Flashback 2007: "Time to pick up the pace"

     Today being Pi Day, I thought I would reach back into the vault and disinter another column about the mathematical holiday, there being quite a few, given my boys' inclination toward numbers.  

     Though in this case I'm torn, since this is from the day when my column ran over a thousand words and filled a page. Do I present the single, pi-related tidbit, in recognition of readers' social media-stunted attention spans? Or the full range of comments and risk alienating the easily-bored? I decided, since some readers have time on their hands, to go with the latter. Though feel free to skip to the second item, read that, and call it a day. No one will know.

OPENING SHOT

     We're still at war, right? In Iraq. In Afghanistan. American soldiers dying every day?
     I mean, it didn't end suddenly and nobody bothered to tell us, right?
     Because there was Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who you would think has a million urgent matters on his plate, the first dozen involving keeping our troops from being scattered alongside dusty foreign roadsides.
     Yet there he was, pedaling furiously away from his ham-headed comments that homosexuality is morally wrong, batting aside demands for apology, as if this were the most pressing military issue facing America today.
     Make no mistake. The "Don't ask/Don't tell" policy is institutionalized deceit and cowardice, and itself immoral, in that honesty is a virtue, one that some of us would rank even above the glittering good of heterosexuality.
     And one day, the military will rid itself of this particular phobia, and finally join the rest of the civilized world.
     But that can wait until 2008. First things first.

A BIG SLICE OF DELICIOUS PI

     Today is Pi Day or, to be precise, π Day, since March 14 can be written as 3.14 and the irrational number we call π — well, some of us call π — begins 3.14 before sailing off into infinity: 3.1415926535....

     And yes, I wrote that from memory, but only because my oldest son has "Pi-Offs" with his pals, where they compete to see who can remember the most digits of '. ("Shouldn't you boys be off smoking somewhere?" I want to ask them.)
     In case it has been a while since math class, ' is the ratio between a circle's circumference (the round part) and its diameter (an imaginary line through the center).

     Fixation with pi is surprisingly common — go to mathematicianspictures.com and you will find a blizzard of slick pi merchandise: pi t-shirts and pi mugs and pi posters, including a 4-by-8-foot, $200 monster displaying the first million digits.
    Some people, it seems, are hungry for pi. "It's pretty astonishing isn't it?" said David Blatner, author of The Joy of π. "It's the only mathematical constant that any educated person knows. [But] pi is also a fascinating mystery. It's infinitely long. That's very strange, and completely non-intuitive. To this day, I hear from people who believe they've figured out pi to the last digit, or discovered that it's really 3 1/8 or whatever."

     Meanwhile, at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, students from the Key Club and Mu Alpha Theta boards will be celebrating Pi Day today by selling $1 slices of pie with proceeds going to charity.

BIG GUN OR NO BIG GUN?

     That is the question up in the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook, where the American Legion ignited a dispute by donating the World War II howitzer that sat in front of its former Pfingsten Road headquarters to the village.
     They want the weapon next to Village Hall, and there was a meeting there Monday night to air opinions on the matter:
     The anti-gun people said, basically: A gun is a weapon. Weapons promote violence. Violence doesn't solve anything. A big gun next to the village hall would send a bad message to our youth, promoting war, violence and militarism.
     The pro-gun people — many wearing their VFW watch caps — said, basically: A gun is a reminder of war, where soldiers sometimes are called upon to give up their lives in defense of our freedoms. A big gun next to the village hall would remind our feckless youth about the sacrifices made in their behalf.
     I went there, not to report, but to put in my resident's two cents, which can be summarized as: I grew up in a small town not unlike Northbrook where our town square had a Civil War cannon and a plaque made out of scrap from the battleship U.S.S. Maine. The only reason I know there was a Maine, or that it blew up in Havana Harbor in 1898 is because that plaque is there. Hard as it is to believe, with all these W.W. II vets still here, but the years will pass and memory will fade. If you place the howitzer next to the Village Hall, without question there someday will be children in Northbrook who only know there was a World War II because they noticed the big gun sitting there.
     I meant to add that there is an obvious compromise — place the gun, but allow the peace cohort to protest there, filling the barrel with daisies or whatever. That seems fair.
     But it's nerve-wracking speaking in public — even for a big media star like myself — and before my time was up, I fled back to my seat, heart pounding, mouth dry. (Editor's note: the gun got the nod). 

