Giving thanks to those who gave us life

     Motherhood is a simple biological fact. One that encompasses the condition of a woman — or, I suppose nowadays, a person of any gender identification — who gives birth to a baby. Or adopts a child. Or becomes a foster parent. Or enters into an ad hoc care relationship with a younger dependent.
     Not so simple after all.
     Reminding us that motherhood is also a social construct. Traditionally wrapped up with duty — a mother must care for her, or their, baby; the child, grown, is then obligated to care for its mother, if need be. That's only fair.
     The details, however, shift according to age group, religious affiliation, geographical location. Should mothers stay home and focus entirely on their children? Work full time at demanding careers? Both?
     The image also shifts over time.
     When I was young, the popular motherhood cliche retained a whiff of the prairie. Put an old lady in a coal scuttle bonnet, give her some knitting and sit her in a rocking chair, and the image said, "Mother." Words were not necessary. Think James McNeill Whistler's "Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother)."
    Our impressions of motherhood today often come not from paintings, but from commercials — think of all those women lunging after spills, their faces twisted in horror. Then there is "Strong," a commercial that Ohio consumer products manufacturer Procter & Gamble ran in conjunction with the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Every Mother's Day I post "Strong" on my mother's Facebook page, and it's the rare commercial that I'll sometimes call up and watch for pleasure, the way you'd watch a movie. If you have access to YouTube, I suggest you go watch it now.
     Created by Wieden+Kennedy, a global, independent creative agency, the "Strong" spot grabs you in its first second, both visually and aurally. The opening scene is the back of a little girl, frozen, transfixed in horror at an angry tornado churning up the horizon. A siren wails.

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Steve Albini: The last genuine punk rocker

Steve Albini

     "That hits hard," a college classmate texted from Los Angeles. "Albini always seemed like someone who would be eating pancakes on our graves."
     When the paper called with the news that the influential Chicago sound engineer had died, at work, of a heart attack at 61, my reaction was shock, followed by doubt. Were they sure? Because faking his death, well, if anyone was going to do that...
     Yes, it was confirmed. Did I want to write his obituary? No. I hate writing obituaries for people I know — it seems like seizing their corpses and trying to dance with them. The highest tribute I could pay to Albini was not to presume to explain him, not to look through my keyhole perception, colored with nostalgia and affection, and pretend I had any special insight into his essence. Let someone who listened to Big Black for pleasure do that.
     Last August, Jeremy Gordon, writing in the Guardian, nailed Albini's complicated personality:

     Albini – and I can’t say this without it sounding a little silly because of the way the music industry has conspired for decades to sand off the edges of any once-transgressive cultural movement, but more on that later – is a genuine punk rocker. Not because he plays music with distorted guitars or exudes contempt for pretentious establishment figures – though he has done plenty of that – but because throughout his career he, perhaps more than anyone else, has attempted to embody the righteous ideological tenets that once made punk rock feel like a true alternative to the tired mainstream.

     Chicago musical historian Mark Guarino did a fine job encapsulating his life for WBEZ. 

     I had my swing at his life three years ago, reaching out during the long COVID slog. I'm not sure why — we hadn't communicated in 40 years. But I read a quote from him, and I missed his fearless intelligence — most people have nothing to say and, besides, would be too timid to say it if they did — and went to visit him at Electrical Audio, his Belmont Avenue studio, and then to lunch. 

     I ended up writing two pieces — the first, about his work as a sound engineer — he sneered at being called "a producer" — that ran on Labor Day. I deliberately did not mention that he had, his feelings notwithstanding, produced Nirvana's last album, because everybody cites that, prominently, and it was, I guess, either an attempt to honor his non-starstruck integrity, or just as a way of kissing up. The second, we discussed life and success and the future. I found him softened, kinder, humbler. There was much I left out — he's a professional poker player, and we discussed the high stakes poker scene in Chicago. I mentioned my former roommate, who had a band at college — they practice in our dorm room for a while — and he said some generous things about him, his music, and his brother's music.
     "You're not going to believe what Steve Albini said about you..." I told my friend, in the car leaving the interview. Albini cast a cold hard light that showed the ugliness of a lot of what passes for culture. But it could also warm the few he approved of. I won't claim that Steve Albini was a nice guy, though he could be kind — he probably wouldn't want me to say that. But it's true. 

