Hydrant repair crews face water, pressure

     The fire hydrant on the northwest corner of Damen and Fulton is “jumpy.” Meaning, in Department of Water Management parlance, that water can be heard vibrating within the cylinder, a tip-off that the neoprene seal inside has decayed and is leaking.
     A leaking fire hydrant wastes water, and in winter will freeze, rendering it useless — common enough that on really cold days the Chicago Fire Department routinely sends four engines to a really big fire, setting up north, south, east and west of the scene to make sure they tap enough working hydrants.
     The public is generally unaware of the water department’s important role in firefighting — any fire 2-11 or above requires a hydrant truck be dispatched. Their steamers can thaw a hydrant in 10 minutes, and sometimes a main must be shut down so the CFD can remove their hoses, though that can cause another complication — the main must be turned back on. When the old McCormick Place burned down in January 1967, blame fell to the surrounding hydrants, most of which didn’t work. Not due to being frozen, as first believed, but because one valve that was supposed to be open was closed.
     So a jumpy hydrant can’t be ignored — it can be the difference between life and death. A week ago Friday, one of the water department’s four hydrant repair trucks was dispatched to fix the hydrant at Fulton and Damen.
     Not an easy task.
     It would be a lot easier if they shut off the main — but that would also cut water for blocks around, including the Chicago Teachers’ Union headquarters across the street and an array of nearby hip brewpubs. For hours. Work would have to be done at night, which means overtime for a crew of four.
     To yank out the seal of a fire hydrant while still under pressure and replace it with a new one requires a large, complicated tool the water department calls a “gun” — a 10 foot tall assemblage of pipe, part tent pole, part giant socket wrench, that easily weighs 200 pounds. It seals off the hydrant so it can be opened while under pressure. Only one company in the world makes them to fit Chicago’s unique style of hydrant, and occasionally a pickup truck arrives to collect a broken gun and take it back to Texas for repairs. Water workers call the process, with an occasional blush, “jerking.”
     Dangerous work for them — and passersby
     The device takes about an hour to set up by the truck crew — Kevin Franklin, Robert Laws, Dorian Minor and supervisor Charlie Brown, who between them they have well over a century on the job. Three wear bright orange rain pants — hydrants are 2 feet from the curb, and — talk about pressure — vehicles rushing past pose a constant peril to the workers. Pedestrians blithely blundering by put themselves in danger.
     “We have to worry about their safety and ours,” Laws said.

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Flashback 2006: George Dunne — Scandals couldn't dent charm of board president

George Dunne, foreground and Mayor Richard J. Daley, at 1968 Democratic National Convention.

     "Very nice," reader Dave Bahnsen commented on my 2010 obituary of Dan Rostenkowski. "Now do George Dunne." 

     Welllll...on the one hand, I'm not a lounge singer or a short-order cook. I don't do requests. However, this is Sunday, and while I have indeed written something new, it can wait. I'll need something Tuesday as well (Monday is my fire hydrant magnus opus).

     "Okay," I replied.

     As it happens, I did write the obit for the longtime Cook County Board president. If I had to grade this one, I'd give it a B minus. That "epic" in the beginning of the fourth graph is unfortunate. Its averageness is probably why I didn't post the piece before. I left out some key points — I must have been hurried. I buried the sex scandal that ended his career, and left out the frat brother admiration some of his fellow hacks said in public without shame. The obit also doesn't mention that Dunne personally banned abortions at Cook County Hospital in 1980, even though — as he later admitted — he lacked the authority to do so. Which didn't stop him from sometimes approving the procedure, on an ad hoc basis, when he felt the situation demanded it. "Sometimes he said yes, and sometimes he said no," a source told the Sun-Times in 1992. I'm not sure why I overlooked it — I hope because, in the rush to get the obit written, I just didn't know. It's an important historical fact to bear in mind, a reminder that while when the decision whether or not to have an abortion is denied the woman most affected, a decision is still being made, by an unseen man.

