AT&T U-verse — solution to a problem you don't have.

  
   Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

     A scream is hard to convey on paper. A little more guttural, a little more Linus-with-his-head-tipped-back, mouth an enormous "O":

     Arrrrgggggggggggghhhhh!

     Better.

     AT&T U-verse "In my day" commercials. You've seen 'em. I've seen 'em and I don't watch television, except for Bulls games. Everybody's seen 'em. They're everywhere. The same set-up. Older kids, early teens, adopting a fake sage tone, watching younger kids enjoying the key U-verse feature, apparently: the ability to move your television from one room to another. Commiserating how they couldn't do that when they were small. (To watch an AT&T U-verse commercial, click here.)

    'Cause that's a big regret in a kid's life: not being able to move the family's gigantic television around.

    Now I'm asking you—yes, you, personally—if you have U-verse, have you ever dragged your HDTV outside? Who the hell does that? And most TVs are what, 50-inches across.  Enormous plasma flat screens. Half the time they're bolted expensively to the wall. They're as portable as stoves.

     And really, why should they be moved outside? Why would anyone want to do that? For a kids party? Really? These commercials always show little kids hopping in front of the conveniently moved U-verse-bundled TVs at a birthday party. Have any of the chuckleheads who conceived these commercials ever hosted a party for kids? Chaos. Disorder. Destruction. Mob madness. When my boys were of the age to have big birthday parties, we hid away beforehand any heavy objects that one sugar-crazed child might use to bludgeon another. Barely helped. Once, the boys pelted each other with boots.

     The last thing I'd do is drag my TV outside so some child could knock it over, probably onto another child, killing him. Not that moving the TV was anything I ever contemplated. Because where's the television, typically? Biggest, most kid-friendly room in the house, right? Finished basement. Rec room. Living room. It's already where you want the kids to be sequestered.

    Besides, giant televisions cost, what,  a couple hundred bucks nowadays? Families already have them in every room large enough to hold one and in a few that aren't. No moving around necessary.

     There's pathology lurking here. Huge corporations have a grim track record of failure when it comes to mistaking what they would like to sell to the public with what people actually want or can be made to think they want. The prime example of this of course is the Picturephone which ... AT&T has been trying to foist on an indifferent public for 50 years. Because really, what do you want less than for whatever person is calling you to also be able to see you? AT&T is still at it. Here's a thought: try hawking your stuff on a selling point that means something to somebody. Say U-verse is ... oh I don't know ... cheaper. Cheaper is always good. And it would be cheaper, too, if you didn't waste a fortune on those "In my day" commercials.

     Or am I wrong? Have you wheeled the TV out to the deck? I am open to the possibility that there might actually be actual people who actually do this. Are there? Hello?


Photo above: At the Art Institute of Chicago; atop blog: viewing the Art Institute's Thorne Rooms.

The home team, losing in the late innings

 

