Gutenberg to BuzzFeed, ‘theatre of information’ changes, and so do we

 Gutenberg Bible, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

     Gutenberg went bankrupt.
     Forgive me for leaping to today’s point so abruptly. But I want to get that on the table right away, for those readers who shrug after a few lines and rush off to “Pearls Before Swine.”
     That fact is important, yet overlooked. The average reader is vaguely aware that Johannes Gutenberg was a 15th-century German who printed the first book using moveable type, a Bible, now rare — 49 copies, to be exact. (So rare, there are none in Illinois: two pages at the Newberry Library; one at The Art Institute. Otherwise, the nearest copy is at Indiana University.)
     They do not know that Gutenberg started printing Bibles in March 1455 and by November had gone bankrupt and lost his printing press.
     I mention this now, in this moment, as digital media is being rattled by failure and mass firings: 1,000 employees sacked in recent weeks at BuzzFeed, AOL, HuffPost and Vice Media. Newspapers are shedding staff, as technology relentlessly undercuts the established order, and nobody can figure out how to stop the process. Flash: We can’t. The old way is over. A few living fossils might survive; I’m hoping to become the horseshoe crab of Chicago media. But generally, we’re sailing off into a new world and never going back.
     BuzzFeed, et al., are in the same business Gutenberg was in — selling words for money — and grasping his struggles might give us insight into our own.
     Gutenberg’s Bibles were expensive — 20 gulden, when a stone house in Mainz went for 80 gulden. Think $100,000 in today’s money. Printing these books took time, and getting the monasteries who bought copies to pony up took even longer. The new product worked — people wanted printed books — but money was slow in coming.
     Sound familiar? Early printers struggled to figure out how to keep their heads above water.

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The best grapefruit EVER!

     Humor often doesn't translate well, and sometimes the funnier the moment, the more delicate and difficult to dig up and transplant.
    So from the start, I want to acknowledge that it will take a bit of careful spadework to move this from memory and make it blossom here. Perhaps the humor will be lost. But we will try.
    First, context. I eat a grapefruit, almost every day, at breakfast. Several reasons: I like grapefruit. They're low in calories and filling: 120 calories for a big honking softball-sized fruit. And then there is Vitamin C, and that wonderful tart smell. I've lauded grapefruit here in the past.
    To feed this habit, we are constantly toting five-pound bags of grapefruit home from the supermarket. Grapefruit aren't always good: they can be dry, or too sour. Sometimes I buy one, test the batch, then later return for more. It takes effort.
    My wife doesn't eat grapefruit as much, but she will snack on oranges. Which is a novel practice to me. I would never, ever reach into the refrigerator, pull out an orange, and eat is as a mid-afternoon pick-me-up. Just not something I do.
     A few days ago, my wife cut up an orange and sat down at the kitchen table where I sat, reading the newspaper. She offered me an orange section. It was a perfect-looking orange, the perfect color, the surface glistening with juice, all without flaw.
     I accepted her offer, held the section to my mouth—as kids we'd tuck the skin behind our lips to make orange smiles, but I didn't do that. I bite it. The orange was very sweet, ripe, rich, wonderful.
     I wasn't about to take more sections. That would be poor thanks for her having offered me one. But now I was hungry, hungry for oranges, so I did something unusual. I went into the fridge, removed my own orange, and cut it into sections, of course offering her one to replace the one she had offered me. Nearly 30 years of marriage; manners are important.
      My wife observed that it was unusual to see me eating an orange. Usually I'm a grapefruit man.
      "I like it..." I mused. "It's sweet. It's like the best grapefruit ever." 
     My wife collapsed into laughter, declaring this the funniest thing I had ever said. I'm not sure why. I think it's the grapefruit-o-centric view of oranges, seeing them as a smaller, sweeter version of grapefruits. A naive, a sweetness itself perhaps. But anyway, she was laughing about it a day later, and I thought I would try to pass it along, knowing that I would almost inevitably fall short.