NO 'PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT'

     You do not read the University of Minnesota Press catalogue. But I do, which is why I have a copy of Murat Aydemir's Images of Bliss: Ejaculation, Masculinity, Meaning in my, ah, hands.
     I ordered it, thinking it would be one of those pleasant omnium-gatherum cultural histories. The reader, cringing and entranced, would be led through a spunky view of world history, beginning with Onan and ending with Cameron Diaz's special hair gel in "There's Something About Mary."
     My plan was to read the book and present the fascinating parts to you. Alas. I had forgotten the ability of academics to take even the most promising subject and bury it in verbiage. Here is a representative sentence:
     "Placing semen on a semantic axis consisting of the oppositions between past and future, retrospection and anticipation, belatedness and precipitousness, the third and final dimension concerns temporality and historicity."
     That was in the introduction. By the first chapter, we are thrown Derrida and all those French guys who have made such a hash of academia. I began to skim, figuring there must be one interesting tidbit, somewhere, to share with a general audience.
     There wasn't.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE

     Jim Seguin of New Lenox was kind enough to send this fun nun pun:
     Several elderly nuns were in their third-floor convent one night when a fire broke out. The nuns took their habits off and tied them together to make a rope to get out of the burning building via the window.
     After they were safely on the ground, a news reporter came over to one of the nuns and asked her, "Weren't you afraid that the rope you made out of your habits could have broken, especially since they are so old?"
     "No, of course not," the nun replied. "Everyone knows that old habits are hard to break."

      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 14, 2007

Snowstorms to sizzlers

Photo by Al Podgorski

     The temperature plunged to well below zero. As happens in Chicago, where constantly changing weather is a driving force in city life.
     Sun-Times photographer Al Podgorski went to his favorite spot on the lakefront to capture the steaming skyline. As he snapped the frosty cityscape, a rogue wave from the lake leapt the breakwall and soaked him, head to toe.
     “Super cold,” he remembered. “Totally soaked. My pockets were filled with water” — and expensive camera lenses.
     By the time Podgorski hurried into a nearby building, “everything was frozen,” including his hair. He ran into a bathroom, hit the hand dryer and held his Nikon lenses, one by one, under the hot air to dry them. His hair would have to wait. The equipment had to be saved.
     “We didn’t want the wrath of our bosses,” Podgorski said. 

     In the 75 years since the Sun-Times was founded, an anniversary being commemorated all this year, no story has been as consistent as the mercurial Chicago weather. From polar deep freezes to scorching summer noons — plus howling blizzards, flash floods, killer tornados and the rare gorgeous spring day, not to forget March’s entrance like a lion and exit like a lamb — no other topic has been as personal or carried as much practical importance to readers as the weather.
     And no story was as consistently challenging to the newspaper’s reporters, editors and especially photographers, as the struggle to capture what it’s like outside, to find the wonder in ordinary meteorological events and to bring the rare and extraordinary to the readers’ doorstep.
     “I was the ‘weather guy,’” Podgorski said. “Weather was my thing. I was always shooting weather. I would come back with weather pictures when nobody could find them.”
     A “weather picture” is that elusive blend of whimsy and observation, conveying with power and immediacy: It’s cold. It’s windy. Or hot. Children always help here — cooling off in city hydrants, leaping into piles of autumnal leaves, flying kites, bundled up on sleds, making angels and snowmen.
     “There were times when you had to find a weather picture,” said Rich Hein, who’s been on the Sun-Times photo staff for 38 years.

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Snowdrops

 

     There's so much that is marvelous in Seamus Heaney's poem "Mid-Term Break," starting with the title, which could be a double entendre, though I prefer it not to be. You should read it here now, ideally aloud. There is that internal rhyme, "bells knelling" in the second line, and the unfolding mystery that carries the reader along like an unwilling witness to a family tragedy.
     If Seamus Heaney's name doesn't tip us off that we are in an Irish house, little hints of language do — the "u" in "neighbours," the phrase "hard blow," and "sorry for my trouble."

Botanic Garden snowdrops

     

     The whole thing pivots on one word. Three quarters of the way through, the narrator enters the room where his brother is waiting, and the line ends with what I believe is called a terminal caesura: "Snowdrops."       

     When I read it aloud — and I happened to read it on WBEZ, the day Heaney died in 2013 — I always say the word slowly, infused with a kind of wonder, a measured awe: "Snowwwwwdrops."
     It's a significant pause, the way a roller coaster lingers at the top of a hill, before plunging toward that crushing final line. (And, I should add, an emphasis that Heaney himself doesn't put into the poem, at least not in the video of him reading it on YouTube, though it isn't a particularly effective recitation. He stumbles in places, as if reading the words for the first time. A reminder that artists are not always the best emissaries for their own work). 