Corned beef on rye, Schwartz's Hebrew Deli, Montreal

   
     Before there was science, there was religion, to explain how the universe was created, how animals came to be, why good people get sick and die. Faith filled the empty moments in the day—of which were many—with ritual and requirement, explaining eternal mysteries and softening the frequent tragedy of life. It served a purpose, when life moved at a camel's pace.
     Over the past century, however, science has stepped in to allow us to understand much that religion once handled. The origins of the universe, the nature of disease. And the frantic pace of modern life will latch onto every spare second if you're not careful—which, ironically, creates a new niche for religion, which like any organism, adapts to survive. Now religion is here to slow us down, snatch back a little time from the spinning gears of 21st century living, to help us pause and contemplate what mysteries remain. So though weakened, religion chugs along, changing as it goes.
     Still, when I read the latest example of how faith's still-strong grip on our culture is loosening, I am generally glad. Much suffering, much oppression, occurred in the name of religion and occurs, still. While I wouldn't go so far as to say we are better off without it—there are still those empty moments and nagging mysteries, not to mention the need for community—weakened religion is also voluntary religion, and I firmly believe faith should be something you choose, not something forced upon you by others.
     Thus I was torn, a few weeks back, the Pew Research Center put out a 212 page study called "A Portrait of Jewish America." It might as well have been called "Jews are Toast." It didn't come out and say the religion is circling the drain, but the numbers don't lie. Two-thirds of Jews don't belong to a synagogue, 71 percent of non-Orthodox Jews marry non-Jews, almost a fifth of Jewish children aren't being raised as Jews. It's a recipe for extinction.
    Can't very well smile inwardly when other religions dwindle, pleased that the irrational chains are finally being struck off of humanity, the blinders cast aside, then put up a howl when it's my particular sect's turn. And, to my credit, intellectually, I see the Pew study as more of the same. Catholicism fades, Islam loosens its rigid strictures, and of course American Jews drift quietly away (okay, go ahead, insert your joke: "About time they did something quietly...") 
    And yet. . .
    Jews are the home team. Born, raised, bar mitzvahed, wed and too late now for me to simply shrug off the whole megillah. It smacks of betrayal. You have to root for the home team. It doesn't matter if the owner is a tightwad, the coach a bum, the game child's play and nonsense. Nobody in the American League said, "The designated hitter rule is stupid, and besides, we've got football now..." 
    Or maybe they did.
    As with baseball, a case can be made that Judaism is important, culturally—for a long time before globalism started to really mix the world up, Jews were the vanguard of the stranger living amongst you. We were the Other, the observers. That's why people hate us so much. We spoil their uniformity and make them think, which few people want to do too vigorously or too often. Why think when you can believe? Jews were for thinking before thinking was cool, at least secular Jews. The Orthodox, well, let them speak for themselves.
    The study was barely noticed.  Gentile society, of course, doesn't care, and Jewish officialdom, with its dismal track record botching the big issues facing Jews, whatever they are, is already punting this one too, ignoring the growing distance, for instance, between what secular Jews remain and Israel, whose non-policy toward the Palestinians looks shakier to Jew and non-Jew alike, year-by-year. They've been fiddling while the religion burns for years now, and aren't about to stop.
     So recognizing my own bias, why care? It isn't as if there is an intrinsic need for a small Jewish minority to question mainstream beliefs anymore. We set the example, now exit the stage, to join the Shakers. Other faiths will step up. The Muslims are doing a fine job as the new minority American faith on deck, and they can complain about crosses in the public way as loudly as Jews did. Society now has gays to test how much it really believes in tolerance of fractional minorities.
   And there will always be some Jews. A core of Jewishness, kept alive by the hermetically sealed world of the Ultra-Orthodox and the Hasidim. Their society is designed to endure—that's where the whole non-change thing comes in. Sure, we smirk at them for the black hats and wigs and 17th century traditions. But they know that if you swap your heavy black coat for a smart Calvin Klein jacket, you're halfway a Unitarian. As long they exist, there will be a steady stream of secular Jews dribbling away from them, like the tail of a comet.
   Of course extrapolating the current trend into infinity a classic recipe for misreading the future. Maybe this is not a falling star, but a pendulum. We're swinging toward assimilation the past few decades, and then we'll swing back. If you can say one thing about Jews, we tend to endure, no matter what life throws at us. So maybe the flame of faith goes low, then flares up again. If we can survive Nazi slaughter, we can survive American assimilation too.
    No big point to make today. I'm not going to gin up a false alarm, or start going to temple just so Judaism as a whole will glow a few atoms brighter. Life's too short to expend in ritual that you don't savor. All religions fade as their primary purpose—command us exactly how to fill our lives and explain an otherwise incomprehensible world—is replaced by lesser  social and emotional benefits. No one misses the vanished religions of the past—no one mourns the absence of Zeus-worshipping pantheists. All religions are gently fading, and a good thing, too. It only stings a bit more when it's your own home team that's losing in the late innings. As much as the head wants to nod and say, "Yes, yes, that's how it goes," the heart still wants to cry, "Aw c'mon guys, get a few hits, will ya? Doesn't anybody know how to play this game?"

