Publishing news

University of Chicago Press warehouse

     I have an interest in the publishing industry and like to keep current, the way a denizen of the old Maywood Park with $2 on Whirligig in the 3rd would study the Thoroughbred Gazette he's found on a seat, to see how next season's crop of Kentucky 2-year-olds is coming up.
     So my eyes fell with interest upon the March 4 New York Times story, "Simon & Schuster, A Top 5 Publisher, Is Offered for Sale." The opening sentence caught me up short: "Simon & Schuster, the publishing powerhouse behind best-selling authors like Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin and Judy Blume, is up for sale."
     Now let's play, "See if you can guess what puzzled Neil."
    Read that opening sentence again.
     Any ideas? I read three newspapers a day, The New Yorker, The Economist, paw through the New York Times Sunday Book Review.  I know that Beowulf's dad is Ecgtheow.  I like to think I'm aware of stuff.
    But Ursula K. Le Guin? That was an entirely new one for me. If I had to guess, I would assume she's a more recent version of Barbara Cartland, one of those mega-selling authors of bodice-ripping romances that a certain stratum of American society seem to have an endless hunger for. No shame in being unaware of that.
     Wrong. Let's end the suspense with a quick check of Le Guin's Wikipedia page.
     Well, she's dead, for starters, in 2018, at age 88, having written 20 novels—science fiction. A realm I'm not entirely unfamiliar with, having gobbled Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov novels as a lad (and once, believe it or not, having gotten a phone call from Harlan Ellison; he liked one of my books. I should have thought to get a blurb).  Michael Chabon called Le Guin the "greatest American writer of her generation." All told, quite the career.
     Well that's a comfort. A reminder that all success is relative, and someday Mick Jagger will find himself on the phone, trying and failing to get a reservation at a hot new restaurant. ("Mick ... Jagger... The singer...From the Rolling Stones...It was a band. Very big in our day...Oh. Yes. I see. Maybe something at 4:30 then?")
    The story relates how ViacomCBS is selling off S&S because it can't be bothered with a shriveling segment of the entertainment world.
    "It hasn't been a strong growth industry in a long time and what little growth there has been recently seems to be arrested," Thad McIlroy, a publishing industry analyst, tells the Times.
    And here I thought it was just me.
    Actually—and talk about burying the lede, but I'm trying to find a gentler pace as I shamble into the vale—I seem to be back in the game, book-wise. Think of it as a $2 trifecta ticket on three longshots in a race taking place in 2022. Or 2023. 2024 at the very latest. The University of Chicago Press on Friday asked me to write a book—another book, my third for them, ninth overall, if you're keeping score at home. They suggested this new book be called "Every goddamn day." Good title. I said yes.

YWCA and StreetWise to join forces

World War I poster (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

    Businesses gobble up each other every day.
     But only rarely do charities, and then usually because one is in crisis. Which is why my curiosity was piqued hearing that YWCA Metropolitan Chicago is absorbing StreetWise.
     Every Chicagoan who strolls downtown knows the latter—the weekly magazine that homeless folks buy for 90 cents then hawk on street corners for two bucks a copy, as pedestrians drop their heads and hurry by or occasionally—as I sometimes do, out of solidarity for fellow journalists—buy a copy. It’s a surprisingly lively publication.
     I’d always assumed the YWCA is the distaff version of YMCA, maybe with special lady gyms I’ve never had reason to encounter or imagine. Wrong.
     ”Our mission we’re focused on is eliminating racism and empowering women,” said Dorri McWhorter, CEO of YWCA Metro Chicago. “And promoting peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all.”
     I bit back the question, “And how is that eliminating racism thing going?” and instead asked what they do, specifically, to advance those ends. The YWCA has dozens of programs, promoting child care, fighting child abuse, encouraging more inclusive, less biased workplaces, and working with CHA residents.
     ”Providing high quality support for training and education,” she said. “As well as sexual violence support services.”
     Such as the Chicago Area Rape Crisis Hotline—1-888-293-2080.

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Parrots, bonfires and snacks: Going natural in Northbrook

Richard Weiner, left, and wife Karen run a bird sanctuary in Northbrook. They also board birds.

