resources be mobilized?

     The dream reply would have been for the official to stare down the reporter and come back with: "Would you be here for a non-celebrity?" Sadly, the tedious, real-world answer was some evasive observation that any plane would be searched for.

     The question, of course, carried a submerged criticism that the official instantly recognized and dodged. As much as Americans roll like puppies at the feet of their celebrities, as much as we hang on their every action and vicariously relish the perks and luxuries of their lives, when it comes to government privilege, we yank the adoration away and start tallying the cost.

     Just let Hillary Rodham Clinton fly to New York for a little campaigning. Or let the wife of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush try to slip her undeclared Paris shopping purchases through customs. Or let a search armada be rolled out for JFK Jr.'s plane.

     Suddenly, practical questions emerge. Who's paying for all this? Nobody questioned the economy of sending a military transport on a mission of mercy to drop medicine to that doctor at the South Pole, even though the government was paying the tab. The name of the doctor wasn't known. Had it been Candice Bergen at the South Pole needing the medicine, the public would not have been so inclined to charity. It would have sniffed elite favoritism and not liked the smell.

     Perhaps it has something to do with the ingrained American suspicion of kings. The public wants to be the one dispensing favors, not the government. We don't want automatic privileges. If members of the Kennedy family were able to send mail for 32 cents instead of 33, people would howl. (Remember what brought down Dan Rostenkowski? Abusing postage). Even Michael Jordan getting his driver's license delivered to his home ended up in the paper, with an official explaining that it is done to keep the secretary of state's office from pandemonium.

     While this is a positive instinct, generally, the reporter's question was still naive. Celebrities get good treatment, not really because they demand it, but rather because doing so reflects well on us. Mick Jagger would be ushered through the mob at Gibsons, not because they're courting his business, but because it just would not do to let him camp out at the bar for an hour, crushed in a corner, morosely waving his empty glass at the distracted bartender.

     Similarly, I don't believe the effort to find Kennedy was due to his Uncle Ted getting on the red phone and threatening to pull back Pentagon funding. Remember that 200 neighbors will show up to comb the fields for a missing 5-year-old, not because his family is famous, but because they know him or his parents and know that it is terrible to have a loved one vanish. This weekend's tragedy, though overlit by celebrity, is similar.

A question answered before it's asked

     This is embarrassing.
     I have lived in Cook County continuously for the past 31 years.
     In various spots: Evanston, Barrington, Oak Park, Chicago and now Northbrook.
     And in all that time, I have investigated many stories.
     Delved into many questions.
     Looked up many facts. 
     Including, on Wednesday, the definition of the word "pozzolanic."
     Which has to do with volcanic ash related to the manufacture of cement.
     From the Italian town of Pozzuouli, where pumice was found by the Romans.
     But one mystery hung in front of my nose.
     Almost every day.
     For 31 years.
     And not only did I not know the answer.
     But I—curious guy, usually—did not even pose the question.
     Did not wonder.
     Not once.
     To my knowledge.
     Until last week.
     When I met my brother to go to lunch.
     At his place of business.
     In the Cook County Building.
     Usually he's there first.
     Waiting for me.
     Punctual guy.
     But this time I was early.
     A couple minutes.
     Just long enough.
     To notice this plaque which.
     In decades of walking through the building.
     I somehow had never seen before.
     Answering  a question.
     I had never thought to ask.
     Cook County,
     Okay.
     So who
     Was Cook?
     Who was the place named for?
     You'd think such a famous place.
     We'd all know.
     We all know "Chicago" means wild onions
     Or at least we're all told that.
     But Cook?
     Gets the short shrift, as always.
     One Daniel Pope Cook, apparently
     Lawyer, newspaper publisher, Illinois' first attorney general
     Friend of John Quincy Adams
     He died early, at 33.
     And four years later Cook County was named for him. 
     In 1831
     Six years before Chicago was voted a city.
  

Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his (wooden) shoes

    Most people are sheep; even those who try to be different tend to be different in exactly the same way. The rare times when a method of standing out -- tattoos for instance -- is actually sort of rare, so many flock to it that it becomes just another kind of conformity. And then there is Benjamin Pomerance, whose bright yellow wooden shoes were only the tip of the iceberg to his extraordinariness. 

    We live in cages of conformity, shuffling, shackled by habit and timidity. How we act, what we wear, even how we think, are limited to traveling along these set rails of behavior, and it can take an iconoclast for us to even realize it.

     Meet Benjamin Pomerance, 26.

     I spied Pomerance — to be honest, I spied not him but his shoes. His wooden shoes. His bright yellow wooden shoes — across the Impressionist room at the Art Institute.

