You’re safe from falling trees, probably; from opioids, not so much

 

     People exaggerate their proximity to death. "But I was just in Pittsburgh last spring!" I'm not sure why. To scrape up a frisson of excitement, I suppose. Or to feel significant, and turn attention back to themselves. Those sound right.
     So I want to be careful when describing what happened Monday. There had been a big storm the night before, as you remember, heavy snow, high winds, flights cancelled, power lines snapping.
     Monday morning, 6 a.m., my thoughts focused on firing up my mighty Ariens snow thrower, the pride of Wisconsin, a crouching orange beast with a light and its own little shovel, that had waited all spring, summer and fall under a tarp in my garage.
     But my wife counseled that 6:30 a.m. is too early. People are sleeping. Why not walk the dog first? This seemed a shirking of my snowblowing responsibilities—I could have our block clear in a jiffy!—but I yielded to her good sense, and leashed our dog, Kitty.
     Outside the front door, I thought I would address our front steps—easy to shovel before you trample down the snow—and Kitty went bolting off to a corner of our yard after a squirrel, which scampered up a walnut tree. That usually keeps the dog—whose brain is about the size of a walnut—occupied, standing on her hind legs, and looking up the trunk, waiting for the squirrel to come back down and be friendly.
     I finished the front steps, scrapping away the dense, wet snow. I might have had less than a minute to live, depending on what I did next. I headed toward Kitty, but rather than wait for me, she bolted off toward the street. My neighbor, Bill, was walking toward us, heading for the train. He snagged her leash.
     Normally I wouldn't engage in conversation—Bill has those trains timed to the second. But as I took the leash, he said something about the snowblower, or maybe I said something. I explained my wife had held me back, and asked if he wanted me to clear his walk. He said no, his high schooler was asleep, and he'd do it. I was standing at the foot of my driveway, just beyond a line of six 70-year-old, 50-foot-tall evergreen trees. Bill and I were maybe 15 feet apart, me on the sidewalk, he in the street.
     There was a noise, a kind of piny rending. I looked to the left, and the trunk of the tree was moving.
     "Step back! Step back!" I yelled, looking around for Kitty, who was leading the charge away.
     When I turned back, the tree was across the street, spanning it like a bridge, blocking my view of Bill.
     "Are you OK?" I said.
     He was OK. Not a scratch. The tree fell between us.
     Causes of death are in the news; the American life span is shrinking for the first time in nearly a century, thanks to suicide and the opioid epidemic. Overdose is the leading cause of death for those under 55.
     Where does being killed by a tree fit in?
     I searched for stats and couldn't find any, but did find Prof. Thomas W. Schmidlin of Kent State University, who spent his career analyzing windstorms and their fatalities, and studied trees as a cause of death.
     "That's why we did the research, 10 years ago," he said. "I was curious and couldn't find it."
     They crunched data from 1995 to 2007 and came up with 407 fatalities over 13 years from "wind-related tree failure."
     "It's not a big number, compared to all other risks we face in our daily lives," he said. "But it is important."
     I sure think so, now. Though my brush with the Pale Rider was due to ice, not wind.
     "We did look at that, yes," said Schmidlin. "We found 14 people - one a year - killed by a tree branch or whole tree overburdened by snow or ice."
     Very rare, but it does happen. Schmidlin mentioned Molly Glynn, the actress killed in Winnetka in 2014 when a tree limb blew down and struck her while she was bicycling.
     "The map of where these deaths occur from fallen trees are the intersection of where people and trees are," he said. "You don't see many deaths in the Great Plains, or the Rocky Mountains. All the fatalities are from Chicago and Houston eastward and in the Pacific Northwest. A lot of people and a lot of trees."
     Here's the odd thing. My heart never raced. I was never scared. In the days since, a certain happy-not-to-be-dead sense has lingered. I can't help but think of all the places where I've been worried about my safety, from the waterfront of Naples to the Cite Soleil slum in Port-au-Prince. The times I screwed up my courage to head into a CHA housing project or joined a sandbag line trying to hold back the rising Mississippi. Every time I thought, "Oh, this is dangerous." And the closest I come to buying the ranch in my life is on an ordinary Monday morning, walking the dog in front of my house on a quiet street in a quiet suburb.
     Well, that's life for you. Avoid those opioids. Trees, you're safe from. Unless you're that one person a year whose number comes up. Then you're not.

SpongeBob: More than "nautical nonsense."