     Humility can itself be a kind of vanity. Let me explain what I mean. I am proud to have written for a major metropolitan newspaper such as the Sun-Times for more than 35 years. I also take satisfaction in having written for many other excellent publications: Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Forbes, Granta, Sports Illustrated, and on and on. Implies a certain standard of quality...
     But I'm also proud to have written for far more obscure outlets. Advertising agencies and PR firms. I can bat out a commencement address for a buddy, come up with a list of ideas for marketing a product. Write captions for cartoons that carry somebody else's name. Not too long ago I wrote the copy for a memorial plaque.  It shows, I believe, a healthful lack of pride. It's the work, not me.
     And I'm proud to share this piece that came out this week in Northbrook Voice, a new publication of the Village of Northbrook. I was quite surprised that they contacted me, as I've said some things about the place that are not exactly kind. But they were looking for a critical eye, and this first essay permitted me to do what I like to do best: get my ass out of the office and into real life, meeting real people and doing real things. It's publicity rather than journalism, but I like to think it still merits reading.
    I'll let you be the judge of that. This June, I've lived in Northbrook for 20 years. It was a wonderful place to raise a family; my boys are trotting around the bases of life, tipping their caps to the cheering crowd, in part because of the education they got at the Northbrook schools. I'm glad to have the chance to give a little something back to a community that has given me so much. 

    A Chicago friend with a parrot tipped me off: did I know that Northbrook has a bird sanctuary?

     No, I did not.

Kaita, an Eastern Screech Owl

     But then, there are so many ways to interact with the environment living in Northbrook, it’s hard to keep track. My wife and I often walk on the Trail through Time, the Park District’s revival of farm field into Illinois prairie. But I’ve stepped into Somme Woods exactly twice in the 20 years we’ve lived here, and did not realize that almost every weekend, dozens of Northbrook residents gather to help transform what had been neglected forest preserve  overgrown with invasive species into a pristine trio of distinct Illinois ecosystems. 

    "You can get to all three in a short walk," said Lew Brashares, a volunteer. "There are only a few places in the country this way. Prairie coming up to oak savanna coming up close to woodland. It's all right here."

      Returning Somme’s woods and prairie to their original state isn't easy—residents have been working on it since 1978.

      "There are so many opportunities to volunteer, usually two or three a weekend," said Eriko Kojima. You can find a calendar at sommepreserve.org.

   And if restoring natural habitat doesn't sound enticing, think of it as cutting down trees and building big bonfires, then meeting neighbors to share homemade snacks and conversation. 

    “It’s better than the gym,” said Ying Hensel, who volunteers in Northbrook, she says, because her hometown of Wilmette has nothing like it. We were both volunteering on a recent Saturday morning—my second visit—and I plan on many more.

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Cutting and burning invasive, non-native trees in the Somme Woods. 

Arnold Loeb: more than a meat maven, a nice man

     In 30 years of writing obits, I have never phoned a bereaved family and been asked to come over the house to talk as they sit shiva, or observe the weeklong mourning period.
     Yet when the daughters of the deceased made the request Monday, I immediately agreed. This was no ordinary man, after all, but Mr. Arnold Loeb, owner of the Romanian Kosher Sausage Co. at Touhy and Clark.
     Yes, I had already eaten lunch, I thought ruefully, driving over. A mistake. Still, I couldn’t help but imagine the spread: The corned beef. The pastrami. The salami. The tubs of chopped liver. Romanian chopped liver. Shivas are normally awash in food. But this. Perhaps, our business complete, I could assemble a heaping plate to take home. Would that be bad form?
     Daughters Katharine Loeb and Karen Levin met me and took seats on mourning chairs, with the widow, Lynne Loeb. Orthodox Jews in mourning cover mirrors in the house — you aren’t supposed to think of yourself. They sit shiva on special low chairs, a symbolic returning to earth. (Job 2:13: “And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights ... for they saw that his suffering was very great.”)
     For all the shivas I’ve attended, I’d never noticed the chairs. Nor picked up on another tradition. I looked at the bare table and made a remark about cold cuts. Chutzpa.
     “The tradition is, people are supposed to bring us food and serve us,” Katharine explained, good-naturedly. “It’s their turn to feed us.”
     Ah, I thought.
     Arnold Loeb’s father, Eugene Loeb started the business in Bucharest, Romania, making sausages in his mother’s kitchen.
     “Much to her dismay at times,” Karen said.
     The Loeb family survived World War II intact — Romanian Jews fared far better than Jews in, say, Poland. In 1946 the family moved, first to the Dominican Republic, sending their only child ahead to Chicago, where he had uncles.
     Arnold Loeb, 83, who died Feb. 27 of pancreatic cancer, went to the Illinois Institute of Technology and became an electrical engineer. 