    My first thought, naturally, was: “Now that’s strange.” Maybe it was some event related to Rembrandt. Dutch Week or something. But he wasn’t greeting people. The business suit didn’t go along with the shoes. “An odd duck,” I thought, dismissively, pointing him out to the family.

And that would have been it. But this was my chance. A moment later and he’d be swirled away in the crowd. I had to know.

     “The shoes?” he replied. “They’re from my grandfather in Holland.”

     Not his grandfather by birth, he explained; his parents were traveling in Europe when this older Dutch gentleman befriended them. When Benjamin turned 5, he received a present from his new grandfather: a pair of wooden shoes.

     “Every year since I was 5, we’d see a shoebox-sized package from the Netherlands and say, ‘What is this?’ ” he smiled.

     He wears wooden shoes almost every day.

     “They’re comfortable,” he said of the shoes, made of willow wood.

    A lawyer from upstate New York, he was in town to speak at John Marshall’s Elder law conference. Knowing the wrath of judges, I asked if he goes to court like that.

     “Not with these on,” he said. “But I have worn them to negotiating sessions.”

     “They create quite a fuss in the prisons,” added his mother, Doris (his parents were with him). “Airports go crazy,” his father said.

     Back at my office, I jumped online.
     Pomerance graduated last year from Albany Law School, where he received the New York State Bar Association's Pro Bono Service Award for, well, read the citation:
     "While maintaining a 3.93 grade point average, Benjamin Pomerance of Plattsburgh founded and leads the Albany Law School's Veterans Pro Bono Project. He organized a three-hour Continuing Legal Education training focusing on legal issues confronting homeless military veterans. He also recruited volunteers to assist at a monthly Wills for Heroes pro bono program at the Albany Housing Coalition's Veterans House. Most recently, he implemented free legal clinics to help 87 veterans from five different counties."
     More here, clearly, than splintery shoes.
     Pomerance got his undergraduate degree at the State University of New York-Plattsburgh campus, where no less a figure than school President John Ettling confirmed that wearing wooden shoes is indeed Pomerance's habit.
     "You can hear him coming before you see him," Ettling said at commencement in 2010, in a clip you can find on YouTube, introducing Pomerance, who gave a speech quoting Jackie Robinson as saying: "A life is not important, except for the impact it has on other lives."
     That's a radical thought, one you don't see in the media much, and I'd like to draw a connection between the sort of rare personal courage — for want of a better word — needed to go about in public wearing a fashion so out of the mainstream, and the extra drive needed to routinely set aside your private concerns to do significant work for others.
     The truth is, we could all do so much more — wear yellow wooden shoes, start a program addressing life's ills — than we end up doing. Most of us anyway.

Free stuff is better than advertising

Fresca

      Fresca is my favorite soda. I love Fresca, and drink a can every day, more or less. I never get tired of Fresca. When the supply gets low my wife stocks up on more Fresca, lining up 12-packs so I never run out. Fresca has no calories, yet tastes wonderful, grapefruity, yet something more complex ("Surprisingly complex," according to the tag line).
     Squint your eyes and it tastes like a gin and tonic, almost—its parent company, Coca Cola, doesn't push that aspect though. 
     I've been eagerly drinking Fresca for almost eight years, a date I know with precision because I can trace when I had my first sip of Fresca, at least the one that set off my current fling with the brand.

     It was 2006. The family was visiting Niagara Falls* when we came out of a gift shop and wandered over to a table set with cups of Fresca.
     I accepted a small plastic cup of the stuff.
     If I were telling my story in front of a Salvation Army band on a street corner, it would be how that one taste opened up the gates of hell, the downward slide into Fresca addiction, as my life collapsed into a Fresca-fueled disaster after another.
     But Fresca has no side effects, as far as I can tell. It doesn't have calories. It doesn't leave an aftertaste. It's just good and refreshing, and if all those artificial ingredients cause something bad, well, given how much of it I drink, it would have happened already. My jaw hasn't fallen off yet.
      I say this to give some long overdue credit to a generally ignored area of marketing: the free sample. While the Mad Men advertising creative types get all the credit for their stupid cartoon characters and annoying jingles, which are celebrated forever as cultural touchstones, often there is no better way to get the message about a product across to consumers than by pressing that product into the hands of the would-be customer. Fresca was introduced in 1966, and I don't know how many Fresca ads and Fresca commercials I shrugged off and ignored before that fateful day in Canada. You can turn the page in a magazine, look away from a screen. Harder when somebody hands you something. Drinking the stuff worked.
     Some companies have samples built into their business plan. Costco has an army of employees ladling out the samples on weekends. And as much as the boys used to clamor to go, the experience was only in the freebie gobbling. I'm sure the theory was to draw customers to the products, but for us, it merely drew us to the store. Nobody ever wanted to buy packages of coconut shrimp. Just the idea was sort of nauseating. One was plenty. 

