Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     I'm not sure what drew me to this chief.
     The fine detailing on the feathers of his war bonnet, surely.
     Maybe the almost-semitic arch to his nose.
     Something of a sneer, facing into the cutting Chicago wind.
     Or maybe I just thought, "This'll stump 'em."
     Which of course it won't.
     But a guy can try.
     So puzzle over this one. 
     I'm in California, bopping around the Parents Weekend events at Pomona College.
     So I won't be able to render the verdict until late in the day.
     Unless you get this very quickly.
     As you tend to do.
     The winner receives a bag of fine Bridgeport coffee. 
     Which I never get tired of drinking.
     So place your guesses below, and good luck. 

Winter is fall season

     Blame the dog.
     On our walks, I prefer she go right. Habit. Better scenery.

     But last Sunday morning she turns left. I think, "Okay, follow the dog."
     I pause in a driveway across the street, looking back at our yard, wondering whether rabbits can take down a 3-foot-tall pine sapling that has gone missing. Then it happens.
     What happens I can't tell you, exactly, other than I fell, apparently.
     Wham.
     But honestly, I didn't even feel "wham."
     One moment I'm standing, feet planted, wearing my heretofore trustworthy Keen hiking boots, looking at the spot where that tree the rabbits perhaps ate should be. Then staring at the sky, my hands curled above, the dog licking my face after, I assume, both feet shot out, there was a Wile E. Coyote moment of suspension, then gravity did its thing, with the requisite halo of stars and tweeting sparrows.
     I couldn't move. Not as worrisome as it sounds. A calm, almost a curiosity. This is a development. Using my shoulder, I angle my right hand toward my face and give my thumb a tentative nibble. Completely numb, as if asleep.
     At least I'm not dead. Falls killed about 30,000 Americans in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control, making it almost as common a cause of death as car accidents. Winter, ironically, is peak fall season.
     "Falls are more common in the wintertime," said Dr. Rahul Khare, an emergency room physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. He estimated NU's ER might get 10 cases in a morning on icy days, as opposed to one or two when it's dry. Falls cause a variety of injuries. "One of the biggest is what we call "FOOSH" injuries—Falls On an Out-Streched Hand," he said. "We see fractures in the bones in the hand as well as bones in the arm as well as elbow injuries, shoulder injuries."
     "With younger folk, ankles and wrists, older individuals you'll see ankles, fractures in spine, hips," said Dr. Mark Cichon, chair of emergency medicine at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood. He said the costs of such falls will increase tremendously as what he calls the "grey tsunami" of an aging population rolls on. According to the CDC, the 2.4 million people whose falls required visits to the hospital in 2012 resulted in a staggering $30 billion in medical costs.
     "You go down very quickly," said Khare. "You don't even remember. It only takes half a second from standing to hitting your head on the ground."
      I can vouch for that.
     Eventually my neighbor rushes out and helps me to my feet. My head doesn't hurt, but my arms burn—electric shocks up and down. I hurry inside and climb directly into bed, consider ignoring the incident, embarrassed at the shame of falling. That horrible cheezy TV commercial. "I've fallen," the old woman whines, "and I can't get up!" But the burning worries me. That isn't good. I tell my wife, who leaps out of bed and hustles me the hospital, while I fret about adding another straw to the groaning medical system.
      At Glenbrook Hospital, the ER doctor suggests not one CT scan, but two—one head, one neck. I balk. Is this really necessary? I mention having just read "Medical Tests You Can Safely Skip" in the March Consumer Reports ("CT emits a powerful dose of radiation, in some cases equivalent to about 200 chest Xrays...That does can alter the makeup of human tissues and ... the damage can lead to cancer.") I've know people who've had facial cancer—not a condition you want to court.
      But my arms are still burning, and balancing the theoretical risk of something going wrong down the pike against the need to learn what is causing this now, I accept the risk of about $2000 worth of look-see.
     "I have this conversation at least once a shift, if not more" said Khare. "It is really important to ask your physician about the necessity of the CT scan....in your case, burning hands ... I'd be more inclined to get the CT scan on that because of that neurological finding. The important thing is to be honest with doctor to say 'Hey, could we have a discussion?'"
     And the doctors don't hate you after that? I asked.
     "No, I don't think physicians are doing that as much as they used to," Khare said. "Shared decision-making is very powerful. Nothing is black or white in medicine ."
     I leave Glenbrook with a pack of steroids and a diagnosis of "cervical strain." As far as what people should do to avoid falls...