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"We don't deserve to be erased by a bunch of libs/dems"

     Lots of reaction to yesterday's column on the Chicago Public Schools scrapping Columbus Day. I particularly appreciated those from Italian-Americans saying they share my sentiments.     

     Though this one, from Charlotte Ulmanis, made my day:

Good Morning,Good Columbus-Native American column.If my father Scott Williams Thundercloud was still around he would try to adopt you into the Ottawa nation.

     Some brought up aspects that I agree with but didn't have space to explore: Certain native-American groups were themselves barbaric, and why do they get the soft-focus "Dances with Wolves" treatment while people keep trying to pry the Columbus blankie out of their hands? 

     Easy. Because life ain't fair. Because society undulates in peaks and valleys, which is what makes the cling-to-the-past-because-it's-what-we're-comfortable-with approach such a non-starter. I could see arguing that Columbus Day could be kept as a grim day of reflection, like Holocaust Remembrance Day. But nobody seems to want that.

     Of course, others were ... well, maybe I should let them speak for themselves. This, from Alfred Pilotto who, to his credit, allowed me to reprint it, can stand in for them all, and I will post it without commentary:

Your totally missing the point..its the fact that italians are getting erased in history more and more and by whom...people who have no idea probably who Columbus even was..I'm talking about the chicago public school system, frankly you can call it idiot day because all of the kids in CPS care about is a day off school. The liberal masses no matter how small win again. If this day was about an African American no matter what atrocities he committed there is no way it would be changed to anything else but what it is. Do we analyze every single person who was given a holiday,,I'm sure we can even find several wrongs with even dr.king for that matter but the Democrats/liberals who would never upset the African American community simply for their votes are using this to show how diverse or worse that they really care..how bout eliminating Thanksgiving or even changing the name..how bout veterans day because well they killed people with guns..Italians are a proud community and worked extremely hard for everything they have with no help from anyone. We dont deserve to be erased by a bunch of libs/dems who either pander or after 100 yrs think they know better..back in the day people used to say merry Christmas without insulting someone and that's the way it was, leave well enough alone..how bout this..how bout we have a happy indictment day for half of these moron aldermen who get indicted on an regular basis or give the kids a day off every time a CPS official fails to do their job..call it clueless day..that's what the cps needs to be concerned about..thanks, sincerely a proud Italian

Friends to Columbus, but not to truth

     Alds. Nick Sposato and Anthony Napolitano belong to a people notorious for their theatrical emotion and looseness with fact. I’m referring, of course, to the Chicago City Council. Those qualities vibrated off the page in the Sun-Times Friday, in Fran Spielman and Nader Issa’s story detailing aldermanic outrage at the Chicago Public School’s decision to drop Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous People’s Day.
     ”He found America,” Sposato said of Columbus, declaring “war” on the CPS over its disinclination to honor the Italian explorer.
     ”It’s absolutely ridiculous,” added Napolitano, inflating elimination of the holiday into a general slur “that Italian Americans haven’t contributed to the United States.”
     Sigh.
     Let me begin by saying I have sympathy for the underlying issue here: the importance of the Italian-American community, their invaluable culture and vital contribution to Chicago. I could not have spent as many hours as I did sitting at Gene & Georgetti, across a table from that charming booster of all things Italian, the late Dominic DiFrisco, hearing him expound on this very issue, and not be sympathetic.
     A huge deal, Columbus was. In the 19th century. From Columbus Ohio, founded in 1812, to the 1893 Columbian Fair.
     But guess what? We’re in the 21st century now, and the political climate has shifted. Columbus Day, while a chance for some Italians to display their pride — something which, judging from these two alderman, needs no special holiday to rear snorting and pawing its hooves in the air — has turned into open season on Italy’s famous son.
     Were I to create a holiday specifically designed to generate ill will toward Italians, I would call it “Columbus Day” and encourage students to work themselves into a lather revisiting his atrocities, which are real no matter what Nick Sposato imagines.
     ”You think he could do the things they’re claiming he did with 90 people?” he said.
     Columbus sure thought so. The crimes lain at his feet are not some slur cooked up the anti-Italian legions infecting this pair of aldermanic brains. Read Columbus’ journal:
     ”They do not bear arms, and do not know them,” Columbus wrote of those he encountered. “They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane ... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
     Sposato returned my call. I read him that entry.