     Snowdrops were bad luck, signs of death, a flower found in graveyards. There can be an irony in that flower, and not another, as they symbolize not only innocence and purity, but hope, which in this situation would be misplaced.  Though a sign of spring, there is something negative about snowdrops. They're cold and pale. "The snowdrop only," Tennyson wrote, "flowering thro' the year/Would make the world as blank as winter-tide."
     Heaney took possession of the word. He owns it, for me anyway, and when I was walking through the Chicago Botanic Garden — I went three times this past week — on Tuesday I noticed their sign chronicling the appearance of their snowdrops, the first flowers of spring. Hence their name, which was quite literal when snow started falling Thursday and I noticed some in my own garden: a rare instance of the Steinberg yard outstripping the Botanic Garden.

Snowdrops in my yard.

Works in progress: Lane J. Lubell, "Three Thoughts on the Oscars"

     This week's guest writer is someone special. I have known Lane Lubell his entire life — his parents, Larry and Ilene, are longtime family friends; my wife went to high school with Larry. I've watched Lane, a little younger than my older son, grow into that rarest of individuals: someone you can have an intelligent conversation with. We talk about books. I recently read a fascinating Harlem renaissance detective novel, Rudolph Fisher's 1932 "The Conjure-Man Dies," based on his recommendation. We talk about the arts, particularly movies. He studied film at Northwestern, knows of what he speaks, and as a teacher, also knows how to convey it. With the Academy Awards Sunday, I invited him to write something to share here, and he did not disappoint. Take it away, Lane:

     Thanks for the invite, Neil. I’m honored to contribute. For clarity’s sake, I have decided to split my thoughts into three sections.

Part I: Predicting the Oscars   

     I love predicting the Oscars, but that doesn’t mean I care about them. I couldn’t care less about what designer Ana de Armas may be wearing or whether some talented hunk brings his mom as his date. I have never paid any attention to the red carpet and I never will. Similarly, every ceremony has been disappointing since Seth MacFarlane’s controversial hosting duty. Moreover, I regularly disagree with two-thirds of the Academy’s decisions. And that’s okay. 

     For me, predicting the Academy awards has the appeal of tracking on-base averages. Like baseball stats or March Madness brackets, the fun is in predicting — looking at results from the cavalcade of previous local awards & fests and their respective correlation percentages to prior ceremonies, tracking Academy membership, averaging the predictions of others (GoldDerby serving wonderfully to this end), and determining the impact of box office numbers and a movies’ mass appeal. It’s a nearly scientific endeavor. Last year, I managed a rare perfect score at the ceremony, (a victory overshadowed by ”The Slap”).

     However, I’m not going to talk about my predictions. (If Neil is feeling generous, he’ll link you to them here). Instead, I’m going to tell you the good news. 

Part II: The Academy Sells Out…in a Good Way 

     Back in August and September, Sarah Polley’s "Women Talking" was the mathematical front runner for the top prize. I hadn’t seen it yet, so I went along with the stats. Now, I have.

     For those of you who haven’t seen it (which you probably haven’t because Orion, the film’s distributor, is clearly at a loss as to its promotion), the film is effectively a Socratic dialogue in a barn with sad Mennonite women debating whether they should or should not leave their sexually-assaultive community; Polley puts theme and message before character in this “should-have-been-play” tale. However, I know why people believed it would win. It’s “important.”

     For the past 25 years or so, the Academy has been … pretentious. Movies that fill seats get passed over like they have lamb’s blood above their doors. Anything without systemic social injustice and grit get hidden under the bed before mom comes in to check on you. Sometimes, you need to put your toys away, but other times, you want to see the toys on the floor; it means your kid is having fun. Instead, they’re reading with Dostoevsky and Ta-Nehisi Coates. I don’t mean to downplay the importance of the work, but we go to the movies to have fun. 

     Oscar viewership is down significantly. Many blamed the rise of the cable-cutters and media diversification for these woes; others point the finger at a generation less interested in the pomp of celebrity, while some argue that they just haven’t had the right hosts. While I agree that all of those factors could affect tune-ins (certainly, Kimmel’s return will not help), these pundits miss King Kong in the room. People aren’t watching the ceremony because they don’t have a vested interest. They have had little to root for. There was a time, not long ago, when nominated films were widely seen. Look at ‘94. "The Shawshank Redemption,"  "Forrest Gump," "Quiz Show," "Four Weddings and a Funeral," and "Pulp Fiction." Now, we have Andrea Riseborough (an actress you’ve seen many times but can’t quite place) nominated for "To Leslie," a film with a box office gross less than a private school tuition. How can you root for or against Riseborough? You haven’t seen her performance. No one has!    