The Sun-Times regrets the error.

   Grr. Urg. Other expressions of visceral, teeth-grinding frustration.
     Monday morning. All is right with the world. Or right enough, if you squint. The vanhoutte spirea are in their puffy white glory. There are fresh blueberries to put atop my Shredded Wheat. The big challenge of the day is to get downtown and go to Gene & Georgetti for lunch. Maybe get something going for Wednesday, columnwise, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel Tuesday morning.
     Rinse the blueberries. Pour the cereal and the milk. Flip open the Sun-Times to page two — "Every day I'm on page two is a good day," I often tell the wife. There is my lighthearted riff on yo-yos. The story begins:

     “No," I said, puzzled, slow on the uptake, figuring she was coming out of a dream. "Why do you ask?"

     Well, that's how the story begins in the physical newspaper. The actual column, as written, has three paragraphs before that. Bowl of cereal in my hands, I rush upstairs to the computer, to see whether the opening was also sliced off online, or whether it was a print issue. I'm worried that, in copying the opening to post on my blog, I somehow cut it instead, and the mistake was carried unnoticed into the paper. An actual impossibility with the system, but still...
     The story was fine online. Whew, so not my fault. But somebody's. I instantly see what had happened. They put in a big "OPINION" bug as a subtle hint that what you are reading is not the just-the-facts-ma'am impartial news the paper prides itself with, but slant, bias, perspective. Whoever went to grab the copy to put into the paper took the part below opinion and didn't notice the part above, and no sentient eyes gazed up the result.
     Forty years writing for the paper, I can't recall that ever happening to one of my stories. A first for everything.
    I fire off a note to my editor saying as much. Then wait, checking my email for befuddled "Huh?" notes from readers. Instead, I get people enthusiastically upping their subscriptions and donating to the newspaper, which seems an odd reply to a blunder. Then it hits me. Ohhh. The marketing department had asked me to write a letter, rattling the cup. The same morning that my decapitated column hit the street, the letter asking for donations also went out, the type of ironic coincidence which makes life the rich pageant it is. The species of minor indignity that follows me, quacking, like a pull-toy duck. Some journalists won the Pulitzer Prize on Monday, others have their mangled work tossed out into the world with a shrug.
     I knew immediately that I would not be inundated with puzzlement. Readers tend to plow on. And as my wife points out, even the few who notice something amiss, well, most people do not write to newspapers. The physical paper itself goes to, what?, 50,000 readers. Maybe. Not 2 percent of the population. Online is where it's at. Online we draw a full ... well, several multiples of 50,000. I think. Or hope.

     I call my editor, not seeking explanation, more just to have some someone to talk to about this. "The trick to journalism is to both think what you're doing is the most important thing in the world and know that it actually doesn't matter much," I say.  You thunder in a column against Donald Trump, liar, bully, fraud and traitor, as if doing so is the difference between America continuing on in freedom or sliding into a slough of fascism and oppression. And know that you could have written every single article highlighting the Oort Cloud of crimes and errors surrounding him and he would still be right where he is now, poised to retake the presidency. Raising your voice is the most important thing you can do, and nothing.

     The paper is actually doing something surprising. It's reprinting the column today, with the top three graphs in place (I'm told. I haven't seen it yet. It would be funny if the three paragraphs got lopped off again). I didn't ask for that — in fact, almost pointed out that it really isn't necessary. But they feel it was, and I decided not to question their judgment. Besides, I can't ever think of that ever happening in a Chicago paper — a column running Monday, then its corrected version Wednesday. Kinda cool, really. A distinction, almost. I'll take it.
    Onward, as Rick Kogan says.  Apologies for the inside baseball, but that's what I got today. Honestly, when they said they were reprinting the column, my first thought was I'd have a day off, which I can use. No biggie. Mistakes happen. To write is to err or, as I sometimes spell it, "Too right is two air." Even noble Homer dozed. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes... Okay, you understand. We'll try again tomorrow, and hopefully get it right this time.