A Larabar

     So giving away samples is a trust drop into the arms of your product, a statement of faith that, having tasted it, people will pay for more. The key is to give away stuff that people will still want, even when it's no longer free. A few weeks back, my older son Ross and I were handed miniature Larabars as we headed out of Union Station and into work. A soft mash of unprocessed dates and fruit. I thought the Larabar was okay. But Ross just loved it. Suddenly, cases of Larabars were showing up in the pantry at home. It's like a candy bar whose parents were Whole Foods and Gerber, with the calories of a Snickers but pretensions toward healthfulness. A Milky Way for Millennials.
     On Monday, the Larabar teams were back. On the North side of Madison, a bald young man pressed three into my hand. "Thanks!" I said brightly. "My son loves this stuff." Then across the street there was a lone woman, also handing them out. I tucked the trio into my briefcase and vectored over for more. "Thanks," I said, again. "My son loves this stuff." That must have touched a maternal nerve. "Here," she said, pushing another handful at me. "Take more."
      Down into Union Station, I rendezvoused with my boy—well, went over to where I saw he was sitting. "Rendezvous" implies he gave a damn whether I showed up or not.  He was reading The Economist. I sat silently down beside him. 
     "Did you get any Larabars?" he asked, his way of hello.
     "A fistful," I said. "About 20."
     Actually, it was 10. 
     "Why so many?" he asked.
     "I told them you liked them," I said. "Would you like one?"
     "I already ate three," he replied "This is a particularly good one."
    "Cashew cookie," I said, reading the label. One hundred calories for the little sample, God knows what the full bar would be.  I shrugged and ate it. Of course, you can't expect something called "Cashew Cookie" to be exactly dietetic, can you?
     Ross is 18. He might be eating Larabars for the next fifty years, assuming they still make them—General Mills owns the brand, started a decade ago in Colorado, surprise, surprise, by a woman named Lara, Lara Merrikan (I hope to God, if she has a daughter, she names her "Anna). To whoever is handling the marketing budget for the Chicago area: that sampling budget is money well spent, at least from our perspective. I certainly like them free. Whether I'll learn to like them bought and paid for, well, we'll see.

* In the post, originally, it was at the base of CN Tower in Toronto; but my wife assures me this memory is mistaken and it was Niagara Falls. Given that she right about most everything, she no doubt is right about this, too. 

How do we lure tourists to the Riverwalk? Beer.

 

     Walking along Wacker Drive, I of course noticed the Riverwalk construction, and thought it might be fun to write a column telling people about what was going on, perhaps skimming the most interesting technical aspects. But prying those details out of the city proved difficult; rather than guide me through the project, they were satisfied with the chief engineer briefly describing it to me. Luckily, he mentioned the need for Congressional approval to narrow the river, and that seemed a strong enough hook to hang the thing from.     

     Getting the work permits, as every homeowner knows, is the tough part for any renovation project.  Pouring a new concrete patio is child’s play compared to arranging the city paperwork to do it.
     So a tip of the hat to the Riverwalk construction folks, who are proceeding furiously on the south bank of the Chicago River along Wacker Drive, a project that needed not one, but two official acts of the U.S. Congress in order to happen. Given that Congress on most days seems as if it couldn’t pass a law to declaring the American flag pretty, that’s saying something.
     The first was required by 33 U.S. Code Chapter 9, PROTECTION OF NAVIGABLE WATERS AND OF HARBOR AND RIVER IMPROVEMENTS GENERALLY SubChapter I, Section 403: “The creation of any obstruction not affirmatively authorized by Congress, to the navigable capacity of any of the waters of the United States is prohibited; and it shall not be lawful to build or commence the building of any wharf, pier, dolphin, boom, weir, breakwater, bulkhead, jetty, or other structures in any port, roadstead, haven, harbor, canal,  navigable river...”
     A “dolphin” a pier not attached to shore.
     Doesn’t mention “riverwalk,” but the city can’t go sticking promenades out into the river without federal approval which—miribile dictu—was granted: permission to move the south bank 20 feet to the north, under the bridges, and 25 feet between them.
     And the second Congressional okay was the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, which provided the $98 million needed to pay for it all.
     A loan, alas, to be repaid over 35 years, through dockage and usage fees, according to the city (hmmm, that’s ... about $3 million a year, or about $10,000 a day, 365 days a year for 35 years. Quite a lot really).
     I visited the site Wednesday with Daniel Burke, chief engineer at the Department of