     Sad to hear that SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg died this week, at age 57.
     We boys loved SpongeBob. Loved him. His buddy Patrick, the goofy starfish who was even dimmer than SpongeBob, if such a thing were possible. The power-mad Plankton, desperate to steal the secret recipe for Crabby Patties and spirit it back to his Chum Bucket. The whining Squidward with his jazz passion—there was a jazz critic at the paper who reminded me of Squidward so much, from the nasal whine to the bald dome, that I almost pointed out the similarity to him.
    My boys and I would sing along with the rollicking theme song. "If nautical nonsense be something you wish—SpongeBob SquarePants!—Then drop on the deck and flop like a fish!" We went to the full-length movie. 
     There was inanity for the kiddies. And a grown-up wink often tucked behind all the innocent silliness. I was even able to use a SpongeBob moment to try to make a point about charges of racism, which I think are thrown around much too casually. This column is 16 years old, and might grate a bit with our current pieties: the president wasn't blowing kisses at Nazis back then, so perhaps we enjoyed the luxury of being able to make fine distinctions. 

     In a rare moment of perfect timing, I wandered downstairs this morning, searching for my shoes, just as the TV was showing the deepest, most profound scene in the entire oeuvre of "SpongeBob SquarePants."
     SpongeBob and his friend Patrick Starfish are in the midst of a heated argument that deteriorates into a rapid-fire exchange of insults.
     "You paint your fingernails!" accuses Patrick.
     "You don't even have fingers!" retorts SpongeBob.
     Patrick, clutches his head: "I can't believe I'm hearing this!"
     "How can you hear?" says SpongeBob. "You don't have ears!"
     "Holes!" the starfish yells, pointing at the sponge.
     "Conehead!" he answers.
     "Yellow!"
     "Pink!"
     Now Patrick, who is indeed pink, screaming "Yellow" at SpongeBob, who is in fact yellow, strikes me as the perfect embodiment of what many people choose to interpret as racism or ethnic hate, when it is actually just the expression of a convenient slur.
     It was odd, almost uncanny, to see the episode again this morning, because just the other day I was describing it to a colleague, who had challenged me over my plans to return to a local legend's radio show.
     "How," he said, amazed and indignant. "HOW can you go on Steve Dahl's show after what he said about you?"
     What Dahl said is that I'm a Jew. The week before, I had spent a few hours on Dahl's show plugging my new book. We ended up having a good time, dancing on the corpse of Bob Greene, with such joy and gusto that Dahl asked if I'd come back and do it again next week. I said sure, but then surprised him by adding that I'd return if he paid me something. Fun is a job if you have to do it regularly, or as the great James Thurber once wrote: "Even the most pleasurable of imaginable occupations--that of batting baseballs through the windows of the RCA Building--would pall a little as the days wore on."
     Dahl seemed to understand. "No problem," he said. "We'll take care of you."
     The next week, when I didn't hear from him, I shrugged and figured he let it drop. People typically let things drop. No biggie.
     The next Monday, a friend took me aside. Did I hear what Dahl said about you? He asked, with all intent and seriousness, as if someone had died. A caller wondered why you didn't come back, as you promised, and Dahl ripped you for wanting money and called you a Jew.
     Steve Dahl beating up on somebody who isn't there is typical—of him, me and everybody I've ever met in my entire life. What is rarer is my colleague, and I'm not naming him because he is actually a shy guy, despite his profession, and possessed of the quaint notion that his work should be filled up with other people actually making news. He confronted me, honestly shocked, sincerely curious. This was the oldest, vilest slur against Jews: money-grubbing. How could I associate with anyone who expressed it?
     The worrisome thing, for me, is that it had bothered me not at all. I assume people are anti-Semites. Frankly, I gave Steve credit for expressing his slur on the air, rather than whispering it to his buddies.
     Doesn't this condone it, my colleague demanded, not buying my argument? Doesn't this make the slander more acceptable?
     I told him the SpongeBob story. People get mad, they reach for whatever they think will hurt somebody else. If they're yellow, they call them yellow. If they're pink, they call them pink. There's an editor at the paper whom I've looked at over the years, narrowed my eyes, and thought, unkindly: "You big, Semitic, flame-haired S.O.B." That isn't being bigoted. I'm big, I'm Semitic, I'm—OK, not flame-haired, though I wish I were—but certainly an S.O.B. What it is, and what Steve's crack, and most such cracks are, is collecting every quality you can think of relating to the person you're mad at and spewing them back in a bad light. If I were angry at Reese Witherspoon, I might blurt out, "You button-nosed saccharine little megabucks movie fodder!" That doesn't make these bad qualities.
     Frankly, and this might be a false distinction, I differentiate between the Dahls of the world, airing the biases we all share and suppress, trying to be funny, and, say, the Pat Buchanans, who are pretending they're rational when, in fact, they're hatemongers.
     A lot of entertainment involves insulting someone; you need villains to hijack the planes, dupes to slip on the banana peels. We've purged culture of the traditional butts of villainy and humor, and so are stuck with those unidentifiable Eurotrash terrorists in black sweat shirts and clowns culled from the traditional power elite (Austin Powers is British; imagine if he were Jewish, or black).
     There is so much actual hate in the world (the Palestinian, send-junior-to-the-mall-to-blow-himself-and-a-few-Jews-up hate), I just can't see getting worked up over someone cracking a joke, or trying to. I find the insults flying between SpongeBob and Patrick hysterical. Then again, I am not a sponge or a starfish. We have come to that.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 24, 2002