     George W. Dunne, for years among the most powerful cogs in the once-mighty Chicago Democratic Machine who worked his way up from playlot supervisor to Cook County Board president and heir-apparent to Richard J. Daley, died Sunday afternoon.
     Mr. Dunne died at his farm in Hebron, near the Wisconsin border, according to his wife of 16 years, Claudia Dunne. He was 93 and had been suffering heart trouble, she said.
     "I said, 'Just let go. I'll be fine,' " his wife said. "And he did."
     During his epic career, Dunne was Chicago Park District assistant general superintendent, Democratic Central Committee chairman, and longtime committeeman of the 42nd Ward — serving in many capacities simultaneously.
     In his nearly 22 years as board president, Dunne supervised $1 billion in construction of county buildings and was embroiled in a variety of controversies over Cook County Hospital and the County Jail.
     Through it all, he was a smooth politician and a charming man. Scandals that would have shattered the careers of lesser politicians simply rolled off Dunne, at least until toward the end of his long reign.
     "George Dunne was a friend and a respected, charismatic leader who spent a lifetime in public service," Mayor Daley said Monday. "Our heartfelt prayers and condolences go out to his family."
     Park District playlot manager
     George William Dunne was born Feb. 20, 1913, in the Near North Side's 42nd Ward, one of eight children of John and Ellen Dunne. His father, sexton of Holy Name Cathedral for 33 years, died when George was 12.
     He graduated from De La Salle Institute and attended Northwestern University for a year but dropped out. He caught the eye of the Democratic Party organization and snared a job as manager of a Park District playlot.
     During World War II, he served in Europe and in the Pacific from November 1942 to April 1946. He was recalled to active duty for the Korean War and served from April 1951 to September 1952.
     Back home, state Sen. William "Botchy'' Connors, the 42nd Ward Democratic committeeman, tapped him to fill a vacancy in the Legislature in 1955.
    After eight years in the Legislature, Mr. Dunne became Democratic floor leader. Then Mayor Richard J. Daley tapped him for the County Board, where he quickly rose to lead the powerful Finance Committee.
     When Connors died in 1961, the ward committeemanship passed to Mr. Dunne, along with the lucrative ward insurance business. Mr. Dunne's Near North Insurance Agency, formed in 1962, later collapsed in a scandal while under the control of Dunne's partner, Michael Segal, who was convicted in 2004 of looting $30 million from the firm.
     When the Metropolitan Fair and Exposition Authority — whose chairman was appointed by Daley — wanted to insure the new McCormick Place in 1968, it did not take bids but handed the contract directly to Mr. Dunne, who pocketed between $15,000 and $20,000 in annual commissions from that one policy alone.
     Like any good ward committeeman, Mr. Dunne held court, granting favors to his constituents, finding jobs and clouting. But those jobs and favors came with a price tag: Not only ringing doorbells and hustling votes on Election Day, but raising money. Mr. Dunne was proud of the patronage system.
     "I've been in government for a long time, and I can't see any concrete evidence of the merit system resulting in more efficient government,'' he said after being elected president of the Cook County Board in January 1969.
The logical Daley heir?
     Mr. Dunne was a delegate to the 1968 Democratic convention. There, he was seen on television next to Richard J. Daley while the mayor jeered Sen. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut for decrying violence in the streets of Chicago.
     For more than 21 years, Mr. Dunne controlled Cook County, the second-most-populous county in the nation with 54 agencies and departments and a budget of more than $150 million.
     Mr. Dunne established himself as a cost-cutter. But despite his loyalty to the mighty Democratic Machine, outside forces began to crack it. In 1972, the Shakman decree ended the practice of coercing government workers to make contributions and do political work.
     Toward the end of Daley's life, it was assumed that Mr. Dunne was "the logical Daley heir.'' Mr. Dunne was at the height of his power, a large, handsome man who had a face that had "aged gracefully and a head of gray hair cut so well and so often that one suspected it actually never grew at all,'' as he was described by one historian.
     But the mid-1970s were also a difficult time for Mr. Dunne. In fall of 1971, Mr. Dunne was in hot water when a Daily News story said government officials had bought racetrack stock on the basis of information and sold it at enormous profit. The venture was the same deal that sent former Gov. Otto Kerner to prison. But Mr. Dunne was spared because he had no public duties connected to the racing industry.
     In 1972, the Better Government Association accused Mr. Dunne of holding stock in two banks receiving interest-free county money, and that the banks had given Mr. Dunne huge loans. Mr. Dunne sold his stock and resigned his directorship at one of the banks.
     The next year, Mr. Dunne was accused of making lucrative investments in luxury high-rises built by a Chicago contractor who received millions in county contracts. He did not deny the charges.
'Very smart in every way'
     After Daley died in December 1976, Mr. Dunne seized the chair of the Cook County Democratic Central Committee. His first act was to unceremoniously dump Jane Byrne as co-chair and disband the Democratic Women's Group.
     "Dunne obviously cared little for women politicians,'' Byrne said in her memoirs.
     On Monday, Byrne remembered Dunne as "very smart in every way."
     Mr. Dunne threw himself and the then-faltering Machine behind the luckless Mayor Michael Bilandic. But Byrne upset Bilandic in the 1979 primary, and in March 1982, Mayor Byrne ousted Mr. Dunne as chairman of the Democratic Central Committee.
     With his future in a Byrne administration bleak, Mr. Dunne threw his support to Harold Washington. He was one of the few Machine pols to do so, and battled old-timers' horror at the prospect of a black mayor.
     "The party had better get used to the idea . . . and get behind Washington's candidacy,'' Mr. Dunne told party regulars. He also played a decisive role in the Council's election of Eugene Sawyer as mayor after Washington's death.
     The wheels finally began to come off Mr. Dunne's career in 1988, when WMAQ-Channel 5 reported on two female Cook County Forest Preserve female employees who said they were forced to have sex with Mr. Dunne to get hired and gain promotions. Encounters with the women, described as lesbians, happened at Dunne's farm in Hebron.
     Mr. Dunne, whose first wife, Agnes, had died in 1980, was 75 at the time. He admitted having sex with the women and acknowledged "extremely poor judgment.''
     He did not run for a sixth term as board president in 1990.
     Mr. Dunne did continue as committeeman of the 42nd Ward until 2003, when he stepped down at 90 after holding the post for 42 years.
     "His personality was always marked by charm and good manners. The good deeds he performed for so many are the best commentary on his long and worthy life," said Ald. Ed Burke (14th).
     Besides his wife, survivors include two daughters, Mary Louise Morrisseau and Eileen Dunne Zell, a son, Murphy Dunne; five grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
     Visitation will be 6 p.m. Wednesday at Holy Name Cathedral. A prayer service led by Cardinal Francis George will follow at 7:30 p.m. On Thursday morning, a funeral mass will be said at Holy Name.

                — Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 30, 2006

Flashback 2010: Dan Rostenkowski — The ultimate mover & shaker

    Dan Rostenkowski's name was mentioned at a party Thursday night — bidding a belated farewell to my colleague Mark Brown, who officially retired two years ago, but whose fete was nixed by COVID, and so circled back for some well-deserved cake in the newsroom. It was delicious cake.  Mark was one of the Sun-Times reporters who helped put Rostenkowski in prison — for what I considered a "Lone Trombonist Crime" (the marching band on the field makes a hard right turn; one poor schmuck trombonist keeps going straight). That, plus the anniversary of Rosty's death falling Friday, nudged me to realize I've never shared his obituary here. Let's correct that.

 

 Loyola University
Chicago Digital Special Collections,

     Dan Rostenkowski was the most important congressman ever to represent Chicago, "Mr. Chairman" of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, confidant of presidents, pride of the Polish community and bringer of millions upon millions of dollars in federal pork home to Illinois, until it all came crashing down in a scandal over minor expenses — postage stamps and office chairs — that tarnished his legacy and sent him to prison.
     Mr. Rostenkowski died Wednesday at his summer home in Wisconsin, surrounded by family. He was 82.
     He was never an eloquent speaker, but Mr. Rostenkowski's inside knowledge and useful connections — especially with Mayor Richard J. Daley — eased his rise, first in Springfield, then in Washington, where he was friendly with presidents from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton. He and Lyndon Johnson were particularly close.
     Among his most significant accomplishments were the 1986 rewriting of the tax code, the passing of the 1993 deficit-reduction package and the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
     Some said that, had Mr. Rostenkowski's conviction come six months later, Clinton might have succeeded in reforming health care. Instead, Mr. Rostenkowski pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud in 1996 and was sentenced to 17 months at the Oxford Correctional Facility in Wisconsin.
     Mr. Rostenkowski never apologized for the actions — he called them "technical violations" —that sent him to jail, though doing so might have eased his return. The central debate is whether Mr. Rostenkowski was a victim of changing times, an advocate for Illinois who was too focused on the big picture to worry about trivial expense account rules, or whether his life as a consummate political insider — born to an alderman, weaned on the Cook County Democratic Machine, given the inside track, first in Chicago and then in Washington — finally caught up with him, that times had changed, and he, lulled by power, had arrogantly refused to change with them.
     Daniel Rostenkowski was born Jan. 2, 1928, son of Joseph P. Rostenkowski, the 32nd Ward alderman, in the house built by his grandfather, Piotra Rostenkowskiego, born in Poland in 1868, who came to Chicago as a teenager.

