South American Diary #1—Fly Me to, ah, Buenos Aires

    The solidly-built young man had a full red-beard and was dressed all in black, from his watch cap to his sneakers. His new bags—hip, if luggage can be hip—were also black, as were the clothes and luggage of his friend, who wore a Dutch cap. 
     A quip occurred to me. 
     "Are you lads on your way to blow up the bridge over the Remagen?" I thought, but did not say. Shutting up is an art form, and mentioning obscure bits of World War II trivia—capturing the Remagen bridge over the Rhine was vital to the Allies forces drive to Berlin in the spring of 1945—to young strangers is not a practice embraced by those aspiring to be au courant. Okay, hipsters try to look like commandos when they're not aping lumberjacks; deal with it.
     There was no need to chat.  From snippets of conversation, not to mention a few tell-tell luggage stickers for companies like Shure microphone, I figured out that these two fellows, and a few dozen others exactly like them gathered here for the 10:20 p.m. flight to Buenos Aires, had to be sound people, on their way to Lollapalooza, which I noticed was scheduled in Buenos Aires in a couple days. One later admitted, with all the modesty he could muster, that he was the sound man for 21 Pilots, and I hadn't the heart to tell him that this was as meaningless, to me, as if he said he was chief accountant for the Hemschlott brand of rustic pipkins.
    That's why they were going. To work. But why was I going? Good question. The short answer is: a pal asked me to join him on a Royal Canadian Geographic Society expedition cruising up the coast of Chile. 
     I had never been to South America nor felt a desire to go, the same blend of inertia and ignorance that keeps so many content to while away the years at home. My entire impression of the continent, I'm ashamed to say, was formed by watching Walt Disney's "Saludos Amigos" at an assembly one rainy afternoon in Fairwood School.
     But saying "No" just wasn't an option; it would have betrayed a timidity that, while sincere, was the equivalent of climbing into my coffin and pulling closed the lid. I might be that homebound person, but that didn't mean I had to let him do whatever he pleased. The dynamic, still-alive man within would accept the call to adventure from his good friend.
     That didn't mean I was eager to spend nearly three weeks hauling off to a place I'd never been nor contemplated. I really like my life and routine: grapefruits to peel, a dog to walk, columns to write. Going somewhere far away conjured up a raft of particulars to deal with: tickets to secure, inoculations to get, clothes to pack.
    The last challenge was killing two hours during the layover at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. I had assumed there would be a good Southern place for dinner—airports now do a better job of featuring cuisine from their local communities, rather than being just so many anonymous outposts in an interchangeable neutral international world without flavor or distinction. But the closest I came was a palm-sized sweet potato pie in a small round tin to follow my anodyne grilled chicken and vegetables.
    Boarding time approached.   I pulled out my iPhone and wrote a message to my wife: "I seem to be about to board a plane to South America. Should I really go?"
    A joke, surely, mocking my own timidity. But with enough truth that it was less funny, more taking my unease and waving it over my head.  Bad idea. No man wants to be a coward in front of his wife. And why spread anxiety around? Shutting up, as I said ... I deleted the email, gathered my stuff, and got on the plane.

Flashback 2013: "Calling in sick is for the weak"

     "So are you putting out a Gone Fishin'" sign?" my wife asked hopefully. 

     "Maybe..." I lied, embarrassed to mention that I had lined up a few weeks worth of posts, out of exactly the foolish consistency that Emerson tagged as being the hobgoblin of little minds. 

      Though these snippets of a column—which I blundered upon while looking for something on Ed Burke—fills out the mindset a little. 
      Starting tomorrow I'll begin blogging about where I've been for the past ... 10 days.

     Being a workaholic (God, both a workaholic and an alcoholic — I should get some kind of prize) my first thought, when I suspected that the flu jamming emergency rooms and scything through offices is knocking on the side of my head, was to get this written, quick, so I can collapse in a corner and hope to be better 48 hours from now.
     Sure, I could just call in sick, but calling in sick is for the weak; I hate doing that — you’re not in the paper, you might as well be dead; besides, in most offices the present sit around plotting the demise of the absent.
     Plus, it might not be the flu; maybe it’s just some cosmic hand that has reached into my skull, snatched out my brain and is squishing it before my eyes, grey matter oozing through its fingers. Not a terrible feeling, really; a dizzy exhausted numbness. This must be what stupid people feel like all the time.
     Thank goodness I have a few housecleaning topics I’ve been meaning to put in the paper, which shouldn’t demand too much brainpower to relate, or to read, and will keep me in your I hope un-flu-flummoxed minds until Friday, when I plan to be better.