Heroic dog

     

     "If you're going out, what are the shoes you're wearing?" asked Cichon. "If you're elderly, think about a cane, a walking stick. Not to say you're old and need a cane. Just to help steady your balance. Take small steps."
     Still, no matter what precautions you take, falls can be unavoidable.
     "The truth is, you still have to take out your garbage," said Khare. "You still have to walk your dog."
     Speaking of which, we don't really blame the dog; in fact, she is a hero. She could have left me and chased a squirrel. But she stayed with her downed man, and licked him back to consciousness. 
     "She's Lassie!" my wife exuded, when the crisis had passed.

Still in the dark on Valentine's Day

I'm heading to Los Angeles today, and as much as I wanted to hang out the "Gone Fishing" sign, I hate the thought of leaving you staring hungrily at your screen. Valentine's Day is Saturday—not Friday, as this 1997 column claims. But otherwise it holds true. 

     This Friday is Valentine's Day. In preparation for tiptoeing into the minefield, I dug into Valentine's Day lore, trying to find a clue as to why it is always such an ordeal.
     Most of the stuff was pretty tedious, the various Saints Valentine who may or may not have existed, and the colorful ways they may or may not have been slaughtered.
     There was an interesting line from Chaucer, who comments how chickens chose their mates on Valentine's Day. The word he uses for chickens is "foul," and only then did I realize that "fowl" and "foul" have the same origin, something that should be obvious to anyone who has been to a poultry factory.
     Interesting, but not helpful.
     Then I ran across a theory offered by Jack Santino, a professor at Bowling Green University, that Valentine's Day is the opposite of Halloween. "Halloween is approximately seven weeks before the winter solstice and marks the progression into the darkest period of the year," he writes. "Valentine's Day is about seven weeks after it and marks the progression out of winter and into spring." Santino points out that Halloween imagery is all about harvested crops and death, while Valentine's Day is flowers and romance and life.
     And—this struck me as most important—Halloween is outdoors and male, given to pranks and disguise, and Valentine's Day is indoors and female, given to revealing new affections and reinforcing old ones.
     Bingo. No wonder I make such a hash of it—as I suspect many men do—year in and year out. Valentine's Day is a female thing.
     Some of my worst dating nightmares have taken place on Valentine's Day. One year, I waited until the last minute to make a restaurant reservation, not realizing that Valentine's Day is Amateur Night Out, second only to New Year's. Every place was booked, and we stopped at six restaurants before we found one that had only a half-hour wait. It turned into a 2 1/2-hour wait, and we finally ate just before midnight. It's amazing she still married me. That's love.
     And love must receive its due. But what? Too small of a token — say, just a card and a single, elegant rose — would look cheap and receive scorn.
      But too much is just as bad. If I gave my wife the traditional dozen red roses — which cost about $200 this time of year — she would take one look at the flowers, then murder me and bury the body where it would never be found.
      She's frugal. Maybe your significant other has a different characteristic. Extravagant. Or traditional. Or quirky. Whatever it is, you, as the guy, are expected to have measured your lovemate's individual soul and arranged just the proper gift to resonate with that soul perfectly.
     Woe to we who misjudge. Last year was a disaster. My wife had been sick for a week. I was running the house, cleaning, caring for the baby, trying to work. This didn't seem like the time for grand romantic gestures.
     Then, about 6 p.m., she came downstairs, pale, wraithlike, sick, blinking into the light. Where, she wondered, were the Valentine's fripperies? The surprises? The chocolate delicacies? I stared at her, agog, as if I were in a foxhole in war and a corpsman belly-crawled over and shouted, above the shrieking shells, that they needed men immediately over at the firebase to dance around the maypole.
    That brings up the element of surprise. Even the perfect gift turns a little sour if you tip your hand ahead of time. If you mention to your wife today, "I thought I'd buy you some nice lingerie for Valentine's Day," she'll react as if you said you want a divorce. The perfect thing must be revealed at the perfect moment, perfectly. 
     Women.
     I almost had it once, almost 10 years ago. My girlfriend wanted to see "Cats." It was a hot ticket, playing at the Shubert Theatre. Now, I would just as soon be tied in a sack with cats as go see the musical, but, well, you know, amantes sunt amentes* and all that. So I bought the tickets. I arranged for an early dinner, close to the Shubert: the Berghoff,** a get-you-in, get-you-out type of place if ever there were. There was a long line—Valentine's Day, remember—and I almost tipped her off by absentmindedly crushing my fedora into a ball while we waited.
     But we got in, had a pleasant dinner, and were just at the cusp of leaving, about 20 minutes before curtain time. The waiter was pushing dessert. No thanks, I said, just the check.
     There must have been some revealing tone in my voice—waiters can smell fear, like dogs. This one smiled and said: "Going to see a show, eh?" I issued an immediate denial: oh no, not a show, not us, nope. Too late. My girlfriend broke into a wide grin and exulted: "Cats!"
     It's amazing that she still married me.
     This year, I have a gift for her—she knows what it is, and I know she knows, though we've never discussed it. That's love.