Daniel Burke

Transporation; we looked out at a clutter of cranes, gravel and corrugated steel barriers.
Won’t narrowing the river affect navigation, as various Wendellas, barges and schools of kayakers jockey for position?
     “We worked very closely through the whole process with the United States Coast Guard and a number of river user  stakeholder groups,” Burke said. “There was a comprehensive study done of  traffic on the Chicago River. While we’re proud there’s quite a bit of traffic and usage, we feel there’s plenty of capacity and clearance.”
     That seems true; even with the construction barges,  various derricks and supplies, blocking nearly half of the river, a steady stream of boats had no trouble slipping by.
Work began in December, 2013, and three blocks of the Riverwalk are under construction now, from State to LaSalle—the State Street bridge will be closed to traffic all week, beginning Monday. This phase should be done by Christmas. The next stage will push the Riverwalk west then turn south, the three blocks from LaSalle to Lake, making a promenade of about a mile and a half.
     Now that I think of it, perhaps the Congressional passage should be expected. This has been a priority for Rahm Emanuel. The first time I spoke to Rahm after he was elected three years ago, I asked what he wanted to do most as mayor, what his legacy should be. He surprised me by saying he wanted to complete the Riverwalk. At the time, it seemed to be setting his sights low, and more recently he denied saying it (though he did) and picked grander goals.
     Will it become the tourist destination he envisions? My impression, the rare times I’ve wandered down to the finished portion by the Vietnam Memorial at Wabash, is the area is sort of forlorn. The new configuration won’t allow bicycles. How to lure folks there? I would suggest food; rather than stick the kind of generic churro and candied nuts carts found at Navy Pier (or, in case it has to be said, eyeing the Park Grill fiasco, instead of tapping some connected mayoral foodie pal) they need to enlist purveyors of  distinctive, hard-to-find Chicago cuisine: Rainbow Cones , Skrine Chops, The Doughnut Vault and such treats that would send people scrambling along the river.
     Three Floyds Beer. Now there’s a thought. Suspend the open container law, like at Taste. Let people buy craft brews and stroll along the river. That’ll get them packing bags in Des Moines and Hammond. If Congress can pass a few laws, I’m sure our City Council is up to it, with a kick-in-the pants from the mayor. Ten grand a day in fees is a big nut to crack. It would be a shame to go through all the paperwork and trouble to build a sidewalk jutting into the Chicago River then not have anyone show up. 

Call the cops.

     Registering an opinion on the topic of rape seems to be an invitation for a guy to get himself fired.
     However. This is my personal blog, so the odds of me firing myself are slim.
     That said, the New York Times ran a long, front page piece Sunday about an 18-year-old freshman who was raped at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The article is on how the college, a school I had never heard of before, located west of Syracuse in New York's Finger Lakes region, had mishandled its inquiry into the case, which involved football players, allegedly.
      Now I am not an expert in these matters, and I am a man. However: rape is a serious crime and serious crime should be reported to the police. Is that not so? The story never addresses why she didn't. Now I'm not saying there aren't reasons people don't report rapes to the police, embarrassment, lack of trust, and such. The notion might be that a college investigation would be less traumatic, for the victim, than a police investigation, but that doesn't seem borne out in reality. And I am not saying that, if you don't report a rape to the police, you should take what you get. But colleges have a hard enough time fielding competent professors. They are not in the crime-detection business, and while their bobbling such an investigation is not acceptable, it's not surprising either. A recent study showed that 40 percent of colleges haven't investigated any rapes over the past five years. The message from this story, a message that I believe is not driven home enough, and should be, is that if someone rapes you— a football player, a priest, a friend, anybody — you should always call the cops. Immediately. The cops might mishandle it, God knows they do that. But they're the ones with experience in investigating crime, the ones in the best position to have a chance to get it right. Calling the police, I believe, is an important step in a crime being taken seriously. If a crime is committed against you, and you don't call the police, the obvious question is "why?" and there is an implication that you yourself have your doubts as to whether you are actually a victim or not, since these situations can be murky.
     Or am I reading this wrong? I'm not the Jedi Council. But having read the New York Times piece, that's my feeling. If you're raped, call the cops.