Corned beef on rye, 2nd Ave. Deli, New York City

Some companies you can't forgive

Photograph courtesy of Lexie Rand

    Sunday dawned and the iMac had trouble snagging the Internet.  Who knows why these things happen? A glitch.
    I did what anyone does under those circumstances: shut off the computer and turn it back on. 
     Still no go. 
     A creeping dread. What if we were cut off?
     I alerted my wife. She suggested powering down the modem, and turning it back on. That sometimes drives the gremlins away. We traipsed downstairs, began pressing buttons. 
    Modem lights no longer blinking, she said we should give it time— to cool perhaps — so we went for our walk in the Botanic Garden. A Halloween celebration was going on—little kids dressed as dalmatians, as princesses.
    It was nice. Still, I was concerned -- my thoughts were of you, of course. If I couldn't get online, I couldn't update the blog. I might miss a day — Every goddamn day, remember? — and not only would your day be just a little less festive, but the trolls hiding under the bridge of Eric Zorn's blog would all leap up and start gleefully dancing around their Malice Pole, cackling and ululating that Steinberg had missed a day, missed a day, missed a day. So yes, I guess I was thinking of myself too.
     "I suppose I could take the laptop over to Caribou Coffee and use their wi-fi to update the blog," I said, as we walked.
    "Starbucks," my wife said. "You'll go to Starbucks."
    "Of course," I said, immediately understanding what she was meant. The Caribou Coffee in Northbrook is radioactive. You can't go in. A dead zone, our own Chernobyl. Oh, the building is there, a block from our house, but it no longer exists as a place a person could walk into and get coffee and a sweet roll and go online. 
    Why? It had, during the recent homecoming week, allowed students from Glenbrook North High School's gay-straight alliance to paint a window, as local businesses will do during homecoming festivities. But when the Caribou manager saw what the students had painted, the rainbow gay pride flag, he quickly washed it off. 
    Parents complained on Facebook. They urged boycotts. The newspapers covered it. I expected the Caribou to do what any sentient business  would -- beg the kids to come back, ply them with brownies and soda, allow them to repaint their window, a bigger rainbow flag this time.
    But no. The Caribou corporate parent in Minneapolis issued the standard, we-welcome-everybody-to-buy-our-coffee BS statement. The Illinois Caribou organization did too. But nothing from the local coffee stand operator, the guy with the most to lose. He should have been going door-to-door in sackcloth, personally apologizing to residents. 
    To me, purely from a business perspective, it is that second lapse that is the true sin. People are human, they err, they let their fears and biases get the better of them. Happens to everybody. But to leave the error sitting there, festering, particularly a business as marginal as a coffee shop—it isn't like coffee is hard to find—in a squishy liberal community like Northbrook, well, that's just unforgivably stupid. "It's worse than a crime," as Talleyrand said, "it's a blunder."
    To people with long memories, such as myself, who sometimes shudders when I see a BMW because of a photo I saw at the Holocaust Museum in 1994 of prisoners in World War II walking the "staircase of death" at a BMW factory, Northbrook's Caribou Coffee is now a hate group, like the Posse Comitatus, and we are never, ever ordering coffee there again. It might as well change its name to Westboro Baptist Church Coffee.
    That might be petty of me. But in the immortal words of Nicholas Cage in "Moonstruck," "I ain't no freakin' monument to justice." Maybe there is something about humans that just needs to hate something, and since I can't find it in my heart to despise any particular group of people based on race, religion or nationality, I express that natural tendency to loathe by really getting my back into hating certain companies and their products, and not always rationally either. 
     I will not, for instance, drink Perrier, because it was tainted with benzene. The fact that it was tainted with benzene in 1990 is meaningless. You can get pure water from the tap; what bottled water companies are selling is an idea, and if that idea is "benzene," even faintly, why waste your money? Go for the brands that weren't once poisoned. Time doesn't fade on horrors. Brown's Chicken didn't wait a couple years after the massacre and then try to re-open the shop where it occurred. They tore the building down. Because it would always be tainted.
    Not that forgiveness is impossible. For years I did not fly American Airlines, because American flipped a DC-10 over at O'Hare in 1979, killing 271 people. I didn't even like to fly on DC-10s. But after 25 year or so, the memories of reading the graphic descriptions of body parts being plucked out of the fields around the runway faded, a little, and I grudging allowed myself to fly American, and now I quite like it. 
    But for some companies there is no forgiveness. Ford, and its anti-Semite founder, Henry Ford—as bad as it is to be a fan of Hitler, Ford was worse: Hitler was a fan of him. Or Jimmy John's, rushing to bitch that giving health care to its workers will add pennies to the price of a sandwich. Or Walmart, which is practically a branch of the Chinese Communist party. 
    For me, the lowest rung of chthonic corporate ill-will must be reserved for The Berghoff Restaurant. The Berghoff used to be my favorite place to eat. When out-of-towners came to Chicago for the first time, I would take them proudly to the Berghoff, as if I had created it -- my pal Adam Gopnik, the New Yorker's man in France, and I had our first meal there.
     Then, in 2006, the Berghoff pretended to close, in order to fire its union waitstaff, putting its customers through this elaborate mock farewell, only to reopen, on the down low, a few months later. They did it for a little money. It was if your mother staged her own death and funeral, fooling you kids, in order to get out of some magazine subscriptions she no longer wanted. 
    As with Caribou, the vile initial act was compounded by the indifferent response. The Berghoff never apologized, never explained. Just a big, loud, drawn out, middle finger in the air fuuuuuuuck-youuuuuu to all its devoted, long-time customers. Then turn around, smile broadly, adopt a different tone of voice and welcome them all back in with a sweep of the arm to spend their money there again. No thanks. 
    Still ... I'm a soft-hearted guy. I don't like to hold grudges. Even when right, it still feels petty. And I missed their creamed spinach, their schnitzel. I ran into the Berghoff publicist at the McCormick Place restaurant show a few years back. Let's bury the hatchet, I told her. All that has to happen is for one of the vile Berghoff spawn -- I didn't use those exact words -- to spell out exactly what happened, and in the purifying light of candor, all will be forgiven, and I will lead a joyous procession back to the Berghoff for thuringer and sauerkraut sandwiches and their good homemade root beer.
    No dice. 
    So damn the Berghoff then, the restaurant, the family, the whole edifice of deceit and bratwurst. There is no wrath like the lover scorned. May the avenging god of restaurant calamity smite it, and send it down to the oblivion that has claimed so many far better restaurants. And while the Berghoff lingers, unwelcome, on Adams Street,  a haunt for tourists and the soulless, we turn our faces away from it, the way we'd turn away from a lunatic on the street corner doing something disgusting.
    Sometimes it takes effort. I ran into Newt Minow, the famous lawyer, at a party, and it turns out he is a fan of the column. We decided to have lunch. We chatted in his office for a while, then went down to the street. I found he was steering us toward the Berghoff. Respect mingled with a kind of panic. 
    "Umm, Mr. Minow," I finally said, freezing in the entranceway. "We don't want to eat here."
    "We don't?"
    "No," I said. "Bad karma." I believe that puzzled him a bit, but we walked out, ate nearby at Vivere, on the ground floor of the Italian Village, without having to worry about the ghosts of betrayed waiters spitting curses upon our food.  Our lunch was excellent.