‘Inquiring Nuns’ holds a mirror to 1967 Chicago, and to ourselves today

Sister Marie Arné, left, and Sister Mary Campion

     Are you happy?
     This simple question underlies "Inquiring Nuns," a charming time capsule returning to the public eye this week, a 66-minute black-and-white documentary of two young nuns going around Chicago in 1967, asking about happiness.
     The film is from Kartemquin Films, a "collaborative community" that has produced 65 movies since it began in 1966, including 1994 "Hoop Dreams."
     The film stars are a pair of Adrian Dominican nuns, Sister Mary Campion and Sister Marie Arné, who are given a microphone and thrown into filmmaking.
     "I'm not exactly sure what we're going to do today," Arné says, in the opening scene. "What do you think works best?"
     For me, the film works on three levels. There is the universal question and its variants: What makes you happy? What makes you unhappy?
     There are the unnamed Chicagoans of half a century ago: how they dress, how they speak ("You mean Fadder Buckley?" asks a man from Berwyn). The streets behind them. The Art Institute, a supermarket, the crowd letting out after church at St. Columbanus Church on East 71st Street.
     And third, the movie's stars, the nuns.
     Our cliched notions of the '60s are almost entirely absent: hair is merely longish, no beads or hippie garb. Though the first person approached, a round young woman greets the question with, "Groovy. Yeah, I'm happy. I really am." Most of the men wear coats, ties and fedoras, while many of the women view happiness through a very conventional lens.
     "My husband and his success..." replies one. "That's what makes me happy."
     I admired the brio of a woman in sunglasses who looks at the nuns and replies:
     "There are three big things that make a person happy," ticking them off on her fingers. "Sex, social life and ... what's the other? ... your work."
     Some replies are joyfully incongruous.
     "We like raspberries," says a man with his wife in a supermarket. "We pick raspberries, wild."
     The most common topic—at least six people mention it—is what one calls "the present conflict we are having right now, the Vietnam situation."
     For a modest documentary, "Inquiring Nuns" has surprising star-power. First there is the score, composed by minimalist icon Philip Glass (who had met one of the filmmakers at the University of Chicago).
     And second, the nuns talk to Lincoln Perry, who used the stage name, Stepin Fetchit, a vaudevillian who became the first black movie star to get a screen credit. Perry reaches into his pocket and pulls out a thick stack of photographs, which he starts handing to the nuns, one by one.
     "There's me and Shirley Temple," he says. "There's me and Will Rogers."
     Both nuns soon left the order and started families. Kathleen Reinmuth—the former Sister Marie Arné—now lives in New Buffalo, Michigan. Cathy Rock lives in Florida. When I caught up with Reinmuth, she looked back on the film with mixed feelings.
     "This is the movie that will never go away," she said. "I was 23. When I look back, personally, I often get embarrassed. I look so young and naive about things. But when I watch it with other people ... I can step out of myself."
     How did the pair of nuns wind up in the movie?
     "I was involved with a film group through the parish of St. Denis," Reinmuth said. "We were already showing movies like 'Night and Fog.' The archdiocese decided to do an adult education program using film, and hired Gordon Quinn and Gerry Temaner to do three films. I think they came up with the idea of doing one on happiness, using nuns."
     While it is natural to focus on the people talking, Reinmuth said it is also important not to miss the nuns listening.
     "Listening is such a gift to people," she said. "To ask a question, then really listen and let them talk. I kept thinking, 'Wow, they really wanted to talk.'"

