‘Jumping off a cliff to feel the breeze’

     I’m too out of touch to know if Facebook is truly defunct, or just feels that way. An enormous virtual senior facility where aging Boomers show off our lunches and post wildly unflattering pictures of themselves in hospital beds. Not life, but a pallid imitation, a faint echo of the real thing, that red hot dynamo humming somewhere else, far, far away.
     Yet I toss my column up on Facebook every morning, and check the “Memories” section, which sometimes reminds me of things I’d rather forget.
     ”So let’s review, shall we?” I posted on Oct. 16, 2016. “Donald Trump refuses to accept the basic mechanism of our democracy, the orderly transition of power after an election, citing imaginary voter fraud. ... Yet millions are voting for him. I just don’t get it.”
     A plea, obviously. Facebook must have had more pep six years ago: 172 comments followed, many eerily current.
     “Q: Which is more important to Donald Trump: the stability and legitimacy of our electoral process and the orderly operation of our government, or his own oversized, yet fragile, ego?” asked Dave Magdziarz. “A: It’s his very own damn “TRUMP” ® brand ego.”
     In case you forgot: anticipating defeat, Trump was casting doubt on the validity of voting.
     “This election is a sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy” Trump tweeted after Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney in the 2012 election.. “We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty.”

     Now, with the 2022 midterms approaching, and the baldly hypocritical formula (Legit if I win, bogus if I lose) is back. As is his man-the-ramparts rhetoric.

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Flashback 2011: The world is coming to an end! (again)

   

Created by Dall-E artificial intelligence.

     A favorite story in my new book, "Every Goddamn Day," is about a 1950s Oak Park doomsday cult that every Chicagoan should know about, just because it's so unexpected and wonderful. Plus a reminder that our current era does not have a monopoly on crazy. I realized I never posted my original column about it, and it's not online, until now. Enjoy.

     The world is supposed to end, again, this time on May 21, 2011, according to a California sect led by 89-year-old Harold Camping, who uses "a mathematical system he created to interpret prophecies hidden in the Bible."
     My first thought was that the world is already ending, supposedly, on Dec. 21, 2012, according to the Mayan calendar, and it makes sense to wait until one doomsday passes to start ballyhooing another — two looming at the same time is like putting out the Christmas merchandise before Halloween is over.
     The second thought is that journalism is slipping — in truth it slipped long ago. I saw this latest doomsday in a Time magazine online "NewsFeed" titled "Judgment Day: Will May 21, 2011 Be The End of the World?"
     Mmmm . . . that’s a toughie. News reporter Megan Gibson did not put the story in context of the periodic false predictions of the world’s end going back centuries. She didn’t even mention the Mayans. No, she juxtaposed it with another story in the headlines, claiming, "This prediction is pretty eerie in light of the mysterious animal deaths in Arkansas."
     It is? The media always deadpans this kind of report, because we believe faith deserves respect, no matter what that faith is about, or maybe the reader is expected to get the joke.
     It is Time’s helpfully serving up the animal die-off as evidence of the apocalypse that bothers me — anybody who knows squat about birds or fish knows they occasionally die in huge numbers for murky reasons.
     I turned for comfort, again, to When Prophecy Fails, the classic psychological study of a doomsday cult led by an Oak Park housewife named Dorothy Martin, who in late 1954 predicted that the nation would be destroyed by floods while she and fellow true believers were whisked to paradise by flying saucers.
     Researchers secretly joined her cult, hoping to test their theory of cognitive dissonance: that a zealot, "presented with evidence unequivocal and undeniable" that his belief is wrong, nevertheless "frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than even before."
     Unlike what passes for journalism today, the book recounts the rich history of America’s doomsday fixation, and the ridicule it once received ("What! — not gone up yet?" people mockingly inquired of earthbound Millerites in the 1840s. "Aren’t you going up soon? — Wife didn’t go up and leave you behind to burn, did she?")
     Though frankly, viewing Mrs. Martin and her devotees moved me, not to scorn, but to pity. They are so credulous, so purely naive.
     Well, not all. My favorite person in the book is Mr. Martin who, as his wife is preparing to greet the flying saucers, is described as: "A man of infinite patience, gentleness, and tolerance amounting almost to self-abasement, he never believed that his wife could communicate with other worlds, yet he never actively opposed her activities or sought to dissuade her . . . He simply went about his ordinary duties in the distributing company where he was a traffic manager, and did not allow the unusual events in his home to disturb in the slightest his daily routine."
    An inspiration for all husbands.
     The appointed hour — midnight — approached. A dozen true believers waited in Mrs. Martin’s living room on South Cuyler. The lapdog media watched, reporters phoning in, TV trucks outside. The male believers ripped the zippers out of their trousers, the women removed their underwire brassieres, because metal, Mrs. Martin insisted, would burn up on the spaceship. Her husband went to bed hours earlier and was sleeping peacefully.
     "The last ten minutes were tense ones for the group in the living room. They had nothing to do but sit and wait, their coats in their laps."
     Midnight. 1 a.m. 2 a.m. 3 a.m. The saucers, need I say, did not come.
     A few were disillusioned. "The others, however, were neither willing to accept the disillusionment nor tranquil about the failure of the escort to appear at midnight."
     They only needed proper perspective.
     At 4:45 a.m. Mrs. Martin "once more summoned everyone to the living room, announcing that she had just received a message which she read aloud." The end of the world had been avoided, it seems, by the strength of their faith. "Not since the beginning of time upon this Earth has there been such a force of Good and light as now floods this room," she read.
     "This message was received with enthusiasm by the group," the researchers noted. "It was an adequate, even an elegant, explanation. . . . The cataclysm had been called off. The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction."
     This news was "released immediately to the newspapers."
     In the next day’s Tribune: "WORLD SPARED FOR TIME, SAY DOOM PROPHETS." There’s an evergreen headline that will come in handy come this spring.

