'Success is a journey'

     You don’t often see a judge cry.
     But Cook County Circuit Court Judge Lauren Edidin was repeatedly brushing away tears on Thursday — though she would be quick to point out it was not in her own courtroom but at a decidedly emotional event: the latest graduation ceremony of the Skokie Mental Health Court.
     “I’m really going to try not to cry,” she told those gathered at the 2nd Municipal District courthouse in Skokie.
     Mental Health Court is one of three types of Cook County’s 20 “problem-solving courts.” The other two are veterans court and drug court. Rather than trying to punish non-violent offenders — the accused must plead guilty to participate — these courts try to address the problems that pave the way for criminality.
     The work is time-consuming, often frustrating, occasionally rewarding environments where members of the legal community band together, often in their spare time — Edidin was praised for devoting her vacations to the effort — to help disentangle those caught in the legal system.
     “We help participants learn how to live and succeed with their illness,” Edidin said. “This program exists to help participants find long-term housing, set up treatment plans, receive job training, obtain insurance and Social Security benefits. The program formulates individual plans, based on participants’ specific needs.
    “That is so important. With that, they have a higher likelihood of success. Our program supports participants with kindness, understanding, tough love and encouragement,” she said.
     Emotions were high not only because Deborah L., Ashur N., Lamont O. and Kathy R. were celebrating their exit from the criminal justice system, but Edidin was retiring after 12 years on the bench. That was why Chief Judge Timothy Evans took the time to be there, along with about 50 fellow judges, public defenders, assistant state's attorneys, staffers and family members.

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Flashback 2010: Veterans Court assists vets the rest of us forget

      I attended a graduation ceremony at Cook County Mental Health Court on Thursday, for a column running in Monday's paper. It's one of three "problem-solving courts" the county runs. Another is veterans court, which I mention in the story, and have written about several times over the years. This is the first one, in a story timed for Veterans Day:

     Cyril Hall isn't the kind of vet you'll probably have in mind when you put out the flag tomorrow for Veterans Day. He didn't fight in Iraq or Afghanistan — he's 51, an Army combat engineer who did bridge repair.
     Hall doesn't have a job — he's on disability for a bad back. (The idea that vets as a group can't find jobs, or have trouble holding jobs, is a myth — the unemployment rate for all veterans is 8.1 percent, better than the rate for the general population).
     Hall has battled drugs, and was arrested for possession of a controlled substance.
     "It wasn't mine," he says of the bag of drugs that led to his arrest, which brought him here, to the Cook County Criminal Court Building at 26th and California. Blame was put on him "since it was closest to me."
     But in one respect Hall represents a military elite — he is among the 54 vets enrolled in Cook County's Veterans Court program, formed last year as a "specialty court."
     "We have drug courts, mental health courts — Veterans Court is an extension of that," said Criminal Division Presiding Judge Paul Biebel Jr., who heard about such courts in Buffalo and Tulsa and thought they were needed here. "A lot of people who come in here have issues."
     We are a nation that just went through a mid-term election and barely talked about the two, count 'em, two wars we are currently fighting. We can hardly force ourselves to pause from fretting about the economy to pay attention to soldiers fighting and dying on our behalf every day, never mind those who fought in previous wars, particularly vets who get in trouble like Hall. That's what this court does; it gives vets not a legal break, but support they are entitled to.
     The real work of Veterans Court does not take place when Circuit Court Judge John P. Kirby enters his courtroom and all rise; rather, the heavy lifting of helping these vets get back on track goes on an hour beforehand, at a pre-court meeting, in a room so crowded with staff — I count 19 people -- there isn't room for them to sit around the table. Representatives from the states attorney, public defender and sheriff's offices are here, along with those from the U.S., Illinois and Chicago offices of veterans affairs, plus probation officers, drug counselors, homeless coordinators, legal clinics.
     "Everybody was already up and running," says Kirby. "Every program here was in existence. We just put everybody in the same room and said, 'How can we work with veterans the best that we know how?' "
     One by one, Kirby reads the names of the vets on today's court docket, and the caseworkers involved report regarding drug tests and program participation.
     "Looks like he's been attending all his meetings . . ."
     "He came back positive for cocaine . . ."
     "We're just waiting for the results so we can fax them over."
     Kirby occasionally asks pointed questions: "Have we reached a member of his family? There was one there, early on . . ."
     To qualify for Veterans Court, an accused vet has to be charged with a crime the law doesn't require jail time for if convicted.
     "We don't take violent crimes or sex crimes," says Kirby. "We are looking for people who commit probational offenses."
     Afterward, the vets whose progress — or lack of progress — has been reviewed appear in court. Some are in custody, brought in wearing sand-colored DOC scrubs. Some are in street clothes — untucked button-down shirts mostly. Some are appearing for the first time.
     "I've been informed you are a veteran," Kirby tells a young woman.
     "I was in Iraq," she says.
     "What I am going to do is have you interviewed by our veteran's team," says Kirby.
     Veterans are a special class for two reasons. First, their service to the country implies that — at least at one point — they had more on the ball than the average street criminal. And second, as vets, they qualify for services that aren't available to non-veterans. Help is available to them, and Veterans Court tries to make sure they get it.
     "A veteran comes in, we want to treat that person as a whole, not just a case before us," says Kirby. "If he needs treatment, if he needs housing, we have Volunteers of America, Featherfist, for housing. If other issues, we send him to the John Marshall clinic."
     Not only is Veterans Court the right thing to do, but it works, as a crime-fighting tool.
     "The year prior, the individuals entering our program had 278 felony arrests total," says Kirby. "A year later they were four — that's a decrease of 98.6 percent."
     There are three other Veterans Courts in Cook County besides Kirby's, with another set to open in Bridgeview next month — that's where Hall's case was, before an alert assistant public defender suggested he transfer to Kirby's courtroom.
     "I wish they had this years ago," Hall says. "It is working. I'm not doing any drugs anymore because of it."
     None of this laborious attention is patriotic bluster. It's not what people have in mind when they stick a yellow ribbon magnet on their cars — and fewer even bother to do that anymore. But as the needs of vets grow, merely "remembering" them rings hollow, something we do more for our benefit than for theirs. All the unheralded people working to make Veterans Court happen actually help real vets to get their lives back. More of us should do the same.
     — Originally published in the Sun-Times Nov. 10, 2010