"Inquiring Nuns" will be screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, Friday Nov. 30 through Thursday, Dec. 6. Filmmaker Gordon Quinn will attend three showings for an audience discussion. For details, see the Siskel Film Center web site. (Editor's note: This was in 2018, so don't go now. It's not there).

The Chicago 21

     Twenty-one.
     That doesn't sit quite right on the page right. Just a number. Imagine it said with a pinched kind of vague Eastern European accent.
     Twantee wahn...
     Better.
     Twenty-one candidates running for Chicago mayor.
     Treated with respect by my colleague Fran Spielman at the Sun-Times.
     I marvel how she can do that. Me, a story about 21 mayoral candidates could be titled "Invitation to Wack-a-mole." It really makes you want to roll out the old rhetorical chain gun and start blasting away.
     I mean, there were only seven dwarfs in "Snow White," and even that was way too much. Twenty-one is way too many for a field of candidates. Add one more and they can divide up and play a game of regulation football.
     It's better to view them as a mass, The Chicago 21. Start to view them as individuals and, well, it's endless.
     Besides, they'll cancel each other out, eventually, and we'll be left with Toni Preckwinkle and Garry McCarthy. We don't have to criticize, we don't even have to learn their names. All we have to do is wait.
     Which is not to dismiss the rest. Amara Enyia, an intriguing candidate, her second bite at the mayoral apple given a boost by Chance the Rapper. Hope that election cash can come from more people than Ken Griffin and J.D. Pritzker. 
    Or Gery Chico, an actual adult who doesn't spend the years in between mayoral runs in deep freeze storage.
     But Paul Vallas? He's hardly worth the breath to ridicule. Really, do you need me to explain why Bob Fioretti is a joke? Because I'm reluctant, in part because the last time I did, it upset one of his unbalanced supporters so much he writes to me continually. It all goes to spam, but still, every so often, when I gaze into the spam filter the way a man will open a handkerchief after a healthy blow to examine the result, I'll spy this guy, and it's like one of those science fiction movies, where the monster is contained in some kind of special pressure device, all steel and bolts and thick shatterproof glass. And you can see the thing, pressing against the little window and the containment vessel vibrates a little, and you can hear it shrieking through the seals. It's unsettling.
     So let's leave Bob alone. If I thought there was a chance he could become mayor I would go down to City Hall, dressed in a white jerkin, dowse myself in gasoline and set myself on fire. Metaphorically, that is.
     I'd rather focus on the attention on Bill Daley. Last I looked, he was going to go on a listening tour, visiting senior centers and stuff, trying to find some ideas because he hadn't any. How's that working, Bill? Get some good ones? Well, let us know....
     Dorothy Brown. Let's end with her, because this isn't a proper column, just some monstrosity I'm disgorging to keep you occupied on a Tuesday. I would be loath to describe Brown in a dry, journalistic way, because, times being what they are, I'd be accused of treating her unkindly because she's black, or a woman, ignoring the fact that Toni Preckwinkle is both and I think she's swell. The Republican Party might be laid low by a plague of irrationality, but the bug can be found elsewhere.
     And to be honest, I don't have to castigate Brown, all I have to do is check my files. Pointing out Dorothy Brown's flaws is practically a full-time job. We should have a Dorothy Brown Flaw Reporter. I'll limit myself to two:
     From March 10, 2004:
     What would be coming out of the clerk's office if Dorothy Brown hadn't ordered her employees to keep their mouths shut? As it is, they're dishing dirt like frenzied ditch diggers. Two great accusations came zipping my way: a) that Brown has her security detail empty out elevators before she uses them, and b) that this same security detail also pulls her boots on for her. Devoted to the requirements of the form, I ran this by Brown, who responded a) no, she uses the judges' elevators and b) no, they don't.
     At this point I thought the fair thing to do would be not to print these baseless charges. I checked with two editors here, who said:
     a) "Why start being fair now?" and b) "It's election season."
     See, it isn't just me.
     From Sept. 3, 2006:
     God bless Dorothy Brown. She's the perkiest person I have ever met in politics, bar none. The Cook County Circuit Court clerk has more spunk than an Olympic gymnast. She makes Katie Couric seem like Eeyore.
     Have you met the woman? Imbued with energy, excruciatingly well-mannered and the grace of God flowing from her like glow off a light-bulb. Her cringing subordinates might paint a different picture, but that's how she comes across during her visits to the newspaper.
     Of course, she can't run her own department, never mind run the city, not that she'll get the chance: Mayor Daley will crush her like an egg.
     Still, while she lasts, she should provide an interesting contrast to the morose Saul sulking on the fifth floor of City Hall: Daley, the sourest, most visibly unhappy man to hold elective office in America since Calvin Coolidge retired to Vermont, vs. Dorothy Brown, who seems about to bust out into song at any given moment. I'd like to pretend she'll give the mayor a run for his money and he'll only get 70 percent of the vote this time. But I doubt it.