Trans folks are lucrative Night of the Living Dead threat to frightened faithful

     There are not a lot of transgender citizens of the United States — figures I see hover at around half a percent. Still a significant number of people: about 1.5 million. But not like they’re crowding me.
     Looking over my 58 years on earth, I can’t think of any interaction whatsoever outside of my duties as a professional journalist. None that I noticed. No doubt I have run into trans folks and been unaware.
     What I’m trying to say is, the existence of transgender Americans has not been rattling my windows, certainly not the way it does certain individuals who profess to be religious. To hear them describe it, the transgender community is a kind of Night of the Living Dead assault, an inexorable force on the march. That people exist who do not identify with their birth gender is an earthquake, a revolution, one they will not tolerate, this pickaxe aimed at their own wobbly sense of self. It is something terrifying. Something to be stopped.
     Last week I received an email from Brian S. Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage. His effort to stop gay marriage was a flop, so, like the March of Dimes shifting from polio to birth defects, he re-deployed his forces in the fight to keep the world exactly as he imagines it should be.
     Brown’s letter begins:

Dear Friend — I have been saying for a while that the push by LGBT extremists to impose gender ideology on society has reached insane proportions. Take what is happening in California, for instance.

The Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee of the California Legislature, a Democrat, has declared that people who testify before the committee will be prohibited from referring to another individual using male or female pronouns such as ‘he’ or ‘she,’ ‘him’ or ‘her.’ Instead, the rules now require the use of the pronouns, ‘they.’ The rule change was made to endorse gender neutrality so that “transgendered” and “non-binary” people are not offended with the use of a pronoun that doesn’t fit their gender identity.

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Sometimes less cold is plenty warm

 

     It was 7 degrees out Friday morning when I went to walk the dog.
     "It's still cold outside!" my wife cautioned me, from the warmth of our bed.
    Yes, yes, dear, I said, nevertheless refraining from putting on the ski pants I had worn for the past half dozen dog walks. Or the glove liners. Or the scarf wrapped around my face. Or the shop goggles.
     Seven degrees. Not much. But 29 more than the day before.
     I clipped the dog to her leash and we left the house. Outside and it was ... nice. It felt pleasant. Walking down the street, smiling, I thought of an old tale, that goes like this:

     A young husband living in a small studio in Wicker Park goes to see his rabbi with a problem...
     (Yes, traditionally these stories take place in a nameless village in Poland. But times change, and I try to keep up).
     "Rabbi," the young man says. "My apartment is so small. And now with the baby, it is even smaller. Life is unbearable. What should I do?"
     "Do you have a chicken?" the rabbi says.  Of course, the young man says, I have a chicken, out in its chicken coop in the alley.
     (Okay, these traditional Jewish folktales do not translate that well to modern American life, but bear with me).
     "Bring the chicken in the house with you," the rabbi says.
     The young man does so. The next day he returns.
     "Rabbi, I did what you told me to do, and brought the chicken in. But now it's even worse. The chicken is flapping, feathers flying, the baby howling, my wife complaining. With all due respect, this was not a solution to my problem."
     "Wait," the rabbi said. "Do you have a goat?"
     The man admits that he has a goat.
    "Bring the goat into the apartment."
    You see where this is going. It makes a good camp story. You can add as many animals as you like: a donkey, a cow, a horse, though those last two wouldn't really belong to a poor man. You can be descriptive, with the flapping chicken and the braying mule and the chomping goat. The poor young man, desperate now, returns to the rabbi. "Please, rabbi, this is madness!" the man says, at his wit's end.
     "Fine," smiles the rabbi. "Now take them all out of the house."
     The story ends the next day as the man returns, grateful, and thanks the rabbi for the miracle he has rendered. Without the animals, the apartment no longer seems small.

