Statue savvy? Play to (not) win big prizes!

     Howdy folks, it’s time to play ... WHEEL ... OF ... DISASTER!
     Let’s get right to it. Give the old sinister circle a spin and see what comes up.
     Click click click click....
     What will it be? Raging Global Pandemic? Spreading Economic Collapse? Erratic, Ineffectual and Traitorous President? Ongoing Social Unrest? Murder of Chicago Children in Unchecked Random Violence?
     And it’s .... it’s ...
     Destruction of Civic Monuments. A good one! Johnny, a little background if you please.
     Thank you Neil. Along with peaceful protests following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis came anger directed at monuments to to the slaveholding South. First confined to Confederate generals such as Robert E. Lee, eventually far more laudable historical figures, like Ulysses S. Grant and George Washington found also themselves toppled.
     Thank you Johnny. Let’s get the round started. For $50, answer the following: On Friday, the president of the United States issued an executive order related to monuments. Did he a) Resolve to address the festering institutional racism that sparked these attacks on public iconography; b) Form a committee to investigate how the federal government collaborated with the defeated Confederacy to steamroll the rights of its newest citizens; c) attempt to knit up our unraveling rule of law by assuring citizens that we are all part of this grand, if flawed American experiment or d) promise to prosecute “to the fullest extent permitted” anyone caught damaging a public monument or statue? Suzy!

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Toilet paper wasn't our biggest problem

     You never did run out of toilet paper, did you?
     Or know anybody who did.
     Or hear of anybody actually running out.
     Didn't think so.
     I was saving that first line. I thought it would sound an elegiac note when this whole COVID-19 crisis finally was over. Kind of a chuckle over the panicky hoarding instinct that first ushered Our Year of COVID in. 
     Now that seems optimistic—the idea that it might be over. This year. Or even the next. Sure, it has to end eventually. One hopes. And we're blundering by. At least Illinois is coping, for now. But our national government, spurred by the criminal incompetence of Donald Trump, has booted the pandemic so thoroughly, allowed Red State government to kick the can, that who knows how bad it will get.  Call it a hunch, but I'm thinking: real bad.
     I hope I'm wrong.
     Until then,  the system operates pretty well. There is food at Sunset—and the above wry t-shirts, which I admired, though did not buy. It's the first epidemic souvenir I've seen. There will be more.
      But stowing away souvenirs seems premature.  Save the victory lap for after the victory.

     

Sahara in the Texas Sky

     Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey checks in.

    
     When my good friend Snezana was a child in Borovo Naselje, Croatia, she vividly recalls seeing a film of red dust on her balcony one day and her mother telling her “it came from Africa.” Snezana has been on the lookout for this red dust ever since. This past Thursday I sent her photos of a blindingly pink and surreal Austin sunset during yet another one of my COVID walkabouts, and her response was “Sahara in the Texas sky.” I had no idea what she meant, so I looked it up. As many of you know, a cloud of dust from the Sahara Desert has been projected by trade winds — winds that blow straight towards the equator — over 5,000 miles from the world’s largest hot desert (roughly the size of the United States) and this cloud is now doing its thing above Texas and other southern states. According to the National Weather Service the tiny dust particles scatter the sun’s rays at dusk and dawn, which accounts for the stunning sunset I was compelled to share with my friend.
     When I called her a smarty pants for knowing why, from Chicago, my Austin sunset was so special she said “I perk up when they talk about stuff like that on the radio. I never knew before that it provided nutrients to the marine life. What a planet!” I’ll have you know that Snezana is a brilliant and hilarious person but the last word I’d ever use to describe her is perky. Elegant, understated, sublime, low-key, quietly powerful, yes. Perky, no. It made me unreasonably happy to hear her use such excited language.