     By only calling self-serious indies the industry’s best, voters alienate their viewers. Only a select few try to see all the nominees. “You love Marvel movies. Is it Black Panther related? No? Then it’s crap that we will never give a major nomination.” (To date, "Joker" and "Black Panther" are the only superhero films nominated for best picture, while "Joker" and "Logan" are the only two to receive writing nominations (which "Logan" should have won). Last year’s humiliating attempt to let Twitter choose the film of the year (the four hour reedited garbage fire, Zack Snyder’s "Justice League") to pacify these criticisms only made matters worse. 

     But here’s the good news. This year, things have changed. For once, the front runner is a box office success, making over $100 million. "Everything Everywhere All at Once' is one of the most imaginative and inventive films ever made, but it’s also a lot of fun. If it wins, it will be the first ever action comedy to do so, despite it being the most popular genre of the 21st century. It would also become only the third ever fantasy film to claim the title following "Lord of the Rings Return of King' (2003) and the hybrid period romance, "The Shape of Water" (2017). 

     Moreover, in what is likely the 3rd spot flies "Top Gun: Maverick," 2022’s highest grosser and arguably the best straight action movie since "Mad Max: Fury Road." Even James Cameron’s just fine "Avatar" sequel (which somehow grossed $2 billion) made it in. This year, it seems the Academy is starting to remember why people love movies in the first place. 

Part III: Screw you, F#¢% 

    

    Finally, I want to congratulate the Academy for saying “screw you” to F#¢%. And yes, the grawlix (the use of non-alphabetical characters in place of letters in profanity) have a purpose. 

     For the first time in a decade, the majority of the best picture nominees are not rated R. Only "All Quiet on the Western Front," "Everything Everywhere All at Once," "The Banshees of Inisherin," and "Triangle of Sadness" have R ratings. And best of all, each of them deserve their ratings. "Banshees" desperately needs its profanity, "Triangle" needs its nudity, "All Quiet" needs its brutality, and "Everything "needs its … I’m a middle school teacher so let’s just say, paraphernalia. Meanwhile, Polley and Tár’s Todd Field have been able to tell difficult stories of sexual misconduct with PG-13s, proving that you don’t need to pack your movie with graphic violence or frontal nudity to be taken seriously or tackle difficult subjects. 

     Indeed, over the past five years, 64% of best picture nominees were rated R, with 36% receiving a lower rating. Moreover, an R rated film won every year between 2006-2017 save 2011’s pick, "The Artist." This year, 60% are rated PG-13. These numbers represent a marked improvement that I hope to see continue. But, let’s add some G and PG to that list.  

     Thanks, Neil. Back to you!

Offices may vanish like men’s hats

.           John F. Kennedy leaves the White House after visiting on Jan. 19, 1961.

     Twenty years ago, I wrote a book about the death of men’s hats. A strange subject, yes. But I was curious. You’d see these photos of, say, men at a baseball game in the 1920s. A sea of identical straw hats. That uniformity vanished. Why?
     I spent several years researching the topic — and no, it wasn’t John F. Kennedy. He was following the trend, not leading it. The Kennedy era is when people started to really notice the change.
     What happened was this. There were two practical reasons for men to wear a hat: first, to keep warm; second, and most importantly, as a sign of social status. Hats were expensive, and a well-maintained hat showed its wearer as a man of means. Or not. “You get a couple of spots on your hat and you’re finished,” Willy Loman observes in the 1947 tragedy, “Death of a Salesman.”
     That changed. Men weren’t waiting for streetcars and buses as much. They were in automobiles. Which had heaters. A fancy hat wasn’t needed to impress that clerk. Your credit card did the talking. After the practical uses eased, the social necessity followed. The bottom line: men wore hats because they had to, and once they didn’t have to, they stopped. For decades there was talk about hats coming back, but they never did and never will. They became superfluous, an occasional luxury.
     Jump to 2023. This dynamic came tumbling back as I watched the latest round of businesses and government leaders vowing that their workers were coming back to the office. Any moment now. Three days a week. Or two. Or one. Starting soon. To enjoy that magic synchronicity that comes from being at the office. Lured by foosball and cocktail hours.
     When the truth is, people went to the office because they had to. And now they don’t.
     COVID, like Kennedy, drove home the new reality. Many people can do their jobs without ever setting foot in the office. Thanks to technology, smartphones and laptops, we can sit in our pajamas and process claims or design bridges or write columns.
     Now look at going into an office. The average commute in Chicago is 32 minutes. An hour lost right there. Add in office chatterboxes, treks to Starbucks, restaurant lunches. You get more work done at home. Bosses tend to overvalue being in the office and under their watchful eye.

