Steiff, when you care enough to give a teddy bear not intended for children

 

     Hanukkah begins Sunday evening. With Christmas close behind, and all the buying of presents that both holidays demand.
     Let's not mince words: giving gifts is hard. Part mind-reading, part scavenger hunt, part potlatch. Even when you know exactly what to get, and have time to prepare.
     Maybe I should just tell the story.
     Last year, when I found out that I would be a grandfather, my very first thought was about a present. I hung up the phone and went directly onto the Steiff website.
     Steiff is a German toy company, founded in 1880, offering all the soft cute animals you'd expect. But Steiff also has a tradition of hard mohair animals that, in an astounding mercy of time's grindstone, are still made in Germany. Needless to say, they cost a lot.
     My connection to Steiff came about because of a scientific conference in Germany in 1962. My father, a nuclear physicist with NASA, went to present a paper. He saw these gorgeous Steiff animals in a shop. The dollar must have been very strong. He bought a turtle and an elephant, a lobster and a giraffe ... plus a lion, squirrel, various birds — so many toys he also bought a case to carry them back.
     But that isn't the lovely part. The lovely part, according to family lore, is when he gets home from his overseas trip, he opens the case, displaying its contents, and tells my sister, then 4, to take what she wants, and her toddling brother can have the rest. My sister surveys the menagerie and bursts into tears.
     "Didn't they have any dollies?" she wails. She wanted a Chatty Cathy, or whatever.
     Maybe that story isn't much, as far as family traditions go. But it is what I have, and I clung to it. The day my oldest boy was born, when my wife beeped me to tell me to get home now and whisk her to the hospital, I was in FAO Schwarz on Michigan Avenue, examining a little Steiff dog that ended up in his crib. Both boys got Steiff teddy bears when young.
     That brings us to 2025, and the new generation. Should be easy, right? Jump on the Steiff website, find a suitable bear, deploy the credit card, trying not to wince. I began browsing, and encountered a rude surprise:
     "CAUTION! This product is not a toy and is intended for adult collectors only."
     What? When did THAT happen? I appealed to Steiff, telling them I was "surprised to learn that [their mohair bears] are not considered toys, and should not be given to children. This is news to me, and not good news. ... Are the bears dangerous?"
     Their lengthy answer boiled down to two concerns.
     First: "Design & Safety — Certainly, wool-based mohair is still considered a safe material. But many of the mohair designs in our present assortment include elaborate accessories or features which were chosen to appeal to adult fans of the Steiff brand. These items sometimes include small, detachable parts (such as beads, crystals, glass eyes, cords, ribbons, etc.) which might not be considered safe for small children as they could be potential choking hazards."
     Second: "Convenience & Aesthetics — Though a lush and beautiful material, mohair, like other wool products, is not typically machine washable. This is a major concern for today’s parents. Mohair shrinks, and can lose its luster, texture, and color after washing. In this sense, mohair does not meet our own, internally defined standards for aesthetic quality and practical convenience."
     Giving me a choice: I could devolve to their washable, polyester bears that have the additional advantage of costing a sixth as much. Still Steiffs. Or stick with the mohair tradition, one of the few I've got.

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'Reconsider whether cars and trucks are the best way to deliver items in dense neighborhoods'

 

      On Monday, my column looked at the issues raised by Ald. Daniel La Spata's ordinance facilitating Chicagoans who want to turn in people who park in bike lanes. I thought I'd raised both sides of question, and did not expect my first email to be someone cancelling their subscription in protest.

Dear Mr. Steinberg:

     I paused my Sun Times membership just now after reading your latest column while on a bus on South Michigan that was delayed because we kept having to weave in and out of columns of double parkers in our travel lane.
     The sense of entitlement that you seem to share with so many drivers who think that they have some God-given right to block arterial streets is a major part of what makes this city more challenging and dangerous to get around in, whatever mode you might choose.
     Maybe if companies suffered a financial penalty for breaking parking laws, they would reconsider whether cars and trucks are the best way to deliver items in dense neighborhoods. If the price was passed onto the consumer, maybe they'd think twice about ordering something for delivery instead of getting off their butt and walking to the store.
     Nobody thinks every double parked delivery truck on a side street should be ticketed, but blocking main thoroughfares makes travel harder for all of us trying to get around the city. But then again, as you say, you live in Northbrook, so you're not really in the best position to opine on the subject, are you?
     I look forward to resubscribing to the Sun Times when my money doesn't support tired old baby boomers who belong in the Journal and Topics or yelling during public comment at Northfield Township board meetings.
     Sincerely,
     John A.