 This COVID crisis and the incredibly sad and scary uptick in cases in the obliviously irresponsible state of Texas I currently call home has me rocking and reeling. Not in that good way that the hundreds of teens at Pong Fest in Spicewood (just outside of Austin) gleefully swapping germs must have felt while they were doing so last weekend, but in that “how can I adjust to this new normal of irreverent souls killing others with wild abandon?” way. In the incredible confusion that is coming and going for many of us as we live through a plague, I absolutely cling to any and all moments of pleasure, such as experiencing a new image of my dear Snezana.
     Likewise, I have seen other friends and family members with fresh eyes since this crisis started. A couple of friends and I did an exercise together on Zoom called Authentic Movement that is described on its website as “a mindful movement exploration between a mover and a witness which encourages the development of consciousness.” As I watched one of my closest friends Debi move and express herself in a raw and unselfconscious manner on a little screen I usually reserve for Facebook and Netflix, I saw a side of her that I had never seen, and felt closer to her than ever. When several friends and I attended a yoga class on Zoom with my very first yoga teacher (from 1999), Shabad Kaur Khalsa of Spirit Rising Yoga in Chicago, my friends Debi, Laura Rose, Lynda and I shared a deep bonding experience that blew us all away. Zoom screens offer a strange intimacy that we may not have felt during less-present face to face interactions.
     A couple nights ago I hopped into House Party, an app that lets friends jump into virtual rooms together any time, day or night. When I get an alert, for example, that “Julz is in the house” I can hop right in and say hi to her, our faces in little squares. Others can join us, or we can lock the room. I joined Julz that night and it was as though she was sitting on a bench at the park, like when we were kids, and I just happened to walk by and join her. That night her sister Kim hopped in too, and we had a powerful conversation of women witnessing and showing up for each other that would not have happened pre-pandemic awareness of the immediacy of life. We’ve always needed each other and now we are not afraid to say it.   

     I have found other moments of deep contentment that come from being present, such as the one I shared in my EGD post Snail Eyeball at the beginning of all of this where I was able to capture a photo of a little eye peering at me when I had stopped to rest. If I had not been sitting still for such a long period of time in solitude, tired from the luxury of having time to walk miles and miles in the Texas sunshine, I might have missed that tiny black eye arching towards me. I would not have noticed the greenish smudge of slime under the picnic table had I been in normal Caren mode. Pre-COVID I was running myself much too quickly and I didn’t even realize it. I fancied myself chill. After all, wasn’t I the yoga and meditation teacher at a fancy spa? Wasn't I the sensible psychotherapist helping clients find themselves? Well yes, but now I can see how far away from mindful I really was. Staying sober from alcohol this whole time has also helped greatly — no fuzziness, no hangovers, no drama.
     Pre-COVID I was constantly distracted with all of the movies I wanted to see (sometimes I’d go to one a day) at local trendy theaters, with getting to clients' homes and even driving 25 miles in one direction to see one of them (I am never doing that again), with grabbing yet another cup of coffee on the run and sipping it as I diligently drove from place to place to get things done. Solitude and introspection have brought me to a screeching halt and I am grateful. I will do everything I can to stay out of the rat race as it was and practice a more sane and enjoyable way of life that I heretofore had not mastered.
     Today I walked nearly 8 miles and went from feeling positively unnerved by my impending move that’s coming up in a few days, during skyrocketing cases of COVID here in Austin, to calm, grounded and closer to fine. During this walk I spent a good amount of time in silence and also had conversations along the way with mentors and friends on FaceTime and Zoom. A sweetheart from my young adult days Diz and I have reconnected and laughed our butts off during a FaceTime call. I also noticed signs hanging from telephone poles reminding me of the ardent work ahead to do my part to end racist oppression, bathed my feet in a waterfall, and sat under a bridge.

   A few weeks ago I saw a water moccasin glide though the water under that same bridge. Would I have even known we have these terrifying and magnificent creatures so close by if a pandemic had not rendered me neighborhood-bound? I am not happy for this fatal virus among us. I am dismayed at the lack of intelligence and reason of non-mask-wearing anti-distancers, and beyond angry when I try to listen to what they feel is reason. All I hear is “I don’t care about protecting the lives of vulnerable people.” I am unbelievably scared, even panic-stricken, at times when I think about lives that have been lost and lives that will be lost.
     Some of you may remember my beloved landlord Angelo from the last place I lived in Chicago before moving to Austin? I told you of him in my second EGD post called Texas Recollection back on April 18. I shared that he and his wife Eleftheria were the kind of landlords one happily paid to be allowed to live in their peaceful abode. I am deeply saddened to tell you that we lost Angelo to this virus. I had written that if I could have rewound time that day (when I knew he was in hospice care but did not know he had died), Angelo’s wife Eleftheria would finally be able to give me the potted jasmine tree she’d be saving for years that was to be a gift at my wedding (something she always told me, but I never did get married). Angelo would be all scrubbed up in a fine suit at my wedding (had it occurred) and have a dance with me. Now that Angelo is gone perhaps it’s not too much to hope that Eleftheria may still give me that tree one day and I will believe, despite the realities of a pandemic and post-pandemic world, that all is well.

‘I’ll have the Post-Pandemic Special, please’

Kamehachi, March 16, 2020.