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Heal your soul with useless crap

     Yes, three-quarters of Americans believe in angels. They leap to follow the most obvious charlatans, from Oprah Winfrey's feel-good magical thinking, to the caustic, near-Masonic conspiracy theories of Fox News.
     And as a rule, I don't resent people their fantasies. The unvarnished facts of life are hard (all of nature including us is a fuzz on a tiny planet in an obscure corner of an unimaginably enormous and utterly indifferent cosmos. Nothing you do matters in the long run). So yes, squinch your eyes together and conjure up a God who loves you. I'm not going to pop your bubble, this present post notwithstanding.
     But I do get surprised, sometimes, when mystic hoo-ha spiritualism intrudes where I do not expect it, like in the ABC Carpet & Home store on E. 19th Street in New York City. I had seen their advertisements for years and years in the New York Times. Pillows and poufs, coffee tables and candlesticks, silverware and ceramic bowls. I was excited to finally see the place, so as soon as we finished our brunch at their high-end eatery, abcV, I hurried over to check out the store.
      Yes, rich for my blood. Five hundred dollar baby quilts. Many, many types of salt cellars. But it was the Marianne Williamson books that first tipped me off. They had a lot of them, various titles scattered around. Here I had just gratefully seen her vanish from the presidential debate stage, and her especially risible brand of empower-yourself-by-enriching-me shysterism is suddenly peppering department stores.
      But nothing over the top. Not until the big display of giant crystals.

     "These pristine quartz specimens were sustainably and ethically sourced from the Zigras Mine in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas by Avant Mining," the placard begins, rationally enough. "With exceptional clarity, luster, and quality, the raw, un-cut crystals emit a powerful aura of positive energy."
    What if they don't? Can you return them? "I'm sorry, but the energy radiating from this crystal just isn't as positive I expected it to be..."
    Looking for a price online, I kept running into the most atrocious ABC swami ballyhoo. "Crystals are powerful wisdom keepers..." "Cosmic release. Grounding by nature, smokey quartz detoxifies and balances the energies to the free the mind of anxiety and stress." That isn't even grammatically correct, with the unnecessary definite article before "free." All for a piece of rock that is 13 inches wide, 16 inches deep and 9 inches high. For $10,000.
     It suddenly became important to me that someone in New York City has already mocked these people. Can a place as cynical and free-wheeling as NYC simply permit a place to sell snake oil along with $9,000 chandeliers without a few Bronx cheers of derision flung their way? The Times comes close with, "A Souk for Trust-Fund Hobbits" by Ruth La Ferla. That ran almost 10 years ago, so we know ABC didn't just recently slide into the occult. A "souk," by the way, is an Arab market or bazaar:

Part souk, part woodsy-mossy Middle Earth, the ground floor of this temple of eclecticism was conceived as a magnet for the tribes of self-styled aristo-gypsies and unregenerate hippies who maintain riads in Essaouira or thatched lean-tos in Bali — if only in their dreams.

      But the story swerves into an appreciative shopping spree, tutting only at the cost of the merchandise. Please, New York readers, tell me somebody is pouring derision on this place. It can't just be me.
      Maybe ABC Carpet is too local. Ridicule is certainly heaped upon national hucksters, like that movie-star-turned-P.T.-Barnum-in-yoga-pants charlatan Gwyneth Paltrow and her jaw-dropping Goop brand separating trophy wives from their money for a variety of galaxy lotions, young forever creams and detoxifying cleanses. Of course, now that I look at Goop's web site, with its "cosmic health" and rejuvenation tonics, tongue cleaners and—oh look — $80 crystal water bottles, suddenly ABC Carpet looks as practical as Ace Hardware.