Storm flashback, 1999: "A heart finds warmth in a frigid city"

     Admit it. You anticipated the arrival of the blizzard on Sunday with a certain thrill. Setting in supplies, making preparations, half anxious, half eager. I took in the flag and the umbrella, covered the grill and gassed up the snow blower, while Edie went to Sunset for milk and bread and grapefruit. I kept track of the weather situation as if I were in charge of it.

     Both boys' flights back East were cancelled, and while a trip to O'Hare is in the cards for Monday afternoon, that'll be it. I don't have a column in the paper today—since I was technically off for the Thanksgiving holiday Thursday, yet still wrote a column for Friday's paper, my boss told me not to write one for today. A break I gratefully accepted, though not without being a little nostalgic for the days when duty would send me downtown in such a storm, exploring the city, such as this column, from 1999, relates:

     Of all the memories I'll carry away from this week's storm—struggling across IBM Plaza in Saturday's arctic gale, one hand trying to pull my parka hood down over my face, the other clinging to one of those ropes, or walking in the middle of a deserted downtown street late that night, not a car around, just hunched figures loping off in the distance—the one I'll cherish most is an unexpected greeting from a guy shoveling on Oakdale Avenue.
     It was a struggle just to get there, to get home after work Monday. No cabs on Wabash. Nothing on Michigan. I reluctantly joined the throng at the bus stop across from the Wrigley Building, only to have three jam-packed buses blow by. I then wandered north on Michigan, looking for cabs, contemplating trekking over to the L station, several painful blocks west.
     Then the cavalry arrived. A bunch of empty CTA buses roared down the street, lumbering to the rescue. I joined the two dozen people shivering at the bus stop and struggled aboard.
     The bus illustrated how people shed their reserve in a crisis (well, semi-crisis). The windows were completely frosted over—you couldn't see. The driver wouldn't call out the stops, so nobody knew where we were. An enterprising young woman in almond-sized eyeglasses tapped the lady in front of her and told her to pass up the request to the driver that he announce the stops. I was positioned so I could watch the message move several people up the aisle, then stall out at a Julia Roberts-like lady who obviously couldn't bring herself to tap the hulking bald man in front of her and speak to him.
     A well-dressed executive-type next to me, sitting by the window, instituted Plan B, the careful creation, with his gloved thumb, of a small porthole in the frost to peer through, trying to determine where the bus might be. He called out the stops, when he could.
     The trip only took twice as long as usual, and was marked by bonhomie unusual for public transportation. People looked at each other, smiled, spoke. A woman in a full-length fur coat and matching headband remarked to me that this was turning into quite an adventure, and I responded that my wife had a coat exactly like hers, and thus can't understand what all this "cold" talk is about. (Maybe it's nerves, but I've noticed that if a strange woman speaks to me, on whatever subject, my answer invariably includes a reference to my wife. Some sort of self-preservation instinct, the way a possum will play dead if threatened).
     I left the bus, crossed Sheridan Road, and passed a guy digging his car out from the 3-foot-tall berm of snow kicked up by the city plow. He surprised me by greeting me. I stopped, squinting through my scarves, to see if I knew him. I didn't. I said hello and waited. Maybe he wanted me to help him shovel. 

     "Do you think you'll get your car out?" I said, as a prompt. He said he did. There was a pause. "Well, make sure you mark the place with a chair," I said. "People seem to be doing that. Maybe the space will be there when you get back." He went back to digging. I quickstepped up the street toward home, marveling at this bit of small-town small chat.
     What is it about extreme weather that brings out friendliness in people? You'd think it would be the other way around. That beautiful summer days, with soft zephyr winds puffing off the lake, would inspire people to suddenly start talking on the bus and greeting strangers.
     But they don't. Warm weather is when tempers flare and fistfights break out at the beach. And when the city is blanketed with record amounts of snow, suddenly we're leaping to join others pushing at the back of cars as their wheels spin.
     It's as if there is some human need for warmth, and if the weather doesn't provide it, we have to provide it ourselves. At least it's pretty to think so.