    The thing to do would have been to ignore it. But I'm not that sort. I replied:

Dear Mr. A.:

     I like to think of bike riders as a bit more hardy than that. But if you want to punish yourself by avoiding the best newspaper in Chicago because I expressed an opinion not your own, that is your right. I thought I presented both sides of the issue before coming down against a silly law which will not stop packages being delivered by truck, as seems your goal.
     I do plan to retire in two years, and would suggest it might be safe for you to return then, except it is quite possible that someone else might express another opinion that you don't like, and then you'd be right back where you are today. I've been on staff for 38 years, and dealt with all sorts of ruffled bigots. Typically, they have no idea they are expressing hatred toward a group, and I would imagine that ageists such as yourself are no different, even though [you] fancy yourself liberal-minded because you probably would not castigate a Muslim who flies a lot on airplanes or a Black person who likes the coal industry as holding those views because of their ethnicity or race the way you mock me for being 65. But trust me, it's just as unattractive, and indefensible, and if you are capable of reflection as well as outrage — an open question, judging from your note — I would encourage you to reflect on that.
     That said, thanks for writing, and I hope you bike more carefully than you write. Still, as a kindness, when I post your email Tuesday, for the education of my blog readers, I will withhold your identity, to shield you from the contempt you rightly deserve.

Neil Steinberg

     Not that all the emails were from loons. Most were sensible, and I'll include one, just as a reminder to what such reaction is like. It was one of many that took issue with Amazon; I thought that ship had sailed long ago:

     Here is one vote for "enforce the law" let the snitching begin. Amazon and others are taking over public property, the streets, to make additional billions for Jeff Bezos. Of course we will offer them an "out" let them take a 50% discount on the tickets they wrack up when the total exceeds one million!
     Following up on your interest in traffic: Why don't we have speed camera enforcement on Lake Shore Drive? I have asked several Alderman and there is no response. It seems like a no brainer. It would raise money for a city that needs it and undoubtedly have some impact on the rampant speeding that currently leads to all too often accidents, some of them deadly.
Someone has "put a brick" on this common sense idea. Who? 
     Your fan and reader,
     Andrew Davis

    A colleague was intrigued with your question, and found — through an AI search, always dubious, but this answer has the tang of veracity — that the Chicago speed camera program is limited to "Child Safety Zones," aka, areas by schools and parks. Thus LSD (whoops, JBPDSLSD —his joke, but I'm going with it) is excluded. For now. There is legislation pending that would extend those cameras to expressways. Something to look forward to.   

To snitch or not to snitch? Is proposed parking scofflaw law a good idea?

Bike park at the central train station in Copenhagen.