     Eating is a big deal. You don’t need me to tell you that. We give special names for the times throughout the day when we stop whatever we’re doing to eat: Breakfast! Lunch! Dinner! A big part of every faith centers around eating, all those feasts and fasts. Some folks can’t nibble a breadstick without gravely informing God.
     You could argue that making a fuss about eating is what makes us human. Animals generally gobble nourishment where and when they find it. “Only people actively, regularly, and continuously work on the portioning out of their food,” Margaret Visser writes on the first page of “The Rituals of Dinner.”
     To hint at how exaggerated our regard for eating is, consider the other end of the alimentary tract, briefly: going to the bathroom. No ritual, little lingering, no reviews. We don’t even like to think about it, never mind talk about it. That attitude could work for eating too — humans could consume enough food to get through the day in 60 seconds flat. Think of the time we’d save.
     But we don’t, generally. Eating in restaurants is an even bigger deal. Dining out can be one of the most significant parts of our lives.
     I can’t recall much from 1975. In fact, I remember only one moment: My sister and I, on our first visit to Chicago, in a leather booth, holding back laughter as a waiter in a tuxedo presents us a bowl of greens set in ice.
     “Here at zee Blackhawk, we spin zee sah-lad not wahnce, not tweyes, but sree tahmes!”     What began as a practical necessity for travelers — the stagecoach stops for the night, the innkeeper carves off some mutton and draws a mug of ale — now has assumed magnified importance, ingrained in our lives.
     Chicago, and Illinois, opening restaurants Friday for indoor dining should be a milestone in our civic recovery from COVID-19. V-E Day, Victory in Eating.

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Maybe this'll help.

    A busy Wednesday—much progress on the book in the morning, then a pleasant social-distanced lunch on my pal Eric's back porch. In the afternoon, an interview for a future column, a quick 30 laps at the Y, and answering emails—is it possible to cheese off BOTH Fox News right wingers AND social justice radicals at the same time? Apparently so (the former didn't like that I seemed not to hold African-Americans responsible for every bad thing that goes on in their lives; the latter didn't like that I would address the topic at all).
     After dinner, this email came in, which was a more polite form of the Foxers. Polite enough to warrant a reply. Perhaps having polished my patter throughout the day, I achieved, I thought, a kind of purity in concision. Besides, it's all I've got.

    The reader, Jim, we'll shield his last name, writes:

     You'll have to forgive me.  I know it's been awhile.  I was glad to see someone finally touch on an area that many of us find very hard to understand.  Before you dismiss me as part of the Fox Nation or a Trump cultist, let me assure you that I am neither.  I do not consider the former to be a legitimate news outlet nor the later to be worthy or competent for the high office he holds.  That does not stop me from being troubled by the fact that there are thousands of young black men killed by other young black men in urban areas across this country every year with very little outrage or demonstrations for change in the black communities that are most affected.  But let just one of these young black men die at the hands of a rouge cop and you have thousands marching in protest wanting to shut down large parts of metropolitan areas and they don't seem overly concerned about the criminal elements that use their protests as a front to loot, trash and try to create anarchy.     

     What is wrong with this picture?

     I was just as appalled at the death of George Floyd as was the rest of the country but I am even more appalled by the shear numbers of senseless deaths that take place in Black Communities across this country every single day.  Most of the time we never even get to know their names.  They disappear from our streets without any fanfare or adoration.  Once in awhile a story will appear for a day or two about a three year old killed by a stray bullet or two cousins killed in the same bloody weekend in Chicago.  But the stories soon fade with no outrage or condemnation or protests for the kind of change that needs to come from within the Black Community.  So hard to understand.

I hope you are well and keeping safe.

  And I replied:    

Steinberg, Neil	7:12 PM (1 minute ago)
to Jim

Good to hear from you again, Jim. You bring up an interesting point. 

Let me restate the issue in a way that could help cut through the clutter and lead, perhaps, to clarity:

Do you expect more from police officers than from gang bangers? Why?

Thanks for writing.

