2007 flashback: Maritime law vs. the love boat

      I don't want to spoil the opening joke of this column. Just to say, after you read it, and want to immediately act, there is the convenient Eli's Cheesecake link to the left. This ran back when the column was a full page, and I've left in the original section headings. Though I'll warn you, it runs a thousand words, and if it seems to go on forever, well, yeah, it seemed that way to me, too. Nobody says you have to finish the thing, but I'm including it all for anyone so inclined.

Opening shot

     There are three key issues relating to Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which, while perhaps striking the average reader as tedious in the extreme, are in fact so important to our global ocean habitat that I'm going to devote my entire column today to carefully analyzing them.
     Issue No. 1 relates to seabed mining provisions . . .
     Nah, not really. I just wanted to drive away the fair-weather reader. Why should the easily discouraged benefit by the secret knowledge that I'm about to impart?
     Today is Wednesday, Feb. 7. Which means—and I don't know why you need me to point this out, but apparently you do, because otherwise you'd wait until the last minute, as always —that a week from today is Valentine's Day.
     Time fleets. You've already blown your New Year's resolutions. Christmas was, as usual, a depressing disaster. Valentine's Day is your last chance before the Mother's Day/Father's Day nexus to get it right.
     Here is my central piece of advice: Whatever gift you're going to buy, get it by Friday. Don't wait.
     Because forethought is three-fourths of the present, particularly in longtime relationships, when surprise is most elusive.
     Those who procrastinate—who tell themselves, "Hey, I've got a whole week"—wake up and it's Feb. 14 and they're in a rugby scrum for the last gleanings at Fannie May's. They end up with sagging White Hen carnations.
     Sure, it's a challenge to grab the paddles and deliver a jolt to romance. I don't know what you should do for your sweetie; I have a tough enough time thinking up something to wow my wife, never mind wow yours. But whatever it is, do it by Friday. Time is fleeting.

Recherche du froid perdu

     Smell is the most nostalgic of the senses. A certain scent of boiled hot dog and baked bean, and I am cast back to the Fairwood Elementary School lunchroom, my pudgy hand hesitating above a plate of ice cream sandwich halves, bisected and sold for a nickel, trying to pick one where the lunch lady's slice faltered, making it a quarter-inch longer than the others.
     Or preparing for the weather Tuesday. The walk from the station to the office Monday had been like blowing bubbles in a bowl of cold acid. So I wrapped my Irish lambswool scarf around my face.
     One whiff of that breath-moisted wool and I was transported back to the white moonscape of my boyhood, to that frosty suburban noplace, kicking a chunk of snow down the sidewalk, wearing a brown corduroy Mighty Mac coat and a hat knitted by my grandmother, a hat whose pompon had been snipped off, at my insistence, as a show of maturity.
     Why do young people equate casting off their clothing with coolness? Figurative coolness, as opposed to literal. Shuffling up Wacker Drive, I noticed that the underdressed pedestrians were invariably in their 20s, youngsters braving the elements hatless, gloveless, wearing a thin spring jacket instead of the Eddie Bauer Gore-Tex Ridge Line Robert Falcon Scott Edition Arctic Coat System I wore.
     Bundle up, people. It's cold out there. There's nobody to impress. We wrap our children so thickly because we love them and don't want them to be cold. Dress yourself like somebody loves you, and the cold weather will bring only warm memories.

The more the merrier

     They don't invite me to the editorial board meetings anymore. I detract from the air of gravitas, apparently.
     Then again, you didn't have to actually be in the room with Todd Stroger Monday to see his problem at Cook County.
     Passing in the hallway was enough.
     It was like a lackey convention. Too many to actually cram into the board room. So they sat, thumbing their BlackBerrys, or talking into cell phones, or wandering about, examining the photos on the walls.
     I couldn't tell who was an underling and who was a coatholder, who was playing security and who was somebody's ne'er-do-well cousin. But they made quite an assemblage. One reporter counted eight—in my view, there might have been 80.
     All vanity, of course. When Sen. Dick Durbin, who has become one of the most powerful politicians in America, arrives for our periodic breakfasts, he is usually by himself, as befits a politician in a democratic society.
     Then again, Durbin is a savvy statesman, not a flailing, tone-deaf whelp like Stroger, padding the payroll with his relatives even while under close scrutiny, just like his father did. Who can't even grasp that just as charity begins at home, so does economy.