Rattling the cup

     So we moved my mother and father, a week ago Monday. The next day I asked my mother how she liked the new place.
     "I'm not getting my paper," she complained.
     Ah, right, the paper. Did not take care of that. But I will, immediately, I told her. Jumped online to use the subscriber app. It's hard enough to change the address of your own subscription, never mind someone else's, and I was thwarted.
     But I had a Plan B. Last year we donated our van to the paper, and I got to know our membership director. She owed me a favor. Perhaps, I asked, she could point me toward someone who could change my mother's subscription. She did, and it was handled easily. While she had my attention, however, she said, in effect, You know ... we've been sending out these emails, fundraising, and perhaps you'd like to write one. For World Press Freedom Day, Friday. This was, oh, Wednesday.
     Too soon. Next time, I said, not wanting to rush something out half-baked. Not really wanting to do it at all. But she asked nicely, so gave the old Boy Scout try and wrote this:

Dear reader:

Almost 40 years ago, I visited the Chicago public high school located in Cook County Jail so incarcerated teens could go to school. One lesson I watched taught where to put the stamp on an envelope. Later I asked the teacher: is this really necessary? He looked at me pityingly and replied that while students here may have killed someone, may have fathered children, they often did not know where the stamp goes because they'd never written a letter because they can't read.

That stuck with me, and decades later I decided to go back and check up on the place. Yes, I'd written about it before, but no readers rattle the paper and say: "Hey...I read about this 30 years ago!" The Chicago Public Schools didn't want to let me return. But I kept badgering them. Finally, they relented, and when I went back I found out why they didn't want me there, after several teachers pulled me aside and said that, trying to goose the numbers, the school was graduating students who had left the jail long ago. Some had died. The inspector general investigated for a year. The principal was fired.

Exposing corruption and making changes is the heart of what the Sun-Times does, and what gets mentioned on days like World Press Freedom Day. While that's crucial and I'm all for it, done by others, in my career here — now in its fifth decade — I've always emphasized the visit-interesting-places part. To show readers something they didn't know was there. So I've gone down the Deep Tunnel and up the western spire of 875 N. Michigan, then the John Hancock Building, with the workmen changing the lightbulbs on the antennae. I've watched a heart transplanted, a manhole cover forged, and Wilco record a song. It's important to uncover hard truths and confront the powerful with them. But it's also good to have institutional memory and to go places, uncover intriguing truths and share them: the first blood bank in the world opened in Chicago, as did the first public school for children with disabilities. To pray toward Mecca in Chicago, you face northeast.

SUPPORT A FREE PRESS

This is a very long way of saying that my daily column, which has appeared for 28 continual years in the Sun-Times, shines a light in the odd corners, sometimes afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. Sometimes merely being interesting, which is also important. While my colleagues uncover corruption and hold elected officials' feet to the fire, I'm wondering where Fresca went during COVID, who opens Cologuard jars, and what goes on at the dominatrix dungeon on Lake Street, three blocks from the governor's office. One column examined how blind people pick up after their dogs. 

Asking questions that readers might never think to ask, but nevertheless enjoy learning about. I've always found Chicago an infinitely fascinating place, and feel lucky to be able to explore it three times a week in the Chicago Sun-Times. People who don't read the paper literally do not know what they're missing — theirs is a smaller, drier, blander, paler, scarier world. 