     Like his dad, the boy was called "Rusty" — "Rosty" came later — and accompanied his father to Washington in 1941 to witness FDR's third inauguration.
     His surname lopped to "Rosten," he attended St. John's Military Academy in Wisconsin. The young man considered West Point but instead enlisted in the Army, serving in Korea from 1946 to 1948.
     Big and nimble, he went to the University of Kansas on a basketball scholarship, where he lasted a few weeks. He aspired to baseball and got a tryout with the Philadelphia Athletics farm team in Florida until his father pressed him to return to Chicago, where he worked as an investigator with the corporation counsel's office, got his real estate license, did some public relations for the Teamsters. In May 1951, he married LaVerne Pirkins, whom he met on a blind date.
     But in these jobs, Mr. Rostenkowski was just killing time until the right opportunity came along — his father pointed out a vacant Illinois House seat and urged his son to run. In 1952, after restoring the "-kowski" to the end of his name, he won the House seat. In 1954, he moved up to the Illinois Senate.
     Toward the end of the decade, he eyed Congress. Richard J. Daley would have preferred Mr. Rostenkowski to stay close to home. "Daley wanted to keep him around as another Cook County hack," Jim Merriner wrote in his book, Mr. Chairman. But Mr. Rostenkowski convinced the mayor that he needed a young hand to grow in power in Congress, and Mr. Rostenkowski was elected to the U.S. House in 1958.
     He was easily re-elected 17 times over the next 36 years.
     Throughout the 1960s, Mr. Rostenkowski built his power in the House. In 1967, he became chairman of the Democratic caucus.
    Mr. Rostenkowski played a brief role at the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention that was to have implications on the rest of his career. With police and protesters clashing in the streets of Chicago, the convention floor dissolved into chaos. An enraged Lyndon Johnson called the Amphitheater to find out what was going on. Mr. Rostenkowski took the call. LBJ told him to restore order.
     Taking the gavel from House Speaker Carl Albert, Mr. Rostenkowski banged it and called for security to clear the aisles.
     "But for those brief moments at the podium," Merriner wrote, "Rostenkowski may well have become Speaker of the House."

     Instead, Mr. Rostenkowski made an implacable foe of Albert, who felt bullied and spent years trying to thwart his ambitions toward House leadership.
     In the early 1980s, Mr. Rostenkowski had a major role in funding the construction of Chicago's four-building Presidential Towers, a classic political boondoggle that seemed to benefit everybody but the low-income residents it was supposed to house.
     A Sun-Times investigation revealed that Mr. Rostenkowski had provided governmental favors for the complex at a time when his personal finances were being managed by one of the developers.
     But it was an investigation into petty expenses, also led by the Sun-Times, that blew into scandal in the mid-1990s and led to Mr. Rostenkowski's losing his House seat.
     "I was there 36 years," he said in 1996. "They changed the rules 30 times. I can honestly say I was not fully cognizant of the rules and where there were changes. Maybe I was brazen, I ignored it."
     He was accused of chiseling $695,000 from his congressional and campaign funds over two decades. A 17-count indictment included charges of embezzlement, fraud and witness tampering.
     The actual acts that he pleaded guilty to were using government funds to pay for china he gave as gifts to friends and having congressional employees perform personal errands for himself and his family.
     After his indictment, he lost his bid for re-election in 1994.
     Inmate No. 25338-016 spent his nearly 13 months at his prison job, recording the numbers on boiler gauges, and slept on the bottom bunk in a four-man room.
     The last two months of his sentence were served in a Salvation Army halfway house on South Ashland Avenue.
     After his confinement  during which he shed 50 pounds — he formed Danross Associates, a consulting firm, and advised corporate clients, including the hotel workers union. He gave speeches and appeared on TV as a commentator.
     Many supporters saw the conviction as a farce. Sun-Times political columnist Steve Neal called it "wrong and vengeful."
     "Dan Rostenkowski unfortunately ended his career with legal problems," Sen. Paul Simon noted in his memoirs, "but his contributions as chairman of Ways and Means helped the nation immensely. He had a quality not in abundance, backbone."
     Mr. Rostenkowski was issued a full pardon by President Clinton in 2000.
     Survivors include his wife, LaVerne, and daughters Dawn, Kristie and Gayle — who all shortened their names to Rosten. One daughter, Stacy Rosten-McDarrah, died of a kidney ailment in 2007.
     Visitation will be from 1 to 9 p.m. Monday at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, 1255 N. Noble. Services will be at the church at 10 a.m. Tuesday. Burial will follow in St. Adalbert Cemetery in Niles.