Correction
     Whenever our digital future is discussed, the typical reaction is to bemoan what will be lost — no folded newspaper tossed at the end of the driveway every day, no chance to shuffle curbward each morning to sample the weather, to dip your toe in the day ahead.
     That’s true enough — the brief stroll is always infused with optimism. But there are advantages to the electronic, the central one being the correction of errors: bam, they’re fixed. As opposed to the typical print way to address significant goofs: run a correction and hope people see it. A hastily applied bandage, at best — the error was given bold play, while the correction is coughed into a fist long afterward. I tend not to run them much, first because I, ahem, tend not to make them, and second because space in print is limited, and I am reluctant to shave off what I’m writing today to revisit some past blunder.
     But being sick, this is an ideal day.
     A few weeks back the phone rang — it was Ald. Ed Burke; no, make that “long-serving alderman” Ed Burke; no, rather, “the longest serving ever” as he informed me, having taken office on March 11, 1969, a date that found me in Miss Maple’s fourth-grade class.
     He was not sharing this information out-of-the-blue, but because, in a column gingerly seizing one Ald. James Cappleman (46th) between my thumb and forefinger and holding him under a bright light for his pigeon fixation, I had wrongly written Ald. Dick Mell (33rd) is the “longest serving alderman” (in my defense, I was listing aldermen off the top of my head, so checking seemed unfair).
     Anyway, in my blubbering, yes-sir-alderman-so-sorry effort to apologize, I told Burke I would run a correction, and then promptly forgot about it, until Mell himself, not satisfied at inflicting one relative, son-in-law Rod Blagojevich, on the world, made news applying political lube to ease his daughter, Deb, into his seat. Not her fault; she seems a good egg, and if my dad could name me to some pantheon of 50 well-paid writers who get to make speeches and send staff for coffee, I’d likely tell him to go ahead, though with a bit more guile than Mell is capable of.
     Anyway, the Sun-Times and I regret the error.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 8, 2013

The Saturday Snapshot #33

 
     I loved this place in Charlottesville, Virginia, not far from the university. Loved the graphics, the counter, the clean, retro interior. I loved the service, loved everything about the place.
     Well, almost everything. There was one significant exception:
     The pie.
     I just wasn't loving the pie.
     I wanted to love it. I tried to love it. 
     But the love just was not there.
     The crust, well, it wasn't Sarah Stegner's crust. And the filling, well, it was awful sweet. Maybe that's how they like it down South. And I hate to say an unkind word about a spunky independent place with a love-at-first-sight name like Quality Pie. I sat there, staring at the half-finished piece of pie, willing myself to like it more than I did.
     But I failed. The fault is mine, I am sure. Not the pie's. It is no doubt exactly what people who like that sort of thing like. But that person is not me.
     Just one piece of advice:
     Go for the homemade cinnamon donuts instead. My disappointment with the pie was such, I found comfort in a donut. It was fantastic.   

Era of Contempt IV

     Why didn't I sweep Alan Leonard's letter into the garbage, where it belongs? A kind of amazement, I suppose, a residual non-belief, despite years of evidence to the contrary, that such people really exist.
     A hope that does not die, if you want to get all flowery about it.
     I wasn't running to post it either.  But I went on vacation, and it was sitting there, and I figured, share it.  Why not? We've grown sadly familiar with his oeuvre. There is, I suppose, an entertainment value, the way gross horror movies entertain. 
     Though not much. When I read Michelle Obama's "Becoming," I sincerely thought, "This is the sort of book that should be required reading." Because it might create empathy where none exists, in the Alan Leonards of the world.  I wrote a column ballyhooing the book, not that Obama's memoir needed it—it's the best-selling memoir of all time. Maybe there are some people who will encounter it and have their perceptions expanded. This letter is a reminder how naive that hope was. 
     I'd like to suggest that Mr. Leonard is an exception. I don't know. Maybe he's the rule. That seems something worth discussing. 

Flashback 2004: Maximizing their advantage

     I'm on vacation. This ran back when living in the suburbs still felt uncomfortable, like new clothes that didn't quite fit right.