Flashback 2015: America would survive Trump ... right?

   An email notified me Friday that someone had "upvoted" a post of mine on Tremr: Is Donald Trump the President America Deserves?

     Tremr? It didn't ring a bell. These social media platforms come and go. You're not supposed to click on such links, but I clicked anyway — I couldn't imagine a scam that narrowly focused. There was a brief essay written eight years ago, by me, apparently. And here's the odd thing. Its general tone — Trump would not be the end of America — was the exact point that readers were making yesterday on my Mailbag post about the dangers of a potential second term. But those I was pushing back against; I'd come full circle, 180 degrees.

     For a moment, I wondered if perhaps I hadn't written it, that it was somehow assembled by AI. "Deep Freudian bunkum." Did I really write that phrase? Checking my email, there is a note from a Trent McNish on Dec. 2, 2015. "We run a weekly debate, kicked off by a respected journalist or author, and next week we’d really like to run something on the theme of your article," referring to something I'd written in the Sun-Times about newcomer Trump that previous July. I can't quite make out what Tremr is now — something of a ghost ship, a charred, sailless hull bobbing on the great debris ocean of the internet.

     It's interesting to read the piece again, just as a bit of Trumpalia. My suggestion that Ben Carson or Ted Cruz would be worse isn't embarrassing — the truth is unknowable, and I do believe that Cruz would have been more methodical, less self-obsessed and blundering, and therefore could cause more damage. 

    Anyway, enough prelude. I return you to that innocent time in American life when the presidency of Donald Trump was merely speculation. Although, in my defense, America DID survive Trump. So far.

  

     It's December. 

     Which means the nightmare sideshow of the Republican 2016 presidential campaign has been in full swing for about five months now, every minute of it starring that improbable figure yanked from the deep Freudian bunkum of the United States, that supercharged Id with its own jet, Donald Trump. 

     The laughter that the media and fellow Republicans greeted Trump with, the teeth-gritted, can-you-believe-this-guy amazement has long ago shifted into a cold river of panic running through the soft underbelly of Conservative America. 

     And while history tells us that the early primary darlings flame out and just become bad hangover memories, this field of candidates is so sub-par that comfort is hard to find.

 (Not) The Worst of a Bad Bunch

      The awful truth about Trump is that he isn't the worst running. By far. 

     Donald Trump is Solon the Lawgiver compared to Ben Carson, the doctor who went from being the deracinated pet black man of the religious right to leading the polls along with Trump, his eyes at half mast, murmuring his near-insane pronouncements which, devoid of fact or even sense, were seized on as glyphic truths by his fans.  And neither of those two men approached the hellish unfitness of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a demagogue from the Joe McCarthy mold, hated by Democrat and Republican alike in Congress, a fraud hiding his Princeton and Harvard roots, his banker wife, behind a smokescreen of false populism. 