                 —Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 9, 1997

*  "lovers are lunatics"
** Closed in 2006; later re-opened, but only patronized by tourists and the spiritually dead.

You are not going to win the lottery

     So much of what's left of media criticism consists of slagging various competitors when they make a perceived misstep, I thought I'd pause for a moment to praise a colleague who did something today we see too little of, and is appreciated, at least by me.

WBBM reporter Bernie Tafoya

     Coverage of the Powerball Lottery is generally a relentless ballyhoo,  where the media, for some unfathomable reason—tradition, I suppose—falls over itself to promote this tax on desperation, focusing on the jackpot and the long lines, interviewing people about how they'll spend the millions they're not going to get.
    Rarely does anyone mention the infinitesimal odds. Rarely are the majority of people, who shun the lottery, given their due. We're all gripped in a fever! Every. Single. Time.
    Thus I was impressed to hear two reports on WBBM 780 AM Wednesday by veteran newsman Bernie Tafoya, that offered perspective, talking of people who weren't playing Powerball, either because they didn't gamble or they knew they wouldn't win, and highlighting the just about impossible odds.
        That's refreshing. The truth is, the majority of people never play the lottery, and of those who do, almost all never win anything of significance. It's a sucker's game, and the media does its audience no favors by downplaying that. The odds of winning Powerball are minuscule: worse than the odds of picking one person randomly from among the 315 million living in the United States and having that person turn out to be Barack Obama or his wife Michelle. When the lottery rolls over, the media emphasizes that the jackpot has grown even larger. The excitement builds! It never points out that the rollover means you could have purchased every single ticket sold and you'd still lose. I once figured out that the odds of winning the Powerball lottery is the same as hovering in space above the continental United States, flipping a quarter toward the entire country, where odds were even it could land anywhere on the US landmass, and having the quarter come down inside Wrigley Field.
    If the lottery is news—and I can see the argument—then it is bad news, or at least depressing news: people spending being charged to dream when dreaming of course is actually free, plus government becoming addicted to vice taxes to prop up what's left of its operation. Good for Bernie for telling it like it is. 