              —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 6, 2011 

Gone to the pig races

     You shouldn’t be able to find yourself at a pig race unexpectedly. Not in a major metropolitan area like Chicago. Pig racing seems something a person should see coming, a long way off. It shouldn’t come as a surprise.
     But when Sunday morning dawned, I had no idea that a few hours later I’d be cheering trotters tearing around a track. All I knew was, my older son and his girlfriend had come to town, and as Manhattan sophisticates finding themselves in the Midwest, naturally wanted to visit a pumpkin patch. Ever the amiable host, I plugged “pumpkin patch” into my phone, and the closest green dot was Richardson Adventure Farm, 45 minutes away. That seemed doable.
     Had you asked me, during the drive, what I expected, I would have imaged some kind of large roadside stand, with many pumpkins, set out on pallets. There would be a faux rustic building of some sort, offering apple butter and corn husk dolls and a cafe, where we would repair to celebrate our new pumpkin with hot cider and cinnamon donuts.
     Just trying to park at Richardson told me that image was woefully inadequate — hundreds of cars and pick-ups arrayed across a field, with mobs working their way toward an admission booth that hearkened to the Bristol Renaissance Faire, if not Disney World. We waited in line. The clerk informed me admission is $24 for adults, but my wife and I, being over 60, we could slip in for only $18 apiece.
     I was confused. We were paying $84 for the opportunity to buy a pumpkin? There were pumpkins for sale at Sunset Foods. My initial instinct — flee — was impossible, given the presence of the couple who had just flown in from New York. “I thought I was coming to a pumpkin patch...” I muttered, handing over my credit card.
     “Oh, we’re much more than that,” chuckled the clerk, and we joined a whirling commotion. Richardson’s claims to have the world’s largest corn maze, and soon we were tramping among the dried 7-foot-high stalks. I marveled at how quickly we shifted from trying to navigate around what seemed the entire population of Waukegan, to being utterly alone, listening to the wind rattle the dry stalks. We spent maybe 45-minutes traversing the maze — they give you a map, and checkpoints where you can punch a number on the map, giving the experience more of a scavenger hunt progression of small successes than the usual “How do I get out of this thing?” maze frustration.

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That ship has flown

 

    Cat-sitting duties took us into the city Saturday, and before we checked on Casper and Boo, we slid over to Taqueria Chignon, 2243 N. Western Avenue. We heard it was good, and indeed it was, spicy, substantial. I got a pair of cornmeal tacos, pictured above, of squash and duck, along with a well-crafted horchata, and was impressed.
     The cats seemed well, their food plentiful, happy to see us after their unaccustomed solitude. We petted and cooed at them, and while I was there I took a paternal look around the apartment of the young owner. It seemed he was down to his last few sheets of toilet paper and, trying to be a full-service cat guardian, I headed over to Walgreen's to stock up. One less thing to do upon his return.
     I couldn't recall ever heading to the store just for toilet paper, and wondered if they would give me an enormous bag for the enormous brick that TP comes in nowadays. Or whether I would just bear the assemblage away in both hands, which could be seen as awkward, even embarrassing. 