     This is a tough one.
     As a rule, I'm not a on-this-hand, on-the-other kind of columnist. That's chicken ... umm ... bleep. My job is to not equivocate but make a stand. If you're going to take Vienna, as Napoleon said, take Vienna. No half measures.
     But regarding the ordinance Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st) outlined in Fran Spielman's article Thursday, allowing Chicagoans to take photos and turn in commercial vehicles violating parking ordinances, leaving their big blue electric Prime vans in bike lanes and crosswalks, well, I'm torn here.
     It's good that it's being delayed, so the issues can be weighed.
      On the one hand, as a former avid city cyclist, in my younger days — for years after the Divvy system rolled out, I wrote a periodic "Divvy Diary" recounting the joys of blasting those big blue bombers down Chicago streets —I know you take your life in your hands every time you have to veer around some double-parked doofus.
     Why should innocent cyclists energetically going about their business be forced to risk getting themselves creamed by a bus so that housebound shopping addicts sprawled on their sofas can receive their daily, if not hourly, infusion of superfluous junk?
     On the other: I too order from Amazon. I too marvel when something bought a few hours ago shows up, Johnny-on-the-spot. I don't have a dog in this race, living as I do in the sprawling, low-density leafy suburban paradise that is Northbrook. A half dozen Prime vans could simultaneously pull up in front of our house, day or night, and easily find a place to park. Some days, it seems they do.
      In the city, most blocks are wall-to-wall parked cars. So where else are delivery trucks supposed to stop, if not in bike lanes and crosswalks? They only stop briefly, and if you happen to come hammering along and, checking your heart rate on your Apple watch, rear end one, well, tough luck. Maybe you should concentrate on where you're going, and you won't get doored while fiddling with your bike computer.
      Then there is the risk of dragooning the population into traffic enforcement. Is that respect for law? Or trying create a population of snitches?
      La Spata isn't only doing this out of concern for law, generally, but to scratch his own private itch. He's a cyclist, posting Instagram videos of himself leading critical mass bike rides to meetings of the City Council Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety, which he chairs.
      All good, right? Onward toward a Scandinavian-style cyclist's paradise? Or another example of leaders putting their own priorities first? Maybe La Spata should sponsor an ordinance encouraging police officers to snitch on each other. Because right now the code of silence requires them to cough into into their fists twice upon detecting thin blue line crime, provided no one is around to hear the coughs.
      There is risk involved. As someone who walks around a lot, and often takes photos of what I see, I'd hate to be minding my own business, trying to capture an evocative arrangement of snow on a bare tree branch, only to have some burly delivery guy run over, knock my phone out of my hands and jump on it because he thinks I'm taking a photo of his license plate.
      OK, Steinberg, choose. Ordinance = bad. Is not a culture of snitching another milestone in the road to totalitarianism? Stukach they called it in Soviet Union. Squealing. We start by encouraging people to report someone parking in a crosswalk, then before we know it, schoolchildren are turning in their parents for working on Trump's birthday.
       We're closer than you think. In case you missed it, the National Park Service just scratched Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth from its free entry holiday list, replacing it with the 47th president's birthday. Thank God we're all so numb, or we'd have to scan the headlines with our phones in one hand and air sickness bags in the other.

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Flashback 1991: Pearl Harbor terror recalled at rites here

The 50th anniversary was front page news

  
     Today is Pearl Harbor Day — a Sunday, as it was in 1941. I will fly the flag. Can't say whether the newspaper will run anything — memories fade, passions cool, and 84 years after the event, only about a dozen survivors of the Japanese attack remain alive. Time was, if the Sun-Times didn't mark the anniversary, prominently, readers would complain bitterly. This isn't a column — I was a general assignment reporter at the time, reporting on the Dec. 7 anniversary commemoration — other stories had run the day before. Starting on the front page.

     How bad was it at Pearl Harbor? Enough for Arlandres Dixon to suddenly feel homesick for the Southern city he joined the Navy to escape
     "It was one of the few times in my life I missed Jackson, Miss.," said Dixon of the moment he stood on the deck of the U.S.S. Dale and watched Japanese bombers rip into the harbor. "I was scared as a fox with a pack of hounds behind him."

     The 72-year-old former gunner was one of hundreds of veterans who gathered at Daley Plaza on Saturday for a solemn ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 

     Maj. Gen. James H. Mukoyama Jr., a third generation Japanese American, said honoring the Pearl Harbor dead should not mean rekindling bigotry against Japanese Americans, many of whom fought bravely in World War II and almost all of whom were loyal citizens despite official government outrages committed against them.

     "During World War II, tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were taken from their homes," he said. "In Hawaii, (they) were forced to wear black badges on their clothes, reminiscent of the cloth badges Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany. The only crime committed by these American citizens were their parents were born in Japan."

     Despite somber speeches, the moment of silence, and the Marine bugler playing taps, it was still a gathering of veterans, complete with hearty handshakes, slaps on the back, more than one dirty joke, and a lot of reminiscing.

     Dixon, whose destroyer was the first ship to make it out of the harbor, recalled using blowtorches and bolt cutters to break into the ship's magazine to get at shells because the officer with the keys was on shore.

     Another attack survivor who was present was Clyde Leland Ernst, 85, who 50 years ago was chief warrant carpenter on Ford Island. He was warming up the engines of the ferryboat he operated when he saw waves of Japanese torpedo planes — at eye level, it seemed — pass by.

     "I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it," said Ernst, who would spend the next three days ferrying wounded to the mainland hospital. He said that despite his memories of burned sailors, he holds no animosity toward the Japanese today.

     "I've outgrown that," he said. "Time heals the deepest wounds."

       — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 8, 1991

Flashback 1998: Galoshes mark big milestone

     The aging brain retains many odd bits, the mental equivalent of drawers jammed with junk and jars brimming with buttons and pennies. Friday morning, contemplating the weekend, I thought, "Dec. 6 is James Thurber's birthday."  As to which one, I squinted and guessed: "...128." Close: Dec. 8, not 6th. And 131 years ago — 1894 . 

     I haven't read his stuff lately — haven't read much at all, now that I can scroll mindlessly through Instagram and TikTok like everybody else. But at one time was he was a point of ready reference.  

     This is briefer than columns lately, because it ran, at the time, in the Features section on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It evokes a time when most days I dutifully headed downtown to work, wearing a suit and Oxford shoes, ready for whatever came. Typically I don't like to repeat a word too often, but here I use "galoshes" nine times — I obviously shied away from the double entendre "rubbers." I was 38 when I wrote this. Imagine how I feel now.

     One of the advantages of growing up fat and kinda unattractive is that, as you enter middle age, you're prepared for it. You've been there.
     I weighed the same this morning as when I was 16. How many guys can say that? True, I was 198 pounds when I was 16. But hey, the logic still holds. At least I don't weigh 300 pounds. Some guys do.
     That said, there are still surprises, still milestones that catch your attention and cause you to pause, sighing, in the doorway that leads away from youth.
     The milestones I'm thinking about are more subtle than the typical markers of time's passage: the graduations, marriages, births. I'm referring to the buying life insurance milestone, the gray hair milestone, the making-the-same-groaning-noise-your-father-made-when-he-got-out-of-a-chair milestone.
     Or, as I discovered recently, the galoshes milestone.
     It was raining hard. As I plucked the umbrella out of the front closet I glimpsed my galoshes, turned inside out, where I had flung them last spring, the previous occasion, when, at my wife's urging, I wore them out of the house.
     Normally, I never wear them unless forced to. There is something terribly sad about galoshes, something dreary and middle-aged. Put on galoshes and you're halfway to wearing woolen underwear and walking about with a hot water bottle tied around your neck with a string.
     Men are supposed to be stronger than that. We must be nagged to wear our galoshes. In James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," galoshes are one of the mundane items that, along with puppy biscuits, Mitty's overbearing wife nags him to purchase.
     "Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my hair done," she says. He argues, "I don't need overshoes."
     "We've been through that," she snaps, then adding the coup de grace, a blow at the heart: "You're not a young man any longer."
     Heading out the door, seeing the galoshes on the floor of the closet, I actually looked over my shoulder, to see if my wife was around to order me to put them on. She wasn't. I hesitated. It was raining hard. I was wearing my Church's oxfords, lovely hunks of hand-made leather bought at great expense, shoes that I nurse through the years (they've had more new soles than a tent revival). It wouldn't do to wreck them while saluting some faded echo of youthful bravado.
     I put on my galoshes.
     The heavens did not crack. People on the street didn't point and stare. The oxfords were protected.
     But I felt a little more stooped, a little more tired. I got to work, peeled off the galoshes, and flung them on my desk, where they have sat since, turned inside out, awaiting the next downpour to be worn home.
     I don't know where being cautious became associated with age and decline. Teenagers leave their coats to flap open, defiantly, when they are forced to wear coats at all. Older people button up and wear those stupid hats with the flaps sticking out. It's smarter, and safer, but I miss the old way.
     At least I don't use the shoe trees. I have all these wooden shoe trees that I inherited from my father. They're in the bottom of the closet. The idea is that you put the trees in your shoes at night to, I don't know, keep them from collapsing in on themselves.
     I have never used the shoe trees, and my shoes seem fine. But maybe I'm just too immature to understand the benefit of a shoe tree. Maybe, in a few years, I'll come home one fine day and those wooden trees will make perfect sense.
     And kids think aging is without its thrills.
     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 20, 1998

A few of the comments refer to this photo, which was atop the blog the day this post ran.