               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 7, 1999

The holiday season is upon us

   

     Christmas is a month from today.
     The holiday season.
     Or, if you prefer,
     The Christmas season.
     A month of .... what?
     Buying.
     Selling.
     Eating,
     Drinking.
     Stringing lights.
     Against the gathering winter darkness.
     Expressing goodwill toward men.
     And women.
     And, lately, those in between.
     Among some of us, at least.
     Among others, not so much.
     Expressing hostility toward our fellow men.
     And women.
     And those in between.
     And not even knowing it.
     A friend posted one of those memes on Facebook:
     "IT'S NOT HAPPY HOLIDAYS
     IT'S MERRY CHRISTMAS
     SHARE TO AGREE!!!
     Not just a Facebook friend.
     But a friend friend.
     Someone I know in the living world.
     Or thought I knew anyway
     A good guy, big, effusive
     Someone who, the last time I saw him.
     Expressed sincere gratitude for something I'd written.
     With tears in his eyes.
     What to do?
     Usually I'd just ignore it.
     Life is too short for Facebook spats.
     But someone I knew.
     Or thought I knew.
     So I spoke my mind:
     "C'mon George," I wrote. "Eyes on the big picture."
     "How about, 'It's whatever the fuck you feel like saying'?
     "Isn't that the American way?"
     "I'm surprised at you, dictating to folks what they can say to each other to express their holiday ... whoops, excuse me, CHRISTMAS cheer."
      And moved on.
      Maybe that seems harsh.
      That f-bomb.
      But I think of it as loving.
      As expressing an indomitable hope
      In the perfectibility of my fellow man.
      And woman
      And those in between. 
      Because if these past two years have taught us anything.
      It is not about the jaw-dropping constellation of flaws
      Concentrated in one particular human
      But in how those flaws vibrate sympathetically
      In so many other people.
      How easily they are lead astray from sense.
      From decency
      And our supposed American values
      And the supposed warmth of the holiday...
      Excuse me, Christmas season.
      So that even hello can be 
      Crafted into a weapon.
      The good-hearted holiday greeting
      Recognizing our frequent differences.
      Can be sharpened into a pointed stick
      To shove up somebody's ass.
      Just for the joy of doing so.
      For that little false high of self-superiority
      That all this is about.
      The dominance 
      That some of us need to feel.
      All the year round. 
      Even during the holiday ... .
      Whoops Christmas season
      And all that BS about goodwill
     But so as not to end on that note I will point out
     That though people can be led astray
     They also can be coaxed to return
     To the fold of humanity
     That we all belong to.
     In theory.
     That is what the holiday season is supposedly about.
     Or the Christmas season.
     If you prefer.
     One month out of 12. 
     I don't know about you.
     But I could use one of genuine warmth
     And real fellowship.
     And so speaking solely for myself.
     I prefer to err on the side of 
     Kindness
    And charity.
    And lots of hope
    Hope for the redemption of my fellow men.
    And women.
    And those in between. 


     

Saturday Snapshot #16

     The Merchandise Mart is an enormous building: four million square feet. When it opened in 1930, it was the largest office building in the world. And while more massive buildings have opened since, it still holds its own as a vast space.
      As such, there is no shortage of nooks and corners to hunker down, check your email, read a book, do whatever you need, in relative privacy.
      Which made me puzzle over this pair of Jabbrrbox units spied in the second floor corridor last week. They're new, private rental spaces to do business: make a phone call, check your email. They provide power, WiFi. It's as if someone re-invented the phone booth, then tried to charge $30 an hour for the privilege of using it. Eight of them were installed in LaGuardia airport earlier this year. They are soundproof, with a video screen, a camera for conference calls, variable lighting, and a few other features.
     Didn't phone booths die out when they were free? To be honest, I can't imagine using a Jabbrrbox, particularly not at the Mart, an environment rich with remote vistas where a person or a platoon could set up camp and work uninterrupted. A 30 second stroll away from the Jabbrrboxes is this utterly abandoned area where you could convene a Security Council meeting in utter privacy. I sat there for 15 minutes reading a newspaper and never saw another person, with all the room I needed to spread out and be comfortable. And it was free.
    The Jabbrrboxes, on the other hand, are quite cramped. Did I call them phone booths? Or coffins; I can't tell, I wasn't going to pop the money to try one. I suppose there are situations where they might come in handy: in noisy airports, if you are on an expense account and need to shut out the world so you can make that life-or-death conference call. But even then, you could go to a restaurant, order a nice dinner for the price of an hour in the Jabbrrbox, and both eat and have a workspace to yourself.
     Perhaps I am too far removed from the corporate mindset to accurately made a judgment call on this one. But I would call it a solution in search of a problem.