Postscript: The Caribou Coffee in Northbrook went out of business in May, 2014, part of a corporate mass closing of outlets. 

Growing up in the newspaper

Big Sur, 2009

     With my older son Ross turning 18 on Friday, I found myself glancing back at the many stories I've written about him, since he was less than three months old and I began writing a regular column. 
     Which is ironic, since Ross is the only topic I was directly ordered by the editor of the Sun-Times not to write about. "Every time you write about your SON," boomed New Zealand press lord Nigel Wade, "I get the impression you didn't know what else to write about." Probably true. But I wasn't wearing out the topic  — he had just been born.  My theory was that Nigel, who had no kids himself, didn't quite see their utility. 

At the old Sun-Times office. Photo by John H. White

     I didn't listen to him. Part of the secret to a long career in journalism is knowing when to ignore your bosses. And the readers did seem to enjoy my occasional columns about Ross, and my younger son Kent. I tried not to overdo it —better too little than too much— and didn't want to let my sons devolve into shtick, don't want to stray into "Good Morning, Merry Sunshine" territory.  I've tried to deal with the boys with honesty and humor and love, and I like to think that readers can see that.  Some wonder what Ross thinks about being in the paper. I asked him a few years ago if he minded, and he replied: "What I MIND is that you don't put my picture in the paper more." So there you go, like father, like son.

     ‘They blow through your life like the wind on the plains,” John Hiatt sings. “Like the dust that covers everything, til the rivers fill with rain.”

     He’s referring to children, of course, and if parenthood’s first shock is the overwhelming responsibility (“Being a parent,” I said, when it began, “is the sudden realization that your whole world can choke to death on a penny”) the second shock is when you turn around and they’re nearly adults, driving and managing their lives; while you’re reduced to a minor supporting role, like some ridiculous aged adviser in a Shakespeare play, uttering your idiotic, ignored advice.

     My older boy, Ross, turns 18 on Friday, and is busily filling out college forms, like a prisoner working on a tunnel with a spoon. I whistle my way over, a guard on patrol, and he freezes, quietly waiting for me to pass.