     This is a bit of foreshadowing; it turns out engineers were already on the job.
     After I paid — $10.99 for nine mega rolls — the cashier slapped a little handle onto the package. I'd never seen one before, and it struck me as clever. A lot less waste than a bag, and with a certain shimmer of newness around it. Of course, my purchase was not hidden, and I could see someone being reluctant to advertise their purchase, and all the alimentary activities suggested thereby. But given how frank toilet paper TV commercial have become, with obese cartoon bears practically ululating over how clean and fresh they feel, what a true pleasure defecation has become, thanks to whatever brand of toilet paper they're hawking, well, I imagine that ship has flown long ago, to mix metaphors.

‘A bridge to something greater’

Attendees at a Sabbath dinner to mark the end of the first Chicago Sukkah Design Festival cover their eyes during the lighting of candles Friday night.

     Mrs. Chris Brown, a lady of a certain age and that age is private, thank you very much, insists the honorific must be used before her name: “Mrs. Brown.”
     “Everyone in North Lawndale knows me as ‘Mrs. Brown,’” she said, forcefully enough that, while I did make a stab at explaining the rigidities of newspaper style, for today it seems both prudent and polite that the rule book be set aside in recognition of a force greater than itself.
     Mrs. Brown, elegant in a bright red jacket, butterfly pin and pink cancer awareness ribbon, came up to Chicago from Mississippi by way of St. Louis in the 1960s. She remembers contract buying, redlining and the way Blacks were jammed into tightly constricted areas where they were forced to occupy substandard apartments at jacked-up rents.
     “Coming from the South, I got an apartment of my own,” Mrs. Brown tells a group of about 30 gathered for Sabbath dinner Friday night at the Stone Temple Baptist Church on West Douglas Boulevard.
     “If I told you what that apartment looked like, nobody in this room would believe me. It was in a six-unit building, an apartment designed for one family that was cut apart for multiple families. Our apartment was two rooms of that unit, the back part, which was a kitchen and a little bitty bedroom. ... Filthy. Dirty, dirty, dirty. I mean, dirt like outside, that took me weeks to really clean. Got it clean. Got a job. Started to work. Went on from there.”
     Including her current work to improve North Lawndale.
     ”Our goal now is to get homes where people can live with dignity and pride,” she said.

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Mrs. Chris Brown, right, resident of North Lawndale, talks about the racism that led to the long-term housing problems seen to this day in the community. Looking on is Jenny Merritt, community engagement manager of the Night Ministry.

Flashback 2004: "Single life is fine till about 30, then normal people marry"

In this 1449 work by Petrus Christus, a betrothed couple buy their wedding
ring from a goldsmith who, judging from his grim glance, must be single.

     Facebook let's you "tag" someone — inform a person being talked that their ears should be burning — and I was tagged regarding Mary Wisniewski's fine review of my newly-published book in NewCity. I of course read the comments, which included this: 

     I love Steinberg! One of the best Chicago writers around, except when he wrote, "Married people are better [than single folks]." I countered with, "So my drug addicted, abusive dad was better than Mother Theresa just because he was married and she wasn't?" Sorry....had to throw that in, because as a single person who hasn't even gotten a parking ticket in 7 years (and that one was thrown out) it still bugs me. Otherwise, NS is top of the line and I'll def put this book on my buy list.

     An excellent point. Though leaving me curious about the original column, written in reaction to Richard Roeper lauding the joys of bachelorhood.  I think reposting it is appropriate, particularly since Rich's birthday is Monday. Also, note the date: 2004. I was about to get a master class in just how much marriage can make you a better person, whether you like it or not. Just as Rich was no doubt influenced by his extraordinary singlehood, so I was biased by my exceptional wife, who points out that what I meant to say is not "Married people are better" but "It's better to be married." Exactly right, as usual.

     Once I had a friend who had never tasted shellfish. Not a shrimp, not a crab leg, not a lobster. Not once. Never. This seemed very strange and more than a little sad, and I asked him why. His answer was odder still.