Shutting up is an art form

     I like to give directions to strangers, because there's pleasure in helping somebody. 
     You see a couple standing on the street, puzzling over a map or an iPhone, and you ask where they're going, and they tell you, and you point it out, and the puzzled persons stride gratefully toward their goal. It's so simple, and pure.
     With parents, it's the same. You know the way, you want to give a little hint, some direction, because you've so been there, and you so understand what they're going through, and what's going to happen. 
     Though it doesn't quite work as simply as with directions to the Willis Tower. Because parenthood is complicated.
     When our boys were small, a million years ago, an older person would notice them, in all their porcelain cuteness, playing in the park or whatever, and pause, smiling wistfully. You could just tell the older person was bursting to say something, wanted to pass something along, and eventually they'd make eye contact, and sigh, and utter a remark along the lines of, "Enjoy them while you can," or at least that's what I heard. They might have said something closer to "Enjoy them while they're young" or "What a great age!"
      Which puzzled and, honestly, slightly offended me, this grizzled stranger, this buttinski, offering this crazy comment, suggesting stuff that was never going to happen, not to me. "While they're young?" What do you mean? These boys are 4 and 5, have been for an eternity, and would be 4 and 5 forever. It sure felt that way at the time. Other parents felt their children's live speed past, perhaps, because they weren't paying attention. Not a problem here.
     Boom.
     Now that the boys are 17 and 18, at the moment, and it seemed like yesterday they were 15 and 16 and tomorrow they'll be 22 and 23. I find myself smiling, oddly, at parents with young children, and starting to say, "A great age. Enjoy them while they're..." and the words strangle in my throat, and I fall silent. Shutting up is an under-appreciated art form. 
     I find saying nothing is something I've been doing more and more lately. Even though I ride the train downtown with the older boy in the morning, the trip passes in total silence. That is what he wants. I know because I asked him about it once. "The train is for reading," he said, with asperity.  O...K...
      If the first shock of parenthood is when they show up, the second is when they grow up and leave or, in my case, are about to leave, or have already left in mind if not in body, the older one anyway, and you suddenly face the grim realization that what you thought was forever was really just a phase, a period, a span, an era. Eighteen years, from "had a baby" to "off to college." 
     And then what?
     Oh sure, you always remain the parent. That's what they say. Cold comfort. Like "we'll always be friends." Since the meaning changes. You're still a parent the way you were once a Cub Scout—it's a cluster of memories without a lot of day-to-day practical significance. He's never going to call;* if he won't look up and say something on the train, he's never going to call. I am certain of that. Not once. Maybe on my death bed. "Hey dad, hear you're dying; sorry I haven't called for the past ... 27 years. Been busy. Umm, how are things? Besides dying that is."
     Life is generally a letting go anyway, but with kids you see it so clearly. I've been lucky, in that I've had practice. When he had his bar mitzvah, I realized, somehow, that this wasn't a moment for me to hold some kind of potlach to myself. It wasn't my bar mitzvah, it was his. So I didn't pick the restaurant, didn't invite pals from work, didn't write his speech—heck, I didn't even read it. It wasn't about me.  Parents try to micro-manage because they want to impress people, want it to go perfectly. I figured, if he screws it up, then that's what'll happen and he'll learn from it. I stepped back in the shadows, where I belonged.
    He nailed the whole thing, by the way, beginning to end, including playing "Hatikvah" on the viola.
    I've used that logic a lot during the college process. It's not my life, it's his. That horrified some of my older friends. If I wanted him to go to a certain school, they urged me, I should just tell him. Order him. I'm the father. I have the authority. That wasn't my approach. He has to make these decisions, and if he makes mistakes, then they''ll be his mistakes. Better to let him make his mistakes than to force him to make mine.
    You'd think this broadminded approach would score me points, but it hasn't. My wife explained why.
     "You know," she once said, the best parenting advice I've ever heard, "they're going to have to push away against us, no matter how good parents we've been."
     So I accept the silences, let some harsh things he says fly by, when I can. Stuff I might argue about I let go. "This is not the hill to die on," his elementary school principal would say. Also good advice. The world will bring him down a notch or two, it always does.. I don't have to do it.
     I think, because of that idea, I've been able to avoid the fractious arguments that sons often go through with dads. I know I did. But this isn't about me. My work is done. Take a bow, and edge off stage, at least for the moment. That's what I tell myself: you can make a little speech after he gets married, at the reception, if you like. If there is one.  
     Maybe he has a point. If he wants silence, try silence. I can do silence. I don't have to talk all the time. Shutting up, as I said, twice now, is an under-appreciated art form. I've been tempted to ask him, if he feels the same way, but I'm worried he'd say, "Why don't you try it and we'll find out?" I'd smile tightly, biting back a retort, and think: good line. I like to read on the train too, so we know where he gets that from. 

* Editor's note: In his first three years of college, he phoned every Saturday morning, like clockwork, without fail, including his semester in Paris. Last Saturday we spoke for over an hour. EGD doesn't like to make errors, but it in no way regrets this one.