     Mustering bravado last July, I came up with an approach to observing this ongoing canard without chewing my paw off to escape. I blustered that, if one of these guys became the president of the United States, we would deserve him. 

     It was my way to sop up spreading panic with a display of courage. 

     Maybe it was no more than a facile line, a way to anticipate living with the crushing understanding that a nation of 310 million people had selected a Donald Trump - or a Ben Carson, or a Ted Cruz - to lead it for the next four years. Because how bad would that really be? 

America Would Survive... Right? 

     We survived eight years of Ronald Reagan, and he co-starred in a B-movie with a chimp and had a wife who consulted swamis when setting the presidential schedule. 

      We survived eight years of George W. Bush, a man who resembled Alfred E. Newman, physically and intellectually. 

     If Hillary Clinton self-destructs - as Clintons are wont to do - we'll survive whatever boob the Republican Party designates as heir. Or is that being glib? Is that an insult to the thousands of soldiers killed and hundreds of thousands of civilians butchered in Bush's ill-advised wars. 

     I guess what I'm asking is: how much does the president really matter? All bad presidents have good qualities: Nixon created the EPA, Reagan ended the Cold War bloodlessly. And all good presidents have their bad qualities. Barack Obama deported a huge number of illegal immigrants and failed to close Guantanamo Bay. 

     Does it matter who wins next November? And if Donald Trump squeaks into the Oval Office, won't that be what the country secretly wants, needs, and deserves? Discuss.

Watch out for crossing guards

 

Carol Alvarado

    "Did you hear the sirens?" Carol Alvarado asked in a grave tone as Kitty and I presented ourselves at the corner of Center and Cedar in the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook.
     Sirens? What, the tornado sirens? I did a quick reality check. Is this the first Tuesday of the month at 10 a.m.? No, Thursday, 8 a.m.
     "Two police cars and an ambulance," she explained. "The crossing guard at Cherry and Meadow got hit by a car." 
      I gasped.  A driver had stopped and told her. 
      "He's alright — he was up and walking around," she said.
     That's a relief. We continued talking.
      Mrs. A, as the children call her, is the sort of person you stop and talk to, and I usually do, if only a remark about the weather — grateful for the good, sympathetic toward the bad. To me, that is part of a life well lived: to not be in a rush, the mad scramble that is the default mode for so many, rushing to and fro in their seemingly charmless lives. Better to pause, linger, notice things, talk to people. You never know what they have to say.  

    When we're not discussing meteorological fine points, we often talk about the mad, salmons-to-spawn scramble of the drivers blasting up and down Cedar. Drivers who just don't want to stop. You can almost sense their coiled impatience, being forced to slow down by some guard, just to let these pedestrians pass. She won't even try to step into the crosswalk if a car is less than half a block away because they have a tendency to keep going.
    "Drivers go around me," she said. "Or they don't see me. Wearing this." And she spread her arms out, with her high-visibility safety neon yellow-green coat and hat, and flashing handheld red stop sign. "How do you not see me?"

    After Kitty did her business — "standing on a dime" is how I think of it — I considered heading over to Cherry and Meadow for first person investigation. But I figured the guard was either receiving medical care or rattled enough for one morning without the media showing up too.
    A call to the police seemed in order. Since I'm not in Chicago, the police called me right back.
    "Yes, we had a minor incident over at Cherry and Meadow," said Rich Rash, community relations supervisor for the Northbrook Police Department. "A vehicle turning left with sun on the windscreen, as the truck was turning the crossing guard was right in his pillar. He couldn't see him, but it was a very, very slow turn. The guard jumped out of the way and fell on his back and elbow. There was no contact. He'll probably be a little stiff, but he's okay. The driver was very, very apologetic. He was shaken up too." No citation was given.
    The suburbs get a lot of flack, but we do tend to operate on a more humane scale. I suggested that this might be an opportunity to remind motorists to look out for and respect crossing guards. Sometimes they seem to want to go around the guards, like bulls surging past a toreador. 
    "They do that," laughed Rash. "Everybody's always in such a rush. We want to let everybody know to use due caution and be patient. If the crossing guard is in the intersection, the law is they have to stop movement until the crossing guard is out of the way and onto the sidewalk."
     So slow down. Give it a try. You'll be safer and, who knows, maybe even happier. Because I am not in a rush, after we talked about the accident, I chatted a bit further with Alvarado, 81, who ran an accounting firm with her husband, 87 who, on nice days, sometimes sits in a chair nearby while Carol does her crossing duties. She's crossed children here for six years and plans to remain at the post for a few more, until the pride of our block, a dynamic 9-year-old who happens to be my next door neighbor, moves on to Northbrook Junior High. We both had attended her outstanding star performance at the Northbrook Park District as SpongeBob Squarepants in the eponymous musical. How many crossing guards attend the plays of children they help across the street? Mrs. A. does.
     "My husband wondered how she could absorb all those lines," she said. "And I told him, 'She's playing a sponge.'"
     She looked at me. I looked at her. For a smart man, I can be amazing slow on the uptake. She saw my incomprehension.
     "Playing a sponge," she repeated. "Absorb her lines."
     Ah, I said, laughing, and went on my way, quite fortified by our encounter.
       