Since October 2022, the Chicago Sun-Times has been community-supported, funded by readers like you. If you haven't contributed to the paper, please consider doing so — reflect on how much poorer the city would be without us, not just the crimes that would go undetected, but the wonders that would go unheralded. Then dig deep. To me, you need the Sun-Times the way people need glasses: in order to see properly. You'd think nothing of spending a few hundred dollars on an extra pair. I hope you consider contributing the same to Chicago's preeminent newspaper for the past 76 years. Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely, 

Neil Steinberg
Columnist
Chicago Sun-Times

     That brought in thousands of dollars. But more importantly, to me anyway, a cascade of letters like this:

Hi Neil,

I don't have much, but I wanted you to know I just donated to the Sun-Times because of you.
When I lived & worked in Chicago, the Times was my favorite paper and you were my favorite columnist.

I thought it only fair to show a little respect.

Thanks, Neil.
You have taught me & entertained me a lot.
peace,
Eric R.
Kissimmee, Florida

     Maybe I'm a little shell-shocked lately. But there was something very moving in seeing people I'd never met dig into their pockets, inspired by my column, and say nice stuff on top of it. Anyway, thanks to everybody who pitched in or is going to pitch in. They gave out the Pulitzers on Monday — never getting one of those. But these emails were a suitable consolation. Odd to think it all came about from getting my mother's paper delivered to her new address.

Yo-yos are back, someday, maybe

Boys in a Chicago schoolyard play with yo-yos. (Photo for the Sun-Times by Bob Kotalik)

     My wife sleeps late while I wake early.
     "I'm going to walk the dog," I explained a few weeks back, after she stirred while I was putting on my shoes.
     "Do you have a yo-yo?" she asked, sleepily.
     "No," I said, puzzled, slow on the uptake, figuring she was coming out of a dream. "Why do you ask?"
     "'Walk the dog,'" she explained. Ah. A yo-yo trick.
     My next thought — I kid you not — was: I should get a yo-yo and learn tricks to entertain our future grandchildren. Then I wondered: Are there people who teach yo-yo tricks? Are yo-yos even still a thing? Or has technology completely killed them?
     "Our demographic is 6 to 15 years old," said Josh Staph, CEO and president of the Duncan Toyscq Company, manufacturer of yo-yos for nearly a century. "There's smartphones, there's TikTok. A lot of elements that can provide immediate gratification to kids. A yo-yo does not provide immediate gratification. You have to try it a few times."
     That you do. My only childhood memory of yo-yos is never being any good with them. "Walk the dog" is a trick where you throw the yo-yo down, hard, and it remains at ground level, spinning — like a dog on a leash — until you summon it back up with a snap of the wrist. My string tended to break.
     Yo-yos are another classic plaything to emerge from Chicago, along with Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs and Raggedy Ann. Not that they were invented here — basically a vertical top with the string attached, yo-yos can be traced to antiquity. Women play with yo-yos on Grecian urns.
     Donald F. Duncan was a Chicago entrepreneur in the 1920s who started a parking meter company. He visited California in 1928, where he saw Pedro Flores demonstrate a yo-yo. Flores was from the Philippines, where yo-yos were big, and had already trademarked the word "yo-yo," Tagalog for "come come." Duncan bought the rights then got busy, joining forces with newspaper titan William Randolph Hearst to get newsboys pushing yo-yos.
     Yo-yos were a craze in Chicago in the summer of 1929 — newspaper columnists complained you couldn't enter a Loop building without fighting your way through crowds gathered to watch experts perform tricks. People grew annoyed.

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Flashback 1998: Gays victimized by our silence

     

     Odd that the same year, more than a quarter century in the past — 1998 — would pop up under two completely unrelated contexts this week. Yesterday I traced the origins of "Snoopy in a blender" to a 1998 story. And today's post is prompted by a long overdue shift in policy by the United Methodist Church of Christ last week. Turns out gays are okay after all. Or at least they can serve as clergy.

     Reminiscent of "I Believe," among the funniest songs in the very funny musical "Book of Mormon," basically a rendition of actual Mormon doctrine. It contains the line, "I believe ... in 1978 God changed his mind about Black people." Really meaning that the Mormon Church changed its mind about Black people, and decided, upon 130 years of deliberation, Black ministers were okay after all.