     "My mother is very allergic to shellfish," he said. "She might have passed the allergy along to me." But he didn't know. "You're not certain?" I asked. "You don't know. Maybe you're not." True enough, he said, but he didn't want to take the risk.
     I never quite got over his revelation. Now and then I'd say, out of the blue, "C'mon — let's go over to Northwestern Memorial right now — we'll split a shrimp cocktail in the emergency room lobby. If you start to go into shock, we'll be right there. One shrimp. They're great. You don't know what you're missing." 

     He always refused.
     I thought of him this week, reading the responses of single people to Richard Roeper's column on the joys of bachelorhood. Their point, simply stated, is that they're happy being single, so why should married people try to pressure them into marriage?
     The short answer is: Because they don't know what they're missing. Being married is better. Forget the studies about living longer and healthier. Married people are more plugged into life, their shoulders are to the struggle of moving civilization. Single people keep the cosmetic surgery industry alive and that's about it.
     Of course single people are happy. I'd have been happy staying in kindergarten. But life requires you to move on, and those dragging their feet shouldn't try to transform it into a virtue.
     How do single people know they wouldn't like marriage? It's as if I lived my entire life completely within the limits of Cook County and refused to leave. Yes, Cook County's great, and yes, I could be happy. But if I start claiming there is nothing good beyond the border, nobody would buy that.
     Sign and the millions are yours
     I've been single, and if I criticize it, at least I was there, though not to suggest my bachelorhood and Richard Roeper's are in any way comparable. Which is another thing. Rich, God bless him, is not exactly Everyman in this area. His touting bachelorhood is like Michael Jordan lecturing a high school class on basketball as a career. Works for him, sure, but he's the exception that proves the rule.
     Rich excepted, most singles are leaning against the bar, sighing, waiting for somebody — anybody — to happen by. The social swirl is a fallacy, at least after age 30 or so, when all the normal people get married. But like all fallacies — like the I'm-Crashing-Through-the-Jungle-in-My-Big-SUV delusion — people cling to it.
     Thus the pressure from married friends. We are not, as the single people writing Rich seem to suggest, the malicious band of sideshow deformities in Tod Browning's "Freaks," keen to pull the unmarried into our nightmare as we chant, "You are one of us."
     Rather, in our eyes, we are trying to help our single friends salvage what's left of their lives before the years pass, irretrievable. Single people are cowards and it pains us to see them strut around in their narrow boxes, declaring them the whole wide world. Occasionally, you want to open the door and offer them shrimp.
     There is no Miss Perfect
     It takes guts to scrap all the pipe dreams of perfection and commit yourself to an actual person in the living world. Marriage is good because — and single people just can't get their arms around this — you are not the best person there ever was. Marriage binds you to someone else and puts you under their influence. As the years go by, you drift in their direction, as by a gravitational pull.
     Usually that's a good thing. Sure, I know people who marry an idiot and over time grow idiotic. But that's the risk you take, and marriage — like life — is all about risk vs. reward. Single people are willing to risk an evening of their lives and, sometimes, are rewarded with a great evening. Married people risk their entire lives, and while things do go spectacularly wrong, they tend to go right and either way they are actually building something real, which is more than single people can say.
     Married people are better. I can't imagine the monster I'd have become if I didn't have my sainted wife pulling me in the opposite direction. Left to their own devices, people do not change, they only become more so, concentrating themselves as the years go by. That's why so many old people, deprived of their mates, reduce down into these bitter, vinegary distillates of their former selves.
     A few of the singles tossed around the old chestnut that 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. Well, yeah, and 100 percent of lives end in death. What's the point? I've been married for 13 years, and if, a couple of years from now, my wife leaves me because she has finally had enough of my obnoxious habits, I'll still be glad that we were married.
     On any given day, singlehood might look better — more fun, more free. But then, buying a flat screen TV is, in the short run, more fun than opening a 401(k). Then the years clock by, and the married people reap the rewards, while the single people buy cats and tell themselves they haven't missed anything. But they have.

         —Originally published in the Sun-Times,  Jan. 23, 2004 

Northshore Notes: Simplicity

     A good story not only takes you somewhere but teaches you something. I not only enjoyed accompanying Northshore bureau chief Caren Jeskey on her ramble today, but appreciated learning about the existence of Purple. And soon so will you.