      —Originally published Aug. 10, 2010

No Casper, no Dante, no Halloween

Ofrendra by Norma Rios Sierra (Field Museum)

     Unlike you, I actually read books of contemporary poetry. Because they float my way and I like the cover. Or, in the case of “Citizen Illegal,” because a college-age neighbor loaned me José Olivarez’s 2018 debut collection. I take the literary recommendations of young people as a compliment, nearly a duty.
     I enjoyed Olivarez’s casual, lowercase tone, his honesty, nodding along as he explains how his therapist, encouraging him to “make friends with your monsters,” doesn’t realize just how relentless those beasts can be.

...i ran & it never stopped
chasing me. each new humiliation
coming to life & following after me.

     I forgave Olivarez the occasional broadside fired in my direction, such as in “Mexican Heaven,” which begins:

there are white people in heaven, too,
they build condos across the street
& ask the Mexicans to speak English.

     Well, yeah, we white folks can be jerks.
     The poem ends:

i’m just kidding.
there are no white people in heaven.

    Of course not. There can’t be, because white people don’t die. At least that’s the impression I took away last week from “Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery” at the Field Museum.
     The grim reaper gives us a tour of the globe. We see a Mexican ofrenda, eight paintings of a decomposing Japanese monk, a Ghanaian coffin decorated as a boat, a Haitian spirit flag, Peruvian mummies.
     I particularly liked the mask of Tai Shan Wang, a denizen of Chinese hell, “Judge of the 7th Court, where liars and gossipers had their tongues removed.”
     “Mmm, nice,” I thought. “We could sure use ...” Better stop there.
     Animals were not overlooked. A deep-sea octopus seems very angry to find himself in a jar of preservative. One display explores grief in the animal world.

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Ohio back in the fight

Berea Triangle, postcard circa 1960.

     There's a line in the Pete Townshend song "White City Fighting" that crosses my mind every time I find myself back in my hometown of Berea, Ohio. Standing in its little downtown triangle featuring one monument to the Bereans who fell in the Civil War and another to the USS Maine, blown up in Havana harbor in 1898, helping spark the Spanish-American War, made of steel recovered from the doomed battleship.
     "I couldn't wait to get out, but I love to go home."
     That's true. To pass the familiar stores — and the increasing mix of unfamiliar ones. To mark the spots where something once stood — here was the Berea movie theater, with its green and yellow marque. Here was Southwest General Hospital, now a nursing home. This was Wallace Lake, now a silted in, half muddy field, half swamp.
     Meatloaf's "Bat out of Hell" came out when I was a senior at Berea High School, and as much as I loved the MetroParks, running a few blocks from my house, and the bone deep block by block, almost foot by foot familiarity that comes from growing up in a place, I just knew that my life, whatever it would be, would not unfold here.  Eighteen years and out.

     "And maybe I'm damned if I never get out, and maybe I'm damned if I do..."
     Not that the departure was without melancholy. I remember, the summer before I left for college, standing in the dry cleaner's — there was only one — and rotating the little metal rack with all the yellow tickets and reading the last names, the Campbells, the Cherrys, the Corenos. I knew them all, and I realized, with a certain indelible sadness, that I would never again be in a place where that would be true. 
     I wasn't attuned to Ohio politics beyond what I gleaned from my mother being a member of the League of Women Voters — the name itself vibrating with 19th century idealism. The mayor of Cleveland was the homunculus Dennis Kucinich — he's still on the political scene, a member of the shabby crew of third-rate failures surrounding Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His wife Sandi was a teacher at our high school, and he showed up before the performance of "The Wizard of Oz" and I noticed that students, teenagers, were turning away and busying themselves with makeup and such rather than notice him and shake his hand.