     Wasn’t always like that. You folks know. He’s popped up in this column his whole life. Computers never forget. A few keystrokes and we’re back on Pine Grove Avenue in 1997: 

     “Bye-bye Ross. Bye. Daddy’s going to work now. Bye. See ya.” 

     Nothing. My 2-year-old son’s head doesn’t turn. His face doesn’t deviate a degree from staring directly at the object of his affection: "Teletubbies."
     I walk over to his chair, lean down low, and whisper in his ear: “Bye-bye. See you. Have a good day!” Nothing. Eyelock. He doesn’t even blink. The Teletubbies dance and sing.

     Then he’s 5, his birthday. I write a letter to him.

     Five years old. Happy birthday, boy. Did you like the metal Chicago police car? Just like the real ones.  The doors open, and everything. I wish you could see yourself as you are now . . . Sprawled on the floor, doing a hard puzzle, working through a maze, tossing tough questions from the back seat. “Dad, what’s the difference between hornets and wasps?” “Dad, why does the moon follow us?” “Dad, what happens if somebody shoots a missile at us?”

     At 7 he insists we see Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal."

     [Ross] wanted to know where the seven seals were in the movie. He thought there'd be actual seals, the kind with flippers. I explained about how in olden times important letters were sealed by wax, and about how in the Christian Bible there is a story about the end of the world.
     The next morning, he ran into my office, hugged me, as always, but instead of asking for our chess game, he asked for "the story of the movie." . . . he wanted the Book of Revelation.

     Then he's 11. I ask if he has accomplished all he hoped to over the summer and he says no, he wanted to try oysters. Off we go to Shaw's Crab House, not only for oysters, but the George's Bank Haddock, with spinach:

     Conversation ranged from why fish places always serve cheese bread to which ring of Dante's Hell his dad would occupy, according to an online survey (Level Two, with the gluttons and those buffeted by their lusts).
     Suddenly, a stricken look crossed his face and he leaned over, his nose almost to the white tablecloth. I thought it might be an oyster flashback. "What's wrong?" I asked, alarmed.
    "I have spinach . . ." he said, groping under the table, " . . . stuck inside my shoe."

     Then he's 12, blond hair down to the middle of his back, jumping into frigid Lake Michigan, doing the Polar Plunge with me.

First time behind the wheel: Bonneville Salt Flats

      Then 13. I would never have considered staying downtown on Election Night 2008, would have missed the unforgettable scene on Michigan Avenue. But he wanted to go. The next summer, I'm teaching him to drive on the white tabletop of the Bonneville Salt Flats, during our epic trip out West. The day he turns 15, we go to the Goodman. The PR staff sings him "Happy birthday" as we arrive.

     I did suggest to him, seeing it's his birthday and all, that he might prefer to do something else with someone else — go hang out at the mall with Biff and Marty, go have an ice cream soda with Becky Thatcher. No dice. He's been looking forward to "The Seagull" ever since we saw "Uncle Vanya" at Chicago Shakespeare last spring. I know this won't last. It can't, and I don't want you mocking me when he pops up in a video shot in a cave in Pakistan, gazing sternly at the camera and urging jihad. Those things happen. But it hasn't happened yet.

     Three years later, no cave yet. So what's it like now, his senior year? Quieter. Formal. I make a point to be downstairs before he rushes out at 6:40 a.m., just to say hello, to encourage breakfast, exchange some words. "Have a good day at school, son" I'll say. "Have a good day at work, father," he'll reply.
     When I turned 18, my mother bought cases of 3.2 beer, iced in a garbage can. A backyard crowded with kids. "Don't you want a party?" I ask him, now. No. Gifts? No.
     How do I feel? Proud. Lucky. Some kids drag their parents through hell. Much sympathy for those parents. It must be hard. It's hard enough when kids cause no trouble and just become adults. Well, almost adults. He still has that police car on his dresser.

A pane in the glass.

     This was an assignment. Originally, I was going to focus on the logistics of replacing all the glass damaged at the Garfield Park Conservatory in a massive 2011 hailstorm. But the videographer seemed to capture the workers explaining that aspect, so, with space limited, I thought I would go into some of the history of the conservatory, and how as recently as 20 years ago it was in severe disrepair and some in the park district were ready to see it scrapped. Thank God Chicago managed to save this unique treasure. Though many Chicagoans still don't get to the place  frequently, if at all -- I hadn't been there in more than a decade, since they had their show of Dale Chihuly glassworks. Which is a shame — it's a stunning display of nature, and a historic corner of the city. True, it's in a lousy neighborhood — no. 2 of Chicago's 77 neighborhoods for narcotics and prostitution busts last month. But there's a green line el station directly across the street—the place is only five stops past Clinton— and I felt completely safe traveling there during the day, and imagine that most people would. 