A visit from Sheriff Steinberg

     My apologies in advance for this, perhaps best read aloud, or not read at all, particularly if you are in the habit of writing outraged emails to newspapers, bitterly complaining that your sensibilities have been offended. As the following tries to illustrate, it’s a big world, with many people other than yourself in it, alas, and sometimes the world makes accommodations for them. This is one of those times:

     Welllll friend, I’d say what we have here is a situation.
     Alabama, a state we all thought was a member o’ the You-nited States ah ' merica, has succeeded once again, with the venerable chief Judge Roy S. Moore — he of Ten Commandments in the courtroom fame — announcin’ that fed’rall court rulings are more gentle suggestions, more like helpful hints, as opposed to binding orders, at least when it comes to the subject of quote–unquote gay marriage.
     And if Alabama probate judges, drawing ‘pon the guidance of their own hearts, and the fine Suth’n tradition of oppressin’ folks who have always been oppressed down theh, well, if those judges prefer to ignore those federal rulin’s, say, and not ish-eh marriage licenses to ho-mo-sekshul Alabamans, whale, that’s just fahhhhhhn.
     And Mundeh, when it were to have been legal, had the United States of America authority actually extended down that fah, 52 of the 67 Alabama judges decided that Judge Roy S. Moore was rahhhhht.
     So in honah that, in honah Judge Roy S. Moore — don’t ya justlove that name? — I’m dippin’ two fingers in a pouch o’ Red Man, drawin’ out a generous chaw o’ tobaccah, insertin’ it with practic’d skill, settin’ back in mah chair, and revivin’ a heretofore vanished American stereotype: the grinnin’ Suth’n sheriff.
     O-fensive? Why sure it’s o-ffensive. That’t the point, frind. What you have to ask yerself is, “Am I o-ffended ’cause I’m ‘gainst classifyin’ groups ah people, all groups of people, in an unfair and derogatory fashion? Or am I o-ffended’ cause I just don’t liiiike it when it happ’ns t' me?”

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Why bother with Wagner?

 

Anthony Freud, second from left

     The Lyric Opera announced its 2015/2016 season on Monday. I thought I'd stop by the press conference, though I regretted that decision as I walked to the Civic Opera House, feeling first the customary anticipation of  running into my colleague Andrew Patner, as always, followed immediately by the realization that no, he of course wouldn't be there. Then a few seconds went by, and I'd go through the whole cycle again. It felt lousy.
     For some silly reason I thought this was my own private sadness, and so was surprised, and gratified, when  the Lyric's executive director, Anthony Freud, began his remarks this way:
     "Thank you all for coming. Great to see so many of you here. I just want to start this morning by saying of course there is one person who's not here—Andrew— I have to admit I'm still reeling from the shock of his death, I really can't quite believe it's happened. He was such a great, wise man with a deep passion for culture, and a passion for Lyric. All I can say is that we already miss him terribly and there's nothing like an occasion like this just to emphasize the fact he's no longer with us."
    At which point the great critic Wynne Delacoma broke up the room by adding, "Of course, he might not be here at this point" alluding to Andrew's tendency to come bustling in at the last second.
     I don't want to pick apart next year's schedule. They're doing "Merry Widow" again, only six years after last time because—not that anyone said this but, reading between the lines—Renee Fleming is singing it at the Met and wants to sing it here too.      
      We can parse the whole schedule another time, or not. What I want to discuss is the composer currently being sung across the footlights—Richard Wagner, whose "Tannhauser" opened Monday night. 
     I love Wagner. Not the man, the music. That opinion needs explaining. A lot of people despise Wagner on principle, associating him only with Nazism and enormously long works, and that's a great injustice. Well, not the second part. This article was designed to remedy Wagner-aversion, or at least explain why I don't suffer from the common malady. It was written referring to his lighthearted "Meistersinger" and ran only two years ago, but merits revisiting, particularly since a good number of you no doubt missed it to the first time around, having arrived in the past year as the blog's readership has soared. 

     So why bother with Wagner?

     Not the Lyric Opera of Chicago—it has to bother. To its credit, despite the occasional frustration of loyal subscribers, the Lyric views its duty as an artistic organization to not just endlessly reprise two dozen favorite “barn burners,” as Sir Andrew Davis, principal conductor at the Lyric, calls the most popular operas -- an endless rhondo from "Carmen" to "Madama Butterfly" to "La Traviata" and back -- but to explore the entire range of the musical form, which sometimes means poking into the difficult, atonal, obscure, even despised modern works, or the feverish subchambers of Richard Wagner.