     But I thought of Ohio as a fairly down-to-earth place. We made stuff — in US Steel, the Ford Plant and the Chevy Plant, Youngstown and Lordstown. Glidden, General Electric, and Goodyear in Akron. Ohians farmed, and fed the world. So yes, we had Republicans, naturally, but they were of the Robert Taft Jr. variety — our senator. I still have the letter that my class at Fairwood School received from him after we sent letters expressing our concern about pollution "It is admirable that so many young people are concerned about this problem," the grandson of President William Howard Taft wrote.
    That was back long before the the Republican Party had swapped business for fantasy and become a cult, dancing around the golden calf of Donald Trump, buffing his statue with their long hair. Now a Republican star, Ron DeSantis, can declare war on one of Florida's largest employers, Disney, basically over a few press releases, and nobody bats an eye. Crazy is the new normal.
     Now the junior senator from Ohio is the loathsome piece of shit named J.D. Vance, who parlayed "Hillbilly Elegy," his book celebrating Appalachian poverty, into election to the senate. Cosplaying as a regular working person, the hedge fund investor became the first Ohio senator to take office with zero government experience. The graduate of Yale Law School at first saw Donald Trump clearly enough, expressing valid concerns that "he might be America's Hitler." Then he smelled personal advantage, and got in line for the proto-fuehrer's benediction. "The best president in my lifetime," Vance gushed, while Trump ridiculed him. "J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so much,” Trump sneered, before giving it, lowering his ring to waist level for Vance to smooch. And he did. And does.
     It saddened me that my home state could slide into nationalistic fervor. Ohio seemed so grounded in practicality — home to eight presidents, the aforementioned Taft plus William Henry Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley and Warren G. Harding. Not exactly an honor roll of excellence. But more commanders in chief than any other state, and not a radical among them. Warren G. Harding, long considered a nadir of corruption and cronyism, was Cincinnatus compared to the 45th president. 
     But maybe the days of Ohio as a bastion of stability and decency are not forever lost. Hope flickered anew Tuesday, with Ohio's referendum on whether the citizens could mute their ability to amend the constitution — a Republican ploy to game the system, and prevent voters from controlling their lives, trying to keep Ohio from following other states in enshrining women's reproductive rights constitutionally.  A referendum would move the vote needed to amend the constitution from 50 to 60 percent. Beyond the reach of the current divide.

      About 57 percent of Ohio voters said, "No, we'd like to keep our ability to decide how we live our lives." Some 43 percent voted to have that power taken away (Good thing they have those notional babies they can pretend to be saving, because otherwise, I'd think they're just hot to meddle in the sexual choices of women they've never met).

       My general relief that the totalitarian charge might be turned away was mixed with nostalgic pride. “You can fool all of the people some of the time," begins a popular 19th century saying variously attributed to Abraham Lincoln or P.T Barnum. "You can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time.”
     Ohioans, having been fooled for a while — they threw their support behind Trump twice — seem to be moving from the second to the third category. Whether they stay there, and whether the rest of the nation follows them, is an open question. But it is good to see Ohio back in the fight, on the side of the good guys once again.

Dictionary time with Brandon and John

 

Noah Webster seems to grasp the concept in his 1828 dictionary.

     Readers regularly fall into a trap I call the “Two Definitions Problem.” They know a word means A, but forget it can also mean B,
     For instance. On Monday, a reader chided me for referring to a choice between something that might cure you or kill you as “a dilemma.” A mistake, he lectured, because “a dilemma is a situation in which both possible outcomes are bad. ... Precise English is essential to the unambiguous writing for which you’re admired.”
     I replied by pointing out that while a dilemma indeed can be a choice between bad alternatives, it can also simply be “a difficult situation or problem.”
     We saw the Two Definitions Problem on public display last week at a Brandon Johnson press conference when a reporter called teens looting a 7-Eleven a “mob action” and the mayor objected.
     “We’re not talking about mob actions,” Johnson said. “To refer to children as, like baby Al Capones, is not appropriate.”
     There was a muffled “whump” as countless palms slapped countless foreheads. Meanwhile chairs innumerable scraped back as their occupants leapt up to cheer. The remark made headlines around the world.
     “Chicago’s woke new mayor Brandon Johnson scolds reporters for using phrase ‘mob action’ to describe rabble of ‘400’ youngsters who trashed 7-Eleven in Windy City” blared Britain’s conservative Daily Mail.