NS

Where’s the outrage? Funny you should ask

Anti-police protest, City Hall, March 28, 2018

     "Where's the outrage?" activist Tio Hardiman asked not once but twice. "Where's the outrage? For this 3-year-old that was killed. The same kind of outrage when George Floyd was killed by the police in Minneapolis. There should be 30, 40, 50,000 people on the streets, right now, shutting down the Black community until we get it right. Black men need to shut down the Black community until we get it right."
     OK, I’ll bite. Can I fit in 10 thoughts? Let’s try.
     1. Did cops kill that 3-year-old too? My hunch is they didn’t. Because the outrage roiling the country is not about the victim, per se, but about living in a nation where a police officer, the representative of law and order, in theory, can leisurely strangle a Black man while his buddies stand guard. That’s what galls, as opposed to the age of the person killed. Though I suppose — I hope — that had the Minneapolis police smothered a toddler, not to give them any ideas, the national outrage would be worse.
     2. That question, “Where’s the outrage?” is a cliche, the half-clever way the Fox Nation sorts and their surrogates — not to point any fingers — try to avoid the admittedly slight risk of being drawn into a sincere conversation about racism. “Where’s the outrage?” is Fox Speak for “Fix it yourself.”
     3. Holding our noses, let’s dive into my spam folder, where the tone used to describe last weekend’s 104 shootings is between a leering chortle and a blatting raspberry.
     “Maybe the credo should be ‘Black Lives Matter — Except in Lawndale, Englewood, Etc.’ Very sad,” begins one, “very sad” being the polite form of Nelson Muntz’s bray of “Ha-ha!”
     4. “Black on Black murders. Horrible,” sighs another. “The media ignore it. Not a peep!”
     Well, Fox News certainly didn’t ignore it — that’s where I saw Hardiman’s interview. They even have a running logo, “Chicago’s Crime Wave.” The killings were the front page of Monday’s Sun-Times, not to conflate the two. And the Trib: “Outrage after toddler, teen die.” That sorta answers Hardiman’s question, doesn’t it?

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Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated, as usual

 

Investors in the Sun-Times are a low-profile group of civic-minded individuals

    Sure, I signed up for AARP — the American Association of Retired Persons — years ago, even though I wasn't retired and wasn't yet 60. The discounts alone seemed worth the pittance they charge for membership — or did, back when we, you know, went to restaurants and stayed in motels and stuff.  Plus they seem on the side of angels when it comes to lobbying for health care.
    They send out a sharp publication, the AARP Bulletin, printed on semi-glossy newsprint paper, the way certain trade publications used to. It has the brawny feel of Steel Pipe Quarterly or Chicken Husbandry World.
     That said, I don't fall eagerly upon the thing when it arrives. The June issue, "THE NEW NORMAL" sat around for a while. But I finally flipped it open Sunday.  

     I've been thinking about how the ongoing plague will affect society, long term. Money is gone, obviously, both in the sense of funds, and coins and paper money. We'll finally get Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill just in time for people to stop using currency entirely, the sort of cruel cosmic joke that America likes to play in these matters.
     "WHAT COMES NEXT" is subtitled "EXPERTS PREDICT HOW THE PANDEMIC WILL CHANGE OUR LIVES." Experts! Say no more. Although, I'd rather read a piece called "How experts are wrong about almost everything all the time."
     Still, pretty safe Sunday night reading. Our future seems to include lots of Purell but not many handshakes. 
    I can live with that. Then this popped up:

     "...digital media hasn't been kind to the newspaper and magazine biz, but COVID-19 could bury it. Gannett, the largest owner of local papers, lost nearly 94 percent of its value between August 2019 and April—much of that since mid-February. Media analyst Ken Doctor calls the pandemic 'an extinction event' for print, as newsstand sales, subscriptions and ad dollars shrivel, and beloved columnists you've been reading for years quietly disappear."