     And now God, as represented by the United Methodist Church, has welcomed the LGBTQ community into the ranks of the chosen, i.e., themselves. A little late, surely, but better late than never. I tried to tell them back in 1998:

     I live in a gay part of town. Not the gayest — that would be about two blocks west and maybe four blocks north of our place. But gay enough. Every summer the Gay Pride Parade rolls past my block, which has a small, sedate gay bar on the corner.
     I've never been in the bar. When I pop out of the house for a beer — say, on the pretext of picking up the milk, I pass by the corner gay bar and walk another block to a straight bar, there to drink straight beer. Birds of a feather . . .
     That said, once or twice, I will admit, I have ventured into one of the local gay bars for a quick drink to see what they are like inside and to prove to myself that there is nothing to be afraid of. They served me a beer; they took the money. The TV blared. I finished my beer, unmolested, and emerged with my heterosexuality intact.
     It isn't the sort of thing I tell everyone (well, until now), but it didn't strike me as the biggest deal, either. I think it's important to not be afraid of things unnecessarily. Ignorance is fertile soil for hate.
     For instance, before I moved to the neighborhood, I had to pause to seriously ask myself whether I really wanted to live in a gay area. I worried it would become oppressive in some way I couldn't foresee. But after a little thought, I decided it probably wouldn't be a bother. And it hasn't been.
     Then again, I'm lucky. I've always felt pretty secure about myself. I don't feel threatened. Strolling with my sons through the neighborhood, I don't worry that the boys will somehow be infected by gayness. When we're on the street and a group of laughing, young, fit men — a group I assume to be gays headed toward the bars — passes, I don't shield my kids' eyes. I don't worry I'm exposing them to some toxin. The mighty edifice of heterosexuality doesn't crumble that easily, in my view. And while I'd rather my boys not grow up gay — that seems like a tough road, at least for the parents — I figure the die is pretty much cast, and I'll find out one fine day.
     None of this strikes me as extraordinary. In fact, it seems the basic attitude of liberal American decency at the end of the 20th century.
     But obviously, people must feel otherwise. The Methodist Church is holding a trial in a few months to see if the minister at the Broadway United Methodist Church — just a few blocks up from me — should be booted out of the clergy for performing a rite marrying a gay couple.
     The immediate reason — it's against the Bible — grows pale the more you look at it. Many things are banned in the Bible, from dishonoring your parents to eating lobster. Going hammer and tongs after gays, the way organized religion feels compelled to do, seems awfully selective. Why boot out just gays, and the ministers who unite them, and not, say, adulterers? Why not those who swear? They're banned, too.
     I suppose the quick answer is that gays are targeted because they can be. The Methodists can't very well toss out a minister for marrying an interracial couple, or a Methodist and a Baptist, or a liar and a thief. Gays are one of the few subgroups left that can be openly persecuted. The awning of law and custom we've built up doesn't quite cover them yet, and certain people are horrified at the thought that it someday might. Who would be left to openly loathe?
     Part of it is that the rest of society is so quiet when gays are persecuted. Yes, we cluck our tongues when young gay men are brutally murdered, as if to say, `Well, we don't want to kill them now, do we?" But the fear of being labeled gay is so strong that it is easier to be silent or look away.
     Let me get this straight: God cares about our sexuality, but not about our moral courage. Right . . .

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 27, 1998 

Note: The minister, whom I did not not name, was Rev. Gregory Dell. He was tried by the United Methodist Church in 1999, found guilty, and given a year suspension. He returned to the Broadway UMC until 2007, when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He and his wife moved to North Carolina, where he died in 2016.

Flashback 1998: "Snoopy in a blender"

    

Photo by "DiscoverWithDima."

     "Didn't you originate that?" my wife asked at breakfast earlier this week. "'Snoopy in a blender'?"
     She was reading about Dubuffet's 29-foot-tall, black and white monstrosity, Monument with Standing Beast, being removed from in front of the Thompson Center. I thought hard.