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Mail bag

     A heavier than usual load of reader mail Monday. While prudence dictates that most go unanswered, I responded to more than I probably should. The faux "I'm just discovering the world" tone of the first email moved me to reply. This guy has been sending me right wing fictions for a decade.
    

Dear Mr. Steinberg,

     I always look forward to your column in the Sun-Times, and thoroughly enjoyed the recent offering on the blockbuster film Barbie.
     Yesterday I saw 'The Sound of Freedom' and think it should be on many 10 Best Films of the Year lists. I hadn’t heard much about the film and was taken aback by the content and the message therein.
     I texted a friend about it and he said he wouldn’t see it because of QAnon.
     I can’t say I’ve ever heard of QAnon and googled same. I’m still a bit in the dark about this American political movement and theory, as I am sure others are.
     Please see the film and write an article about your observations as well as those you have on QAnon.

Thank you,

Dick N.
Rogers Park

     My reply:

    I appreciate you reading my column, but that doesn't make me in any way more open to the way QAnon has cynically seized the real problem of child trafficking as a figleaf to cover their shameful and toxic conspiracy peddling and anti-rationality. As for seeing the film, I will instead quote Kierkegaard: "Happy is he who didn't have to go to hell to know what the devil looks like." Since you profess to "still being a bit in the dark" about of QAnon — I don't see how that is possible, it's been around for years — and say you respect my opinion, allow me to fill you in: anyone parroting QAnon is either mentally ill, a chronic liar, irredeemably stupid, or some combination of the three. Thanks for writing.

As the Teletubbies said, "Again! Again!" 

     You are one of my favorite ex-Chicago authors and bloggers. (As I am an ex Chicago resident since 2005.) However you also seem to not have an actual clue as to how life goes on before and after Covid to the great majority of actual Illinois, Cook County, and Aldermanic Ward residents.
     My friends and relatives do suffer from these residencies. Their choice for now.
It might be more elucidating, and interesting if you, yourself spent more time within the City Limits, and then used your fine writing skills to report and reflect back to your readers.
I am a long time fan, (and ex Northbrook resident for one delightful year: 1970) but just wonder why you are no longer in the actual mix, of Chicagoland.
     — Mary C.

I chewed on that a bit, then tried to answer with all the candor I could muster:

Mary:

     Thanks for reading my column, for liking what I do, generally, and for your on-point suggestion and intriguing query.

     I suppose the honest answer to your question of why I don't spend more time in the city is a mix of the isolation and slow decay of age, lingering COVID, both tamping down society and affecting me personally — I was laid up with it most of July — not to forget my characteristic laziness, plus a lack of need. My most popular columns tend to be about some inane social subject — shopping at Aldi's — while columns that involve spending the morning crawling around Lower Wacker Drive with the Night Ministry get a chorus of crickets. I still do them, when I can find something, and try to go to the city whenever possible — I was there last Wednesday, at the Field Museum, then walking up the lakefront to the Gold Coast, then across the River Walk. On Friday, I was on the West Side, standing on the corner of Damen and Fulton, watching a Water Department crew repair a fire hydrant for two hours. I'll attach a photo below. That column will run a week from today.
     Until then, thank you for your patience when my column strays from your vision of what it should be, one that I share with you. That said, while I don't have many rules, as a writer, one I do adhere to is that I should always be who I am. This is who I am right now, for good or ill. Lately I've been quoting to readers dissatisfied with that person a sharp line from Shirley Jackson : "If you don't like my peaches; don't shake my tree."* But in this case, your remarks have such obvious merit, that doesn't quite apply, so I'll just say is that I agree with you, and will strive to do a better job of capturing the Chicago scene.
Best,
Neil Steinberg

There's more, but you get the idea.

* Reader Charles Troy points out that the line predates Jackson, and is found in a 1914 Irving Berlin song, "If You Don't Want My Peaches (You Better Stop Shaking My Tree)."