   If you’ve ever fixed a broken window, you know it can be a chore: finding the right glass in the right size, getting the right tools if you’re doing the work, or the right glazier if you’re not.

     That’s for one window.

     Now multiply the problem by 4,000. And put many of the windows 40 feet off the ground in a cluster of 106-year-old structures, some of which need to be almost completely rebuilt. Then jam delicate plants, too fragile to move, directly underneath the work.

     One more thing: welcome the public during the process.

     That’s the enormous task facing the Garfield Park Conservatory since June 30, 2011, when a severe hailstorm broke 70 percent of the windows in the conservatory’s massive greenhouse buildings, sending shards of glass cascading down upon its collection of rare and exotic plants.

     The conservatory consists of eight “display houses” — enormous mounds of steel, wood and copper that Jens Jensen designed, not to look like the chateau conservatories of Europe, but as “great haystacks” evocative of the Illinois prairie.
     After the damage, it was discovered that the structures were badly corroded and needed major refurbishing. But the immediate task was securing the environment inside.
     "Winter comes very quickly," said Mary Eysenbach, conservatory director. "We had to get protective covering in place so we could get through the winter for all the houses that had tropical plants."
     Plastic sheeting kept the cold out, temporarily. The conservatory, which has struggled to keep in the public eye even before it was damaged, couldn't afford to shut down during the lengthy process of planning, financing and performing repairs.
     "The conservatory is open and has been since the day after the hailstorm," Eysenbach said. "People were left with the impression that we're closed until we rebuilt, and that's not true. We've gotten as much open to the public as we can."
     Some $9 million has been spent on repairs so far, with $7 million of that coming from insurance. Two more houses have yet to be repaired, their missing glass still covered with plastic sheeting.
     Even damaged, the houses are in better shape than they were previously. In the mid-1990s, the future for the conservatory looked bleak. News accounts routinely referred to it as "forgotten" and "unknown." A cold snap that had Chicago temperatures falling to minus 10 included winds that rattled panes loose, sending icy blasts onto the tropical plants below. Then a burst steam pipe in the Aroid House on Jan. 19, 1994, caused temperatures inside to plummet to 25 degrees, killing or severely injuring 80 percent of the desert plants there. Workers frantically wrapped centuries-old cycads in plastic to keep them warm.
     Park district officials wondered aloud if the place was even worth saving.
     "The conservatory is just old," Robert Megquire, the park district's director of landscape architecture and management, mused at the time. "The social question is whether or not there is value to society in keeping an old building like this."
     That wasn't a question after the 2011 hailstorm.
     "The park district really rallied together to make sure we protected the plant collection and got the building back in shape," said Eysenbach, noting that the conservatory is not only a gem of the city, but was named one of the 10 best in the world.
     Right now the Show House is in the midst of complete reconstruction, its weight supported by a lattice of screw jacks supporting timbers, while 34 corroded load-bearing I beams are replaced. At the same time, workers remove strips of copper that held broken panes and replace decaying wood.
     The plan is to get the work on this house done by Mother's Day.
     While you might imagine that repairing the conservatory to be an undiluted headache, Eysenbach says it isn't so.
     "The whole project was just fascinating to me," she said. "After I got over the initial shock, of course. I didn't know anything about greenhouses in terms of construction. I have learned a lot about glass houses. Some really cool stuff."
      Such as?
     "When they took all the glass off the Show House, [removing] the weight of the glass caused the side of the structure to lift a bit, and the doors separating the Show House from the rest of the houses fell off. Who would think the glass would weigh that much?"
     Even after the work is done, the challenge is to get people inside. East Garfield Park is one of the poorest areas of the city - 40 percent of its residents live in poverty.
     The conservatory has been trying to draw visitors from outside the area with art shows, performances, public campfires, with a renewed focus on children.
     "Our emphasis moving forward is to really connect kids back to nature," Eysenbach said. "This is a really great, great place, fun experiences in a beautiful, beautiful setting. We are rebuilding this conservatory to last for another hundred years."

A professional goes home at night.