     That’s why Lyric puts them on. But why would anyone go? The works of Wagner are long -- in fact, “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg’’ which opens Friday, is his longest. Five and a half hours with intermissions. 

     Then there is Wagner himself, German nationalist, fierce anti-Semite, who referred to “the Jewish race, the born enemy of humanity” as vermin who must be destroyed, which they nearly were by his biggest fan, Hitler. Isn’t enjoying his work today, with its heroic mythologizing of German culture, a kind of tribute? An endorsement, really, of a guy who helped nudge Europe toward ruin?

     “That is in the back of your mind as you’re listening,” said Lyric dramaturg Roger Pines, an expert on Wagner. “It depends on how much you decide you want to know about him. His life is an awful lot more complicated and awful lot more interesting than any other composer you can find.”

     Some people willfully ignore Wagner, the man, and just listen.  “Of course, you can sit there and let the music wash over you,” said Pines. But that is not the path of the hero.

      “I had never really heard anyone be as direct and eloquent until I talked to our director, David McVicar,” said Pines. “He was the orignal director [of this production] He thinks the only responsible way to love Wagner’s art is to be fully aware of the dark side of him. It’s the only way to appreciate how wonderful the operas are.”

    Wagner, who died in 1883, is usually put in the context of how he was later embraced by the National Socialists, who used his triumphant orchestrations as the soundtrack for their Reich. But to understand where Wagner was coming from, as he worked, you have to realize he was in the middle of the revolutionary swirl of 1848 that began to form modern Germany and forced him to flee to Zurich. (As opposed to when fled to London to escape debt. Wagner had a tumultuous personal life and I admired this sentence in one bio: “It is not possible to summarize his many marital and financial difficulties.”) 

     The glib line I use to rationalize appreciating the work of those who turn out to be anti-Semites is that if a person limited his enjoyment to artists who weren’t anti-Semites, it would be pretty slim pickings—reading Isaac Bashevis Singer, looking at Marc Chagall and listening to klezmer music.  Grim.

     The facts about Wagner, true, strain this facile approach, but that leads to a realization even more satisfying. The Nazis insisted on binding art to the artists who create it. Their “Degenerate Art” exhibits were meant to ridicule art done by Jews and others they considered sub-human. To separate our ability to enjoy art from the  flaws, whether perceived or real, of whoever created it strikes me as a refutation of the  screwy Nazi worldview of purity and contamination. I  can think of no greater revenge upon the poisonous failed philosophy of Wagner, Hitler, et al than for a Jew in 2013 to park his latke-larded butt into a seat in the Civic Opera House and savor beautiful music, despite the ugly aspects of the guy who wrote it.

    To be honest, I was inclined against “Meistersinger” not because it is Wagner, but because it is a comedy, his only one. Just as, if I see Eugene O’Neill, I don’t want to see a watery “Ah, Wilderness,” his lone comedy, but his 100 proof “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” so if I’m going to see Wagner, I want horned helmets and Valkyries and those low rumbling notes that sound like the 20th century yawning and waking up.

     As for the length.
     “You can’t deny the fact it is as long as it is,” said Pines. “But in a good "Meistersinger"—and this is going to be a great "Meistersinger"— slides by. The music is glorious. You’re not conscious of the length. You’re taking in all the stimuli, the beauty of what you’re looking at and what you’re listening to. The beauty is all-consuming and the lengthy becomes  irrelevant. It’s a total immersion experience.”