The readers speak

     I don't normally print fan mail—it violates my air of Christ-like humility. But this e-mail, sent under the heading, "Sometimes you're ok" is too splendid not to share:

Mr. Steinberg,I read your column most days depending on my mood, and I am glad to see that you are less of a jerk than you used to be. I always like when you write about your sons. I do want to commend you for the very nice piece you wrote on MLK day. I was a little surprised to be honest.Paula Taylor

Today's chuckle

     Vol. VIII of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud is titled Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, and it struck me as a stroke of brilliance—or a sign of desperation—to pull down the light blue book and see what it might have to offer.
     I only wish space permitted me to do more than suggest how spectacularly unfunny most of Freud's jokes are, undone by a near complete shift in cultural references—nobody eats salmon mayonnaise anymore, there are few marriage brokers, we don't know where Galicia is, never mind the reputations of Jews there. Then of course there are nearly insurmountable problems because of translation, which the editor struggles in vain to overcome.
     "In the German the first syllables of 'spas' [Bader] and "brooms" [Besen] sound alike," he explains, unhelpfully. "And in the German proverb the last word is 'well' [gut]."
     Oh I see! Ah-hah-hah.
     But there are enough funny Freud jokes—or at least funnyish jokes—to warrant launching Freud Joke Week, if only to justify my plowing through the damn thing.
     Much of what he presents as jokes are actually pithy phrases, such as the following, which might not be humorous, but certainly is true:

Human life falls into two halves. In the first half, we wish the second half would come. In the second half, we wish the first one were back.

              —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 7, 2007

"Nice country you've got here, shame to have anything BAD happen to it..."

   

     I wrote this before I realized I had gotten an old pre-Valentine's column ready to go, months ago. Well, no rules against filing MORE than once every goddamn day. Just don't get used to it. 

    Yeah, I listened to Tuesday's State of the Union address, the whole 80 minutes, though they seemed like 800. I couldn't understand fellow Dems who "boycotted" it or stayed away with a flourish of self-importance, as if Trump would miss them. That's why we lose. We don't stare the thing we're fighting in the face. I sent out a few aghast tweets, lost in the vast ocean of Twitter snark, for all the good that did.
    A few aspects stood out. The way Trump, representing his entire generation of American exceptionalists, returned again and again to the theme of World War II—he brought in three D-Day vets to sit in the chamber. Highly ironic for an isolationist president who adopted "America First," the slogan of Lindbergh and all the crypto-Nazis who didn't want to enter the war at all. You'd think the man wasn't withdrawing American power and influence from the world stage with both hands. 
    Then there was his prattling on about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, which I'm sure his adviser, the Jewish fascist Stephen Miller, thought a delicious piece of gaslighting, and no doubt drew chortles from the gang at Stormfront and 4Chan. Make no mistake: Jews fall for this shit as readily as anybody else. I'll never forget running into them, yamulke proudly in place, at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Of course they had their reasons.
    To me, the only part of the State of the Union that seems significant the next morning was his thinly disguised pleading to be let off the hook for whatever crimes the Mueller investigation has been laboriously cataloguing.
    "The decision is ours to make," Trump said, early on. "We must choose between greatness or gridlock, results or resistance, vision or vengeance, incredible progress or pointless destruction. Tonight, I ask you to choose greatness. "

     That would be resistance to him, remember, and his bigoted, ignorant, vindictive policies. Vengeance against him, for selling out his country to the Russians. 
     As bad as that was—the rhetorical equivalent of "Don't struggle, honey, and it won't hurt," the worst was coming. This:

     "Our country is vibrant and our economy is thriving like never before. Friday it was announced we added another 304,000 jobs last month alone, almost double the number expected. An economic miracle is taking place in the United States, and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous, partisan investigations. If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just does not work that way."

     As naked a threat as any thug ever delivered to a corner grocery store: "Nice place you've got here, Pops, I'd hate to see anything happen to it." Drop the investigation or I'll shoot the economy. 
     The poll numbers were astounding. Yes, not scientific. Yes, those who watched were a self-selective group, perhaps skewed toward Trump supporters, who can watch him speak without tasting a little vomit in their mouths. But still. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Trump is going to win in 2020. He is going to roll the disorganized, bickering Democrats, rushing first to Bernie, then to Beto, some drawn by Howard Schultz, others to Joe Biden, the whole anthill going in a hundred directions, unifying only to utter a quavering Charlie Brown shriek of "How can we lose when we're so sincere?" after it's all over.

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.

To continue reading, click here.

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.

To continue reading, click here. 

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.