     Every morning at the train station I buy the Sun-Times. Of course I get it delivered at home, but I leave that for the wife. Besides, I enjoy the banter at the station coffee stand, aptly named, "The Grind." One day last week they were out of Sun-Times—stripped clean—so I went to change a buck.
     "Can I have four quarters, Connie?" I asked.
     "You can have anything you want, dear,'' she said.
     "Could you teach my wife to say that?'' I said, happily palming the coins and heading to the platform. There a man with a salt-and-pepper beard was struggling with the Sun-Times box. It sometimes sticks.
     "It takes a bit of finesse," I said. He collected his change, and I plugged in my two quarters. The box opened smoothly. I took out a newspaper and held the door so this guy could get one. He did and began to walk away.
     "Hey!" I said. "You're supposed to put your money in!"
     "It won't take my money!'' he said, shrugging, smirking and hurrying off down the platform.
     I wasn't going to let this idiot rip off some poor delivery guy—with me as an accessory, no less. I pumped in the money for him. The train arrived. I sat steaming. That's what I loathe most about suburbanites. They have a trait I call "maximizing their advantage." Rushing across the tracks is only the start. They park their SUVs in the fire lane. They cut in line. They'll shave any corner to scramble up the ant hill. I thought of searching the train, finding this guy, screaming "THIEF!'' in his face. Not just once, but every day on the platform. The pure Javert-like craziness of that made me smile. I would find out where he worked, become a constant nuisance, bursting into meetings, clad in white Biblical robes, demanding 50 cents. "Let it go,'' I told myself. At least he's a reader. But I kept shaking my head all that morning over the man who leapt at the chance to sell his integrity for 50 cents. Shameless.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 31, 2004 Monday

Don't be a vector

   This was written in late January, obviously. It got nudged aside by other posts, but I like to think is still worthy of being read.     

     4:55 a.m. I can lay in bed and stare at the ceiling and wonder where January went. 
     Or I can get up and take a crack at the column that's going to be on page two of the Sun-Times tomorrow.
     I get up.
     Into social media, my blog, of course Facebook. One message, from an old friend."Man.... you get attacked something fierce on Twitter...."
     I wince, ponder my response. I'm feeling stern, so I decide to be stern.
     "Don't be a vector," I reply, curtly, then immediately wonder if she'll know I mean. "Vector" is most commonly a direction, an arrow, diverting in a particular direction.
      Into Google. "Vector definition" The first one, as I had feared, "a quantity having direction as well as magnitude, especially as determining the position of one point in space relative to another." 
     That isn't it; hopefully, she will push on to the second, which is the one I meant here, "an organism, typically a biting insect or tick, that transmits a disease or parasite from one animal or plant to another."
     Good common advice, for those of us who have survived 2018 and are now trying to make 2019 into something meaningful. The Internet is filled with malice, with mean people freed by the frictionless anonymity of the online world, its general lack of repercussion. 
    This is not news. Yet a great number of people haven't yet figured this out. To them, malice online is significant.  A few weeks back I wrote a column about an elderly lawyer. A former colleague phoned me, practically vibrating with excitement. The lawyer's family, he said, was composing a letter denouncing me, citing this and that, dipping their hands into the muck of the past and flinging it in my direction, like baboons at the zoo hurling feces at visitors.
     "I thought you should know," he said solemnly.
     I thanked him, confident I would never hear anything more from the family, and I haven't and don't expect to.  His passion made me very glad that I generally do the write-one-thing-then-move-on quickstep. He was fixated.
     Nor do you need have some dripping glob of third party ill-will to be a vector. Sometimes friends will be the vessels cherishing some past shred of misfortune you unwisely shared with them, long ago. You've moved on, forgotten all about it. The sun is shining, and you bump into them and they immediately scoop the handful of dark cloud they've been carrying around in their pocket and display it to you. Remember this? 
     As a newspaper columnist, curiosity is your bread and butter. But sometimes it is better to stifle curiosity. I never went on Twitter to see what my friend was referring to. Because I don't care. Not that I ignore valid criticism. But Twitter is a free fire zone. It took me several years, and both Rush Limbaugh and Fox News reviling me by name, to get to that point. Sometimes people build cases, make points. But just as often, what people do is grab whatever they consider a damning detail and try to rub your face in it.

     I understand where this impulse comes from. The old dynamic is that once upon a time we were individuals who lived in groups we had to get along with, and if people in the group thought less of you, you wanted to engage them, understand the trouble, fix things, so as not to undermine your status in your town, family, block, whatever.. If Missy is talking smack about Cindy, well, their friend Sue might intercede, reveal what's going on, pour oil on the waters.

    There is no doing that online. These are faces flashing by in the crowd. The paper stopped publishing comments because vetting reader's often profane and unhinged observations was becoming more time intensive and consumed more energy than writing the stories that sparked them. 
     My general philosophy when it comes to online reaction is: Keep the poison out. For certain readers, I don't even read the subject headings of their emails, the equivalent of throwing letters out unopened, something I also do. You know what they are going to say because they always say the same thing. Not the specifics; the tone.     

     There must be some release in transmitting the awful thing to its subject. I expect friends, people I know in the living world, not to do that, and generally they don't. As you go about social media—and it's our lives now—you should keep that in mind. Don't be the dim cat dragging some mummified mouse up from the basement and leaving it on someone's pillow as a present. Nobody appreciates that.