     It is.  Surrender to this world where cobblers are wise and work in libraries and maidens give their hand to the winners of song contests takes an act of will, but the rewards are there, in both pleasure and understanding. “Meistersinger” helps you grasp Wagner, and Wagner  is a key to comprehending the madness that gripped the Germans, because he reveals what was going on in their backs of their minds all the while. 
                                 --Originally published February 8, 2013

Twitter vows to be less vile

     The other day I almost downloaded the Uber app so I could try the controversial ride service.
     That’s a lie.
     I thought about downloading Uber. Not that I need it. I Divvy most places, even in winter. But I could use Uber a few times, then write something. Though the issue seems pretty clear already: Either cabbies need the expensive licensing and training required of taxi services or they don’t.
     So the thought passed.
     I am not what is called an “early adopter.” By the time I try something, it’s passe. Although I did join Twitter early enough — nearly four years ago — to snag the @neilsteinberg tag, which means the other Neil Steinbergs, like the movie producer in Los Angeles and the business leader in Rhode Island, have to make do with other names.
     Because of this, occasionally someone thinks I’m a different Neil Steinberg, particularly the businessman, and sends something like this actual tweet: “Whom would you suggest I discuss funding for the programs at We Share Hope?”
     I paused over that, licking my chops, itching, just itching, to tweet back: “What the fuck do I care? I live for cold brew and bodacious babes!”

     Or some such thing.
     Because it would be funny, or my idea of funny at the moment, tossing that back at the serious, Let's-Build-a-Better-Rhode Island-type trying to tap this other Neil Steinberg's Babbity brain, getting the wesenheimer instead. Quite an awkward encounter at the Rhode Island Rotary after that.
     But I didn't. Because I can do that Think-About-What-Happens-Next trick learned slowly, after a sufficient number of years kneeling on a rail in an editor's office. I wrote back coolly: "Try the Neil Steinberg who is some kind of businessman in Rhode Island, and not me."
     A lot of people don't take that step. They just blurt out what they think is funny or mean, or both. They think cruelty is funny - they'll mock a 5-year-old who dies of cancer. That's why there's no comments section in newspapers anymore, because it's a full-time job - several full-time jobs - plucking out the nasty remarks, the racist jeremiads, the insane blather.
      Twitter has become a free-fire zone, with threats and condemnations pinging endlessly about. That isn't news. What surprised me is that their boss admits it.
     "We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years," Twitter CEO Dick Costolo wrote in a memo to his company posted by The Verge website. "It's no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day."
     Robin Williams' daughter renounced Twitter after being mocked in the wake of her father's suicide. Feminist comic writer Lindy West recently did a moving segment on public radio about one troll who set up a Twitter account masquerading as her father.  
     "I got a message on Twitter from my dead dad," she told "This American Life." "I don't remember what it said exactly . . . but it was mean, and my dad was never mean, so it couldn't really be from him. Also, he was dead."
     Twitter abuse is especially bad for women like West, whose outspokenness is met with a endless barrage of rape and death threats. Not that feminists can't be nasty too when attacking a man for straying from the path of political correctness. Trust me here. And there is a wave-the-bloody-shirt quality to recounting these threats, displayed as evidence of one's place on the slippery pole of significance. Yet it is undeniable that, as in society, women get the short end of the stick online.
     Costolo vowed that Twitter is going to do better at helping people chase trolls like West's out from under their bridges. If that seems unusually candid for a CEO, remember that Costolo is a Midwesterner - a University of Michigan computer grad who came to Chicago for the comedy, made millions in the tech boom, left because of the weather, for California, where he made even more money heading Twitter. Usually money drowns candor, but that doesn't seem true here.
     "I'm frankly ashamed of how poorly we've dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO," he continued. "It's absurd. There's no excuse for it. I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front."
     Then again, abuse is bad for business. While profits are strong, Twitter's growth is flat. There's only so much scorn users are willing to take.
     It's an interesting question, whether the Internet makes us more vile, by offering opportunities to hurt strangers anonymously. Or whether people already are horrible and the Internet merely reflects it. I'd say a bit of both. If you look at history, people can live amicably for years, then there's a social disruption and suddenly they're slaughtering their neighbors because they can.
      Bottom line: People will generally be as vile as permitted. The Internet allows it, so it's there. Good for Twitter trying to dial the nastiness back. Every kindergarten class starts to act up the moment the teacher steps out of the room. Sadly, one truth about freedom is that it's abused until somebody imposes limits and consequences..