     "I might have been the first person to put it into print," I said. "But I think I was quoting someone else."
    Generally, claiming to be the first to coin a word or phrase is a fool's game. You're usually wrong, an earlier citation is quickly found and pinned on you like a Christmas ornament. Even if you're correct, it's a prize not worth winning. Nobody cares. I remember the pride Bob Greene took in coining ... what? "Yuppie" I think. A term that hasn't stood the test of time. It's like being proud of coming up with "daddy-O." 
     The Monument with Standing Beast Wikipedia page claims, "The sculpture is affectionately known to many Chicagoans as 'Snoopy in a blender.'" Though looking at the references cited I had to ask, incredulously, "How would they know? Did they conduct a poll?"   
      I searched "Snoopy in a blender" on the Sun-Times database and came up with the first reference in "Guide to Chicago Cruises," a fun, June 28, 1998 report written by yours truly about the various boats offering cruises from Navy Pier and the Chicago River — talk about a tough assignment. (It had to be an assignment; even I lack the chutzpah to suggest something like that: "Yeah chief, why don't I take every boat tour offered on Navy Pier? That's the ticket! And when I'm done, I can evaluate every fruity drink sold on the pier...").
     The structure of the story was sort of fun. Here's an example:

Seadog I
Owner: Sea Dog Speed Boat Rides, (312) 822-7200.
Other boat: Seadog II
Location: Navy Pier, 3rd berth
What you pay: $13
What you get: 30-minute tour with a powerful, 2,000 horsepower boat zipping around the lake at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour.
Where you go: Up to North Avenue Beach.
The good part: Loud music, the feeling of going really fast.
The bad part: Abrasive, Ed-Debevic's-waitresslike shtick on part of crew. Also, morbid thoughts of that poor woman who got her lower leg cut off.
Kids? Tots only if being punished. Great for thrill-seeking teens.
Noteworthy error in tour: Claimed the Lindbergh Beacon "guided Lindbergh into Chicago on his flight around the world."

     The line about a "poor woman" referred to Kathleen Rooney, 35, who was swimming off North Avenue Beach in 1997 when the Seadog powered over her, amputating right leg mid-calf. In 2001, a Cook County jury awarded her $10 million for her injuries.
     The guide sails aboard 14 boats — geez, I was energetic — and weighs in at nearly two thousand words. I'll spare you the details of long-vanished cruise experiences. The phrase in question is said during a tour, not off Navy Pier, but aboard Dells-like duck boats on the North Branch of the river:

Mallard
Owner: Chicago Trolley Co., (312) 461-1133.
Other boats: Huey, Louie, Howard and Disco.
Location: Clark and Ontario (the parking lot of the Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's).
What you pay: $20 for adults; $10 for kids.
What you get: a 90-minute land; water tour of the city on a World War II-vintage amphibious craft.
Where you go: Down Clark Street, through the Loop, down Michigan to Burnham Harbor, into the water down to McCormick Place, then back up Lake Shore Drive.
The good part: Friendly employees exhibit occasionally flashes of actual humor (guide referred to the Thompson Center's Dubuffet as "Snoopy in a blender.") Novelty of an amphibious vehicle.
The bad part: Faux-Letterman shtick grew weary after a while; supposed 90-minute tour clocked in at about an hour.
Kids? Just make sure they keep their arms inside when the boat passes close to those wooden uprights at the Burnham Harbor ramp.
Noteworthy error in tour: Claimed Christopher Columbus was born in Chicago, though in jest.

     It's hard to prove a negative. "Snoopy in a blender" didn't appear in the Tribune until 2014. Maybe the nameless tour guide made it up. Maybe he read it or heard it somewhere else. If the EGD Irregulars want to have at it, to try to dig up an earlier reference, well, go for it. The monstrosity first went up in 1984. It's on its way to the Art Institute of Chicago now, supposedly. But if they choose to stash it in a warehouse, well, they'll get no complaint from me.