Flashback 2013: Inter-city spat Pt. II: "Calm down, Canada, it's all good fun"

     A columnist wants reaction, which is harder and harder to get unless you regularly say things that are vicious, insane, demonstrably untrue or—the sweet spot—a combination of the three! As someone who has difficulty with any of those fertile fields, my work has a tendency to shuffle onto the public stage, tap the microphone with its finger, tentatively, and then be yanked off by the Hook of Time. Except when maligning other cities. Sunday's look back at my gentle prod at Toronto would not be complete with this companion piece, about the howl of pain that emanated from our neighbor to the north. The wonder is I ever write anything other than tart critiques of other cities. I suppose because then I'd lose what readers I retain in this one.   

     It was right after the Wall Street Journal reporter called Thursday afternoon, asking for my reaction to Toronto mayor Rob Ford's comments about my column, which at that point hadn't even been printed yet, that I began to suspect we had strayed from the usual daily vaudeville into something odder.
     The column, posted online Wednesday, was nothing extraordinary. An editor had shot me an email, sharing a news item about Toronto surpassing Chicago in population—who knew? —and asking whether I could scrape together a few thoughts about it.
     Well, yeah, sure, happy to.
     The column was done in an hour, posted the next. By the third I was hearing from Canadian television. Then the Toronto Star—the biggest paper in Canada—posted an article that began, "Someone in Chicago has finally noticed Toronto . . . "
     Then Twitter opened up, in salvos, like anti-aircraft fire.
     "Neil Steinberg is everything that is wrong with America," wrote Richard Guy. "Self-centred, ego-driven and uneducated."
     "PLEASE DO NOT LET HIS UNEDUCATED PRESENCE INTO OUR WONDERFUL CITY!" wrote another, to my obvious delight. You have to have lived my life, mocked since grade school as an effete Poindexter rolling out his $5 words, to grasp just how happy that accusation made me.
     But that's the Internet, right? People who think they've been insulted violently lashing out at others they know nothing about.
     Certain words were used again and again; not only "uneducated" but "bitter." A lot of "bitter" coming from Canada, and considering there's nothing remotely bitter in my column —an avuncular chuckle, a mild teasing—I had to wonder whether I was witnessing the common human trait of condemning in others what you can't recognize in yourself. ("Douche" was also used a lot, a word I hadn't heard as an insult since junior high).
     What struck me about most replies was the gravity. Their city under attack! Their nation scorned! Many lunged at Chicago's murder problem—dipping their fingers into the fresh blood of slain children to dab out a reply to a lighthearted essay on civic pride.
     But I hate to generalize—I heard from the nasty and the nice. For every six aggrieved lunkheads, there was a thumbs up from a Canadian who got it, a grateful American expat, or a Vancouverite who assured me the rest of the country isn't too keen on Toronto either.
     I should be grateful; outrage boosts humor. The Marx Brothers would be just a group of strange men lurching around fancy apartments were it not for Margaret Dumont, fluttering her fingers at her throat in dismay.
     Yet somehow, plowing through this reaction, I started to feel bad, in the way I felt bad for ridiculing Jay Mariotti, after it dawned on me that this wasn't merely a person worthy of scorn, but someone who was deserving of pity.
     So there, there, Canada. It's OK. We all look to others for validation. Chicago's own Richard M. Daley, our former mayor, was desperate for some Eurotrash committee of international leeches to tap the city on the nose with their magic wand and declare it "World Class" by saddling it with the Augean Stables labor of hosting the Olympics. We all stood around in public places, numb, gazing at our feet, arms limply at our sides, confetti dribbling out of our slack fingers, when the honor danced past us and into the embrace of that South American slum, Rio de Janeiro.
     No malice here. I'll be candid about what informed my Toronto column. A bit of bleak memory. I took my family to Toronto in August 2006, for five days. Some fun was had. A big Greek food festival. The $91 elevator ride to the top of CN Tower. But much was a let-down. The Ontario Science Centre—so cool and futuristic when my family visited from Cleveland in the 1970s—now threadbare and creaky (though it did have an actual Jacquard loom, so important to the history of computing, and, to me, a thrill to see).
     But by the time we left, however, a certain suffocating ennui set in, a get-us-the-hell-out-of-this-place feeling that has lingered.
     I've also worked for, and with, Canadians, when Conrad Black owned the paper. To a man —and woman—they exhibited a contempt for this hardship post, Chicago, and a narcissism that most Americans would be ashamed to show in public.
     Granted, it was a self-selective group—Lord Black's underlings—but it taught me that Canada was not all Molson beer TV commercial friendliness.
     The Internet will waste your life in empty jousting, so best to limit oneself. I'm turning down Canadian TV requests now, and, moving on, leave you with the truest words ever written about U.S./Canada relations, penned by scholar and Toronto native J. Bartlet Brebner: "Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States." Don't hate me for pointing it out.

    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 10, 2013