     The story is about relativity. Twenty below was really cold. Dangerously, painfully cold. Seven, on any other day, would be bleepin' cold. But after 20 below, it felt balmy. Here's the interesting thing. Later in the day it was 20 degrees above zero. And that felt fine, but not as nice as it had Friday morning. And Saturday it was 40. And while that was certainly an improvement, it didn't have the joyous release that 7 degrees had. The closest I can figure is that people adjust after changes. Twenty below seemed miserable for two days, and 7 was a release from misery. Once you have been released from misery — 7, 20, 40 — you're free, and the rest is just details.
   
 

The Saturday Snapshot #25

     I don't think I took any photographs during the astoundingly cold pair of days we had midweek. It was just ... too ... cold. I'd have to take my gloves off. Madness. In fact, Wednesday and Thursday, I left the house six times: to walk the dog. Otherwise, the cold seemed in my bones, and I sprawled around the house, too tired to even read.
     But reader Nikki D. stepped into the gap, snapping this Wednesday, noting:

     I took this today during the polar vortex cold, and it's an unaltered photo. This is the view of my side yard, our neighbors are there in the background. It seemed as though it was too cold for colors, almost like I stepped into a film noir.  

     "Too cold for colors"—I like that. Poetic. That could be the title of a children's book, something starting in the black and white winter, with perhaps a trace of bluish snow, then bursting into floral yellows and reds and purples come spring—Friday morning certainly felt springlike, a balmy 7 degrees...
      Scale is hard to tell in this photo, at least for me. Is the tree small, a crab-apple perhaps? It looks that way, at first glance. Or is it large? It seems to grow if you compare it to what seems like a brick outdoor stove nearby.
      Anyway, I don't want to overthink this one today. Thanks to Nikki for sending it in, and I encourage other readers to get off their cans and share a shot or two of their own. It's a game anyone can play. 

What’s next? ‘Hi, this is a scam! Grab your wallet so we can cheat you!’

"First Scene of Thieves," by Gror (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

  

     My iPhone rings. An 800 number, calling me. Which might as well flash a red “SCAM!”
     But I am a curious sort.
     “Dear citizen …” an ominous robotic voice begins. “Due to a certain suspicious activity, we are forced to suspend your Social Security number to immediate effect. Due to this your benefits will be cancelled …”
     I’ve received this call 14 times over the last two weeks of January.
     “In order to connect with a Social Security administration officer, press '1' now,” it continues. “In case we do not hear from you, your Social will be blocked permanently. Press '1' now, and you will automatically be connected with a concerned department official.”
     I admire that “concerned” — a nice touch. Who doesn’t want to believe there is a soul in the government who cares? Once I broke down and pressed “1,” though the person I then connected with sounded, to me, not so much concerned as confused. A harried drone in a Third World basement boiler room. They immediately asked for my Social Security number. “You’re the one who called me,” I said, hanging up.
     “Social Security numbers do not get suspended,” the Federal Trade Commission points out on its web page devoted to this scam. “Ever.”
     Are there people who don’t know this? Apparently so. Which raises the question: Why base your scam on something a halfway savvy person knows to be false?  

"Second Scene of Thieves," by Gror (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

   
     For exactly that reason. Because scammers want to weed out those with discernment. Fraud isn’t about duping everybody. It’s about identifying the most credulous, the choicest marks, and going after them. It’s a manpower issue. What scamster wants to laboriously lead a would-be mark along, only to have him balk at buying $3,000 in Apple gift cards to pay off a delinquent tax bill? Falling for the obvious initial gambit means you are more likely to keep giving, information and even cash.
     Scams fall into two categories: fear and greed. The Social Security number is a fear scam. The terrifying and mysterious government is about to drop kick you into oblivion. There are similar scams involving the IRS, which will never call you demanding payment. Or Com-Ed, calling to say your power is about to be cut.