    Once, years ago, I had the chance to spend some time with Garry Marshall, the TV icon — creator of "Happy Days"  and "The Odd Couple"— and movie director, most notably of "Pretty Woman." 
      He was visiting Northwestern University, his alma mater, and he met with students, as he liked to do. The kids were putting on the Waa-Mu Show, the school's musical and, trying to impress Marshall, told him how they had been up all night, working on the sets.
      "If you were professionals," he told them, "you could go home at night."
      That always stuck in my mind. Not that some evenings you don't have to work late. Not that, at times, work doesn't demand you be away from home—I once spent six weeks abroad for a book. But as a general rule, you do your work, you go home. That's what being a professional means. You do your work when you need to, then you stop working until it's time to work again.
        We forget that with all our devices and constant, 24-hour on-line access. But if you don't pause from working, from time to time, then that will be all you do. Besides, your work suffers then, you burn out, and then you're no good anyway. You lose the thing you're trying to hold onto. 

Photo: The Bar D Wranglers performing at the Bar D Chuckwagon in Durango, Colorado. 

Handy concept #5: False equivalence

Intellectual Toolbox Week concludes with a concept ripped from the headlines. 

    Did the Civil War actually occur?
     Well, on one side, there is an enormous mass of historical documents—letters, photographs, diaries, books—describing the war in enormous detail.
     And on the other side, there aren't any movies of it—you'd think there would be, some news footage of battles, somewhere, if something like a four-year-conflict had actually ripped America apart Nor does any American living today remember it... 
      I could go on, but you get the point. It's stupid, my objection about the movies based on ignorance: motion pictures weren't developed until decades after the Civil War ended.
     But we tolerate other, less obvious ignorance-based arguments. Why? One reason we can dismiss Civil War Denial so easily is there aren't a passionate band of advocates arguing otherwise. Here is where people, who are fair at heart, to a fault, especially the media, screw up, because they accept an argument where none exists. We give the benefit of doubt too easily to crazy people.
     Holocaust denial is the classic example of this. Approximately 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II through methodical extermination, a fact completely documented, but also one that is uncomfortable for anti-Semites, who don't like to be confronted with the natural result of their hate, nor recognize an event that tends to create sympathy for a group of people they despise. So they argue the whole thing is a lie, scraping together what inconsistencies they can dig up, variance in testimony, in evidence, faltering specific logistics of certain camps, strained arguments, fabrications and speculations. Being able to lie on such a grand scale themselves, it's easy for them to assign the ability to others.

Plaque at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

     For a long time, they got a more respectful hearing than they deserved, from a world used to listening to historical re-evaluations seemingly based on fact. If not respect, then a certain tolerance. An undeserved tolerance; Holocaust denial is not a field of scholarship, but a symptom of anti-Semitism. The media seems to get that, now, generally, and is pretty good about not taking the bait. But it took a while.
    Not so far along are subjects such as evolution, a fact like the Holocaust, as undeniable as electricity. Yet we have serious attention paid to creationism, a fancy word for Biblical doctrine, supported by no evidence at all, whose major rhetorical point is a misunderstanding of the word "theory." 
    Nevertheless, they would teach creationism in public schools, and some places in America actually do. Those who push the creationist viewpoint -- i.e, push their own religion -- try to pretend that these are just different opinions of equal weight, varying theories all worthy of consideration, and that to dismiss their view for the simple reason it's completely untrue by any standard of evidence is narrow-mindedness. Many people buy that.
    We saw false equivalence during the government shut-down, which was engineered and created by the Republican Party. But to say so smacked of the partisan boosterism that is so unattractive on Fox News. So many reputable news outlets -- and I'm guilty of a little bit of this too -- drifted toward "a plague on both their Houses" false balance where none was merited. This is such a problem with the non-right wing media that some have coined the term "fairness bias" to describe it
    Not everything has two equal sides. Sometimes the two sides are the right side and the wrong side. That this mirrors the absolutist logic of deluded zealots is unfortunate, but the alternative -- give folly more credit than it is due out of some misplaced idea of fairness— is even worse. Treating everyone the same only works when there is a certain sameness or when differences are of style, not substance. A roomful of 5-year-olds should be treated equally, their merits and deficiencies set aside, temporarily, in the name of entry-level education. Outside kindergarten, however, in the real world, we are allowed to favor what's true and dismiss what's bullshit. In this case, politeness is overrated.