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Stamp of approval

       The United States Postal Service unveiled its new Toni Morrison stamp on Tuesday. I read about it in the Sun-times Wednesday, and gazed at the image, set against an orange background. It isn't bad, as far as U.S. postage stamps go, and honestly, last month I wouldn't have thought twice about the image.
    But I was in Washington, D.C. a couple weeks ago for a book dinner. And while I didn't have much free time, I made a point to pop into the National Portrait Gallery, one of the nations under-appreciated treasures. There I contemplated the official portrait of Donald Trump, a stain on our history that will never wash out, hanging among the other presidents, and not in a separate traitor's wing, perhaps accessed through an airlock, where he belongs. But that deserves a separate post.
     I was impressed by how effectively the National Portrait Gallery conveyed the diverse splendor of our nation, and paused to admire Robert McCurdy's 2006 portrait of Toni Morrison. Take a look at it below. Her expression is ... what? Angry? Focused? Fierce? Determined? There was a serenity, a power. That scowl ... the painting made the author live, for me. Gotta read her books, I thought. I'd be more ashamed to admit I haven't if I didn't suspect I'm not alone in that. Blame the era I went to school. We read "Great Expectations" instead. Still, that's no excuse. No time like the present.

      Now look again at the postage stamp. She seems ... annoyed? Impatient? Hunched? Waiting for the picture to be taken? Her smile flirting with a grimace. Her hands lightly folded in front of her. It would have been too much to expect the notoriously inept postal service to nail Morrison's portrait. But it doesn't mean we can't remind ourselves how far from the mark their shot fell.

     

Needy Jews exist; The Ark helps them

Danny Weber

     These columns are news stories, in theory. So I should put the most incredible part first, where you can notice it before you shrug and move on to the rest of the paper.
     But deciding what is the most incredible part can be a challenge.
     Would it be that The Ark, the 50-year-old Jewish social service organization, exists? That it provides food and counseling, medical aid and employment guidance to needy Jews?
     Or is the incredible part that the needy Jews themselves exist? Don’t Jews run the world? Are there really Jewish people right here in Chicago who would fill out paperwork and be assigned a case manager in order to get a cardboard box of tomato sauce and pasta and peanut butter?
     There are.
     Or is the incredible part that The Ark runs a food pantry in upscale Northbrook, 10 minutes from my house?
     Jews are an odd kind of minority group — both successful and oppressed, envied and hated. People believe the slurs. If the college Hillel club shows up at the big campus Oppressed Minority Jubilee, they get hard looks because, being Jews, they’re personally responsible for the wrongs of Israel. Aren’t they?
     I still haven’t gotten to the incredible part that prompted today’s effort: The Ark’s “Dinner-Less Dinner” fundraiser. At least incredible to me, because I once was the charities, foundations and private social services reporter. Wandering around the vast Hilton ballroom, eyeballing the big baskets of swag at the silent auction, entertaining the eternal puzzle: Why throw a big party? Why drain away desperately needed money to pay for indifferent chicken almondine, huge floral displays and a 35-minute set by Chaka Khan? Why not put all the money into good works, and as an added bonus, we get to stay home?
     That’s what The Ark does. It sends out invitations to a non-event, collects money, but:
     “No big gala, no big party,” said Cheryl Wittenstein, director of marketing at The Ark. “Instead, let’s directly affect the clients.”
     The Dinner-Less Dinner is an echo of a dramatic moment in the history of Chicago charity. In 1921, Jewish benefactors gathered at the new Drake Hotel for what became known as “The Food-less Banquet” to relieve Jews suffering in post-World War I Europe. Guests actually arrived at a ballroom containing long, empty tables. Serving food would be an “unwarranted extravagance, and in the face of starving Europe, a wasteful crime,” Jacob K. Loeb announced. “For you, the disappointment is temporary and passing. For them it is permanent and lasting.”

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