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It isn't the cows

Metropolitan Museum of Art

    It's amazing how long you can know something without ever thinking about it.
    For instance.
    Chicago, "hog butcher for the world," yadda yadda. Union Stockyards. We all know it. Cows to slaughter. "The Jungle." Familiar to us all.
     So what was the revolutionary part? The big breakthrough that allowed Chicago to kill all those cattle?
     The chutes? The pens? The hooks? The railroads?
     No.
     Don't feel bad if you don't get it. I'd never get it; I never even thought to ask before Tuesday, and I was reading about ...
     No, before I give away the game, lets do a thought experiment. You run a Chicago slaughterhouse. It's 1877. The cows show up, I don't know, from Kansas, and Iowa, and wherever cows come from. They're led, snorting and foaming, into your slaughterhouse. Where you have all these big Lithuanians with cleavers, Stav and Jurgis and whatever. They kill the cows, and the pigs.
     Then what? Think. It's August. You have all these dead cows and pigs in a bloody heap in your slaughterhouse. What do you do with them?
      Sell them, right? Where do you sell them? To whom? Chicagoans? It's a big city, but we can eat enough to make you a titan.
      Hint: "hog butcher for the world."
      Right. You sell your beef and pork to the world.
     How do you get it there?
     On trains, right?
     So it's August, you kill all these cows and pigs, cut them up, load the meat on trains and ship it to points East.
     Do you see a problem? What happens to the meat? It spoils, right, in about six hours. Which is why the meat slaughtering industry was seasonal. You didn't slaughter in summer. The meat went bad too fast.
     Okay, enough mystery. You need to cool the meat. Which is why, in 1877, Gustavus Swift sent an open railcar filled with sides of beef in the dead of winter back to his former home in Boston. To show it could be done. And how he shipped meat for the next five years, until contracting with the Michigan Rail Car Company to design special insulated rail cars to hold ice, yet keep it from touching the beef and turning it black. He had to set up ice depots along the way to replenish the ice, and overcome resistance from the railroads, which preferred bulkier (and more profitable) live animals, as well as public revulsion with "mummified" meat (butcher shops would display signs, "No Chicago dressed meat sold here") which he did by selling it for far less, since it cost less to ship. Swift was the Uber of his day: a big chain driving out the locals with a vast system.
     It was an enormous organizational effort. Swift "had to buy ice-harvesting rights in lakes all over northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin so that he might have the ice for chilling his beef and loading the ice boxes of his cars at Chicago," his son recalled. "He had to develop icing stations all the way across the country to his markets in the East—the railroads would not build them. Then he had to get the ice-harvesting facilities to supply these stations. he had to build ice houses of huge capacity."
     The railroads wouldn't build them because they preferred shipping live cattle—more profit. But Swift wanted to maximize the value he was shipping. Swift also pushed other innovations: butchers did not typically display the meat they sold. Swift wanted customers to see it, which meant they came to value particular cuts and pay more. He almost didn't care what people paid for his beef, as long as they bought it and became customers. As I said, the Uber of his day.
     "Dressed beef profoundly disrupted the traditional American beef trade," William Cronon observed in"Nature's Metropolis." "Dressed beef brought the entire nation—and Great Britain as well—into Chicago's hinterland."
    But not without resistance. In 1887, the Butchers' National Protective Association was formed with the central purpose of deflecting Chicago beef.
    Not to get lost in the details. What's important to remember is, it was the ice that changed things particularly the car designed by Andrew Chase, at Swift's request: Chase used ice to chill air that chilled the beef. Suddenly slaughtering cattle was a year-round business, a round-the-clock business, since any refrigerated rail car that left Chicago with an empty cubic foot of space was wasting money. Which also led to the huge, consolidated system, because it was expensive to create and maintain this cold supply chain, first with ice, then with mechanically refrigerated cars and warehouses. Driving the small fry out of business.
     Swift's competitors leapt in. Philip Armour created the Armour Refrigerated Line in 1883, and by 1900 it owned 11,000 refrigerated railcars.
     This was supposed to go into yesterday's column. But I had that opening sentence about freezing to death, and sailed off from there, and this was all so complicated, that I never got to what I thought was the most interesting part. Just as well, because I get to tell you now. History, like life, is not fair, and it does not always emphasize the most interesting part. We think it's the cows. But it's not; it's the ice.