By Caren Jeskey

     Fresh out of grad school I took a temporary job, working for a small company called Archeus, an Employee Assistance Program, also known as an EAP.  A place to call when an employee is caught doing things they should not do on the internet and needs “counseling.” Many employers offer this service.

     Granted, this was 20 years ago, when folks didn’t realize that nothing you do online is private. EAPs are also the places to call when you need grief support, marital help, or when the stresses of life get to be too much. We’d counsel folks over the phone, or in satellite offices peppered around the Loop.
     The owner of the company was an elegant man, Reverend Sterling Minturn. I met him twice. Once at the office, and once at a martini lunch at a private club on Michigan Avenue. It was when I was working for Archeus that I experienced the coolest synchronistic experience of my life, which I wrote about in EGD back in April of 2020. 

     During that time I was also working for a corporate wellness program. They sent me out to Burr Ridge, to the Mars chocolate factory where I offered “Lunch & Learn” programs. I’d teach swing shift workers how to decompress with simple breathing and stretching practices. They’d send me home with coolers of dry ice and Dove ice cream bars. A win-win. 

     M&M’S® has recently introduced their newest member, Purple. She was “designed to represent acceptance and inclusivity” and “is known for her earnest self-expression. Keen self-awareness, authenticity and confidence are the driving forces behind Purple’s charm and quirky nature.” 

     Why not? I appreciate the rah-rah of a simple, old-timey pleasure these days. Bring on the Cracker Jack man with sailor hat and bell-bottoms. I was going to say Aunt Jemima, but remembered that her sweet mamie role has been rightfully retired.
     Flashing back to the past, I drove by Mars on my way to an appointment in Burr Ridge yesterday. I always take back roads and enjoyed a 75 minute, leisurely Friday afternoon drive out out to the southwest suburbs.

     I remembered an allergic reaction to super hot sauce at Heaven on Seven in nearby Naperville. They have glass droppers placed in childproof medicine bottles tucked away on a high shelf, and I was silly enough to ask to try them. The waiter cautioned me, suggesting one drop only. Being the high-roller I was, I had three. My neck immediately turned red and itchy, and my date and the waitstaff contemplated calling 911. I talked them out of it. “I’m fine!” I said. I was too embarrassed to admit I might need help. In the middle of that night I woke up to try to put out the mitts of fire that were my hands. I held them under cold water, but not before rubbing my swollen eyes, causing them to burn. Capsaicin poisoning. Being young and foolhardy, I slept it off.

     Yesterday, I knew that driving west into the country would yield great benefits. Road trips always do.
     Clumps of thick forests appeared between fields of tall prairie grasses. After my appointment I asked a local where I might find something pretty to look at. He directed me to Graue Mill. I was not sure what I’d find.
     I parked and found myself in the thick of fall foliage. Old trees surrounded a placid body of water, which I later learned is part of the Salt Creek Watershed. I marveled at the constant beauty of nature and gave a nod to good old Illinois. This land is our land. I walked a half mile or so on a nicely paved path as the dusk settled in. I wanted to keep going, but it was getting dark. I asked a couple if the path wound around the lake. They said “no,” and that I’d best be heading back the way I came. A young boy, 12 or so, came walking up with a fishing pole. He said “I’m going that way. My grandma is picking me up.” The couple encouraged me. "He knows where he's going!" The boy and I wound around the lake and he regaled me with stories of hunting deer with his uncles, and of the 48 inch fish he’d caught a few weeks back. “It was taller than me!” He showed me a picture to prove it. He also showed me the fake minnow bait on his fishing pole and explained that an internal hook was only activated if the bait was firmly snapped back. I’m not a hunter or fisher, nor a vegetarian, so this mini lesson was fun. Hats off to those who catch my food for me.

     His grandma started honking her horn in the distance, so he called her on his phone. “I’m 60 seconds away,” he lied. He stopped and tried to catch a quick fish from the water’s edge. I told him he’d better hurry to his grandma, who was probably worried. He asked me my name and I told him. He ran towards his grandma’s car and called over his shoulder "it was nice to meet you Caren! I’ll be back here Sunday.” I told him I’d try to make it back too.
     A Huck Finn day was had by all.

     “Stars and shadows ain’t good to see by.” Mark Twain, 1885