     Come again? What was that last part? As bad as it is to get an unexpected foreshadowing of doom, directed to you personally, it's even worse to get it in the AARP Bulletin. That's like flipping through the Vermont Country Store catalogue, wondering whether you'd really ever order the Brown Bread in a Can or the Chinese checkers set, only to turn a page and be confronted with, "Neil's Head on a Pike." Only $19.95. Very realistic looking.
     Not that I consider myself beloved. Far from it. Nor reviled, really. More unknown, ignored, not-thought-about-much and beside-the-point, like every other columnist for every other publication for the past decade or two.  I mean, I've got regular readers, thank God. But they don't love me. Okay, a few are obsessed in an unhealthy and probably pathological fashion. I wouldn't call that love. And though I read and appreciate certain columnists — Eric Zorn comes to mind. Or Leonard Pitts. Or S.E. Cupp. But I don't love them either.
    And quietly disappear?!? How is that new? When columnists go, quietly is pretty much the only option. Given the hook by death, yanked off stage as if by a string. Even those blowing up in the most dramatic exits — think Bob Greene — still go with the smallest poof. Really, it's like a gasoline storage facility on the far horizon exploding: a muffled ker-flump and a little mushroom of flame and smoke blossoms upward and vanishes. Replaced in 30 seconds by a sooty plume. "Oh look at that." Then a minute later, even that's gone. Nobody is clutching at the air where we've been nearly a quarter century later. That's only for Royko.  
      Hard as that is to take, it's even worse if we're still alive, and the exit is orderly enough to permit a final ave atque vale column. Usually, our supposedly poignant, thanks-for-the-memories good-bye to all our fans is also the greater general public's introduction to our existence. They look up at the flash of our self-immolation. A theatrical flourish, a deep bow, making twirls with your paired index and middle fingers, a few passionate kisses delivered to the mirror, then gone. Twitter serves up the goodbye of Arthur M. Blainford, the Rock of the Metro City Gazette for 47 years. Some black-and-white shot of him arm-wrestling with Kenny Loggins. And you think: who? Wha? Sorry pal, I somehow missed every single word you ever wrote plus the fact you were alive. I wish I could flatter myself that I won't appear that way to anyone who actually notices when my time comes but — spoiler alert! — I will.
      As for disappearing, you could argue that, with the internet, both nothing and everything disappears. Oh, everything you've ever written is there, swirling around in this snow globe of words the size of Jupiter. Accessible to anyone who wants it, 24 hours a day. Almost a mockery, since nobody knows and nobody cares, now that every single person is jabbering away full volume 24 hours a day. Columnists have already disappeared, lost in the constant roar. I wish I could convince myself otherwise but I can't. 
     So thank you AARP, thank you Ken Doctor, for alerting print to its demise.  Yes, these are tough times for the newspaper biz. And Napoleon has escaped from Elba. Both are not fake, but both are old news. Old, perennial news. Both are always the case. Print is always dying, ever since Johannes Gutenberg went bankrupt and lost his printing press. I've been saying that newspapering is like the M.C. Escher staircase that goes down and down and never reaches the bottom for a dozen years now. If not more. Didn't the Chicago Daily News — the best of Chicago's four newspapers, remember — crumple into dust in 1978? Remember where the Sun-Times came from: two newspapers, the Sun and the Times, joining forces to better survive. In 1947. 
      All sorts of media are declared dead all the time — Napster spelled doom for recorded music, remember? Only to somehow revive and endure. Not to contradict an expert like Ken Doctor, who was confidently predicting in 2012 that there was no economic reason that the Tribune would still be in business in 2015. But everyone's crystal ball is cloudy. The Trib is still here, last time I looked. Yes, arms bound behind her and in a tumbril heading to a wooden platform where Alden Capital is whetting a big double-sided axe. But not yet submitted to the fatal chop.
    Where there's life, as my people say, there's hope.
    Remember, we were doomed too. Cowering on the floor of some luxe Trump Tower condo at midnight as our owner Michael Ferro, doublet unloosed, advanced upon us, rubbing his hands together, jaws slavering, eyes aflame. 
    Yet we were saved at the last moment, spared that final despoilment. And now we've found a new home, and new friends, and things are snapping and popping once again at the Sun-Times.  Every time I look at the paper there are more reporters hired, unfamiliar names, new projects begun.  Our rescuers who galloped up and plucked us out of Ferro's clutches stand like a stone wall between us and the storm rattling the windows of journalism. Our owners, a confederation of labor unions, civic minded individuals and Chicagoans whose love for their city is only matched by their bottomless bank accounts, got together and decided to keep the scrappy newshound in kibble to prevent Chicago from becoming some eternally rainy Gotham City hellscape where all information is curated by Mark Zuckerberg.
    Sure, that could change in a day, or an hour, and you don't have to tell me that merely reporting a rosy outlook is asking for trouble, like a protester flipping off a cop off camera. But our credo is to call it like we see it and let the chips fall where they may, and that goes for good as well as bad. As somehow who has been through years when the paper was riding low in the water, waves crashing over the bow, star-flares exploding above the pitching deck, this feels like smooth sailing. COVID-19, the recession and the civic unrest has, as Ken Doctor said, made it harder to distribute the paper. People can no longer pick it up at newsstands that are no longer open on commutes they don't take to jobs they don't have. 
     But the news — credible, interesting, lively reportage of what's going on, plus thoughtful commentary from we liked-though-not-really-loved commentators — is more important than ever. We'll figure out how to keep it in your hands, somehow. 
     Things change. I bet there were plenty of folks in the cloth mask and hand sanitizer industries who were sitting around six months ago, glumly throwing cards into a hat and despairing whether business would ever pick up. It did. News is no different. Our time has come in the past and will come again. Until then, what is it Henry V says? "All things be ready if our minds be so." The times whir, and we whir with them, at least until the final curtain falls.