Can't sleep? Don't count sheep — use this guided meditation for healthful snoozing

     Hey there, and welcome to the Chicago Sun-Times guided meditation for sleep. I'm your host, Neil Steinberg, and I'd like to invite you to get comfortable in a secure location. If you are driving your car, reading this on your phone at a stoplight, as people actually do, you are invited to ease your car over to the side of the road, angle your seat back, and hold the phone a comfortable four inches from your face.
     Or better yet, set this to MurmurMode, where one of 12 artificial voices will narrate this for you: Unemployed Hunky Actor, Older Lady Librarian, Whispering Mermaid, and such. Then you may place your hand over a flat surface, gently open your fingers, and execute a maneuver known as "setting your phone down." If you are experiencing the residual frozen claw that comes from holding an iPhone for 110 minutes straight, try wiggling your fingers until the numbness and tingling dissipate. Do not be alarmed by your hand being empty — your phone is still nearby and available. Give it a gentle pat to reassure yourself that it's still right there.
     Now sit back and close your eyes. Draw in a deep breath, filling your lungs with air. Hold that, savoring the quality of fullness. Then exhale the air out, preventing yourself from wondering how you've come to such a degraded state that you need to be told to breathe, an activity heretofore done automatically and without guidance, by you and most living creatures. Worms breathe unaided — through their skin, a process called cutaneous respiration.
     Now set an intentionality — what sort of sleep would you like to experience? The serene snuggling sleep of an infant nestled in a completely empty crib, devoid of bumpers, blankets or stuffed animals, because apparently those are considered lethal nowadays? The bivalve bliss of the ocean oyster, resting in the warm sand of an antediluvian sea? The restorative slumber of someone who didn't spend the past 40 years madly dashing like a gerbil on a wheel in a profession that was steadily dying all around him? The choice is yours.
     Identify something that happened today and be grateful about it. Is your skin pale enough that you could go to the Home Depot for a box of nails without worrying that ICE would grab you out of the parking lot and send you to a nameless prison in El Salvador? Do you live in a city where the mayor is not a bumbling buffoon trying to balance the budget on the backs of those businesses that stay despite his constant death-of-a-thousand-cuts harassment? Focus on this good thing while crossing your hands over your chest, executing the butterfly hug while repeating, "I am grateful. I am snug. I am protected."
     While we are utilizing the my-wishes-become-reality linkage between flitting intangible thoughts within and the generally harsh and unresponsive reality without, a charmed notion that Oprah years ago somehow convinced us was real, feel free to add: "I live in a functional democracy, where laws apply equally to smirking billionaires and nugatory losers such as me." Reach for the stars.

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'The Carrot Seed'

 

     The Thanksgiving holiday began early in my household this year, with the arrival of my older son, daughter-in-law and their 5 month old baby brood on the Monday before Turkey Day, and ended with their departure more than a week later. 
     For one week, first thing, I'd do every morning is pad downstairs to visit with my granddaughter, and let me tell you, what a great way to get the day off to the right start. Hard to play the crusty annoyed curmudgeon after that. I wish I could post a picture, but such things are forbidden — social media has not won over the young the way it supposedly has. We're back to photos stealing their souls. Just as well —the blazing cuteness might sear your retinas, like staring into the noonday sun. They've been gone 24 hours, and I'm still fairly dazzled.
     What did we do all day? We sang —I did quite an accurate cover of "The Gummy Bear Song"  — "Oh, I'm a gummy bear/Yes, I'm a gummy bear/Oh, I'm a yummy, tummy, funny, lucky gummy bear...") even getting the slightly electronic warble in my voice (though, I admit, I tossed in a few rhyming adjectives not in the song itself —like "rummy" and "scummy." No reason the adults can't entertain themselves as well.  We danced.

     We read. We were always a book household, and many, many old books were pulled down and read. The one that sticks in my mind is "The Carrot Seed," the 1945 classic written by Ruth Krauss, with pictures by her husband, Crockett Johnson, once famous for the "Barnaby" comic strip and his book, "Harold and the Purple Crayon."
     The plot of "The Carrot Seed" is simplicity itself. On the first page, an unnamed little boy —in the requisite beanie —plants a carrot seed. A parade of onlookers — his mother, father, big brother — tell him it won't come up. Still, he pulls up the weeds around the seed and sprinkles the ground with water.  Nothing happens, except those who told him it wouldn't come up continue to tell him that. This affects his persistent care of the seed not at all. He weeds. He waters and then — spoiler alert — a glorious carrot, bigger than he is, shoots up. "Just as the little boy had known it would."
    That's it. I don't know any young writers —or young people seized with any ambition. But its message  —keep plugging, your carrot is coming, no matter what people say —is an essential one. And not just for young people. Success waxes, and wanes, and you can reach a point where nobody but nobody knows or cares what your projects happen to be. You weed, and water, and persist. Even if the carrot never sprouts. What else can you do?