Mailbag

    I tend to share emails that are laughably hateful or oblivious, out of hey-look-at-this amazement more than anything else. A typical specimen is:

Neil. Fascinating In the same article that you referred to the “Staff of 100 fact fixated news hounds["], you also engage in ridiculous hyperbole, to wit: “Did I mention the real chance of democracy dying in America next year?” Makes it difficult to buy the whole “fact” assertion.  Bob Johnson.

    It probably deserved no answer, but I answered anyway:

     You do know that Donald Trump is running for president? I hate to be the one to tell you. His election could mean the death of democracy in this country. That isn't an opinion. It's just a fact, one that remains true whether you realize it or not. Thanks for writing.     NS

     That said, I don't want to give the impression that ALL my correspondence consists of trolls sniping. I do receive deeply thoughtful letters, such as this:

Dear Neil Steinberg:
     Last August, you wrote a column about how you are prohibited from making political endorsements, under the Sun-Times new legal status as a not-for-profit financial entity. You finished by saying that your column, in any case, was no more than, “…a twig snapping in a bonfire the size of a barn. The entirety of responsible professional journalism has been blazing away at Donald Trump.”
     Your modesty is endearing, but it obscures the fact that your column actually is a mighty big twig in the regional and syndicated news bonfire. I’m saying this now, because I’m convinced that we each need to do whatever we can, and as often as we can, to keep a would-be dictator from becoming President.  There will be plenty of time for fatalism later
     What prompted me to write you today, is that I have just read Robert Kagan’s two recent opinion pieces in the Washington Post about the likelihood of a second Trump term. Kagan counters the current arguments used to assuage fears, and focuses on the enormous political and financial power that will accrue to Trump after he wins the Super Tuesday Republican primary on March 5. I trust that you have read Kagan’s piece.
     As for the possible fate of my beloved Sun-Times, what is at stake If Trump wins the presidency is not only its nonprofit status, but its Constitutional freedom of speech. The mainstream media, in Trump’s own words (as borrowed from Stalin) is “the Enemy of the People.” And he has announced his plans to use the justice department to go after his critics in the media.
     Now, I’m not naïve enough to think that you and your colleagues already haven’t had conversations about how far you might push the envelope in order to prevent this catastrophe. I only write today to lend encouragement to you and your coworkers to take whatever risks you think you can to stop Trump, before it’s too late.
     Finally, I want you to know that I am incredibly impressed and encouraged by how the Sun-Times has become a great paper again. And I trust you will do all you can to rouse us readers from our complacency and so prevent our democracy from becoming yet another dictatorship.
     Respectfully yours,
     Tom Golz

     An honest concern deserves an honest reply, and I thought hard, and did my best to respond as candidly as I could:

Dear Tom Golz:
     Thank you for your thoughtful letter. I too read Robert Kagan's columns, and felt they were spot-on, if lengthy, summations of the peril our nation is facing right now. The really scary part is that his proposed solution — newfound courage among Republicans — is exactly the quality whose general lack has brought us to this crisis. GOP timidity isn't a bug, but a feature, as the techies say, and I can't see that changing, certainly not before March 5. To me, the whole game is Biden winning re-election; alas, and as Kagan points out, that can be easily torpedoed by a third-party candidate like Jill Stein. Or a stroke.
     To address your thoughts on the Sun-Times leading the charge to save democracy, I brought up that very subject at an open meeting last Thursday, explaining to the powers-that-be that this is a moment of grave national peril, and did they really want to look back at it, years from now, and know they sat on the sidelines because they're worried about their 501(c)3 status? I wish I could say their answer was encouraging, but it wasn't really an answer at all. More of a we'll-get-back-to-you-on-that murmur. I'm not holding my breath.
     My plan is, as always, to say what I think needs to be said, when it needs to be said, and if the paper won't print it, despite my best arguments, well, then that is their right. As I sometimes tell readers who demand to know how I can permit some top level misstep or another: I just work there; I don't run the place. I do have my blog, which draws a respectable number of eyeballs. I've already been writing columns about the Israel-Hamas war there, not bothering to turn them into the paper because doing so causes such a quivering bolus of alarm, hand-wringing and nit-picking that it's hardly worth it. Were the Middle East waiting breathlessly for insight from me, I might feel worse about that, but — spoiler alert — they're not. That might be one reason I'm writing a two-part series on baking bread this week.
     Recognizing that I am not the greased hub on which politics twirls is not humility, it's just true. In 2016, I knew Trump was going to win, after Brexit, and said so, repeatedly. No matter. I do take comfort in knowing that Illinois went for Biden by 17 points over Trump in 2020. They don't need me telling them what to do.
     I hope that isn't timidity. I've turned in my resignation in the past, and will do so again, if need be. While you don't rack up 36 years on staff by stalking off in a huff over editorial disagreements, no writer worth his salt flaps in the wind of whoever is signing the checks. If I get sacked in the process of fighting for democracy, then I couldn't hope for a better exit. "I would not lose so great an honor," as Henry V says.
     Finally, I thank you for your closing observation about the Sun-Times ascendancy. That is, to me, very encouraging. Even with our fraught charitable status, there is much to be optimistic about. We are bringing on fresh, enthusiastic talent faster than I ever remember it being hired, and they're writing excellent stuff, covering Chicago as it deserves to be covered. As for me, I am confident that I'll be able to provide assistance to the good guys when the time comes. There are many ways to skin a cat — I suppose I'll have to write a chain of historical columns about the rise of Hitler and count on my audience to read between the lines. One aspect that Kagan dismisses that I think about a lot lately: America has always had extraordinary luck. Not at all times in all things — were that true, Trump wouldn't be the front-runner. But at key moments we caught a lucky break — we elected FDR in 1932 while Germany elected Hitler. It could have just as easily been the other way around. I like to think fate won't desert us now.
      Don't get me wrong — I don't intend to count on chance. I plan to oppose Trump with every fibre of my being up to and — if need be — after his re-election. Terrifying as our time is, it is also the rarest of things — a moment of true historic importance. I compliment you for the letter you sent — nobody else has written anything close — and hope you continue to do what you can, when you can. As will I.
     Neil Steinberg

‘I will change your life with this bread’

Dobra Bielinski

     Dobra Bielinski brought her own bread to China.
     “They have white bread,” she said, dismissively, noting that her hearty, seed-laden bread kept her alive for a two-week trip.
     Bielinski is the owner of Delightful Pastries on Lawrence Avenue. Readers on Monday enjoyed our preliminaries before settling down to work on two breads, a potato and roasted onion sourdough loaf, and an oatmeal porridge bread.
     “You can see the chunks of potatoes,” she said, tamping dough into rectangular molds with her knuckles. “You can see the chunks of onions. This is a nice dough. I love it.”
     Like any fine chef, Bielinski’s all about sourcing ingredients.
     “A ton of onions I brought from Wisconsin,” she said. “Making wild onion soup I foraged for mushrooms.”
     Why are Wisconsin onions special?
     “I love them,” she said. “They caramelize really nicely. I don’t get the big ones, I get the medium sized ones. I love roasting potatoes and onions together, This bread will go well with pate, go well with New England clam chowder. It’s going to be faaaaabulous with that.”
     Lunchtime approached. We sat down and ate ... you might want to skip this part if you’re eating, say, a bologna sandwich on Wonder bread for lunch. The envy might kill you.
     A bowl of Bigos — hunter’s stew, a sauerkraut-based pottage with pork sausage, smoked bacon, dried plums and mushrooms. Her own horseradish sauce. A superlative apple cider that made me think of the cider at Alinea. Thick slices of warm rye bread.
     “I will change your life with this bread,” she said. “Let me get some butter. Some delicious fabulous Wisconsin butter.”
     She held the loaf.

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Potato and roasted onion sourdough loaves. 

In baseball news....

     Indifference to professional sport is a hobby horse I've ridden for a long time now. It began because I was a fat kid, terrible at athletics, living outside Cleveland, whose Indians had built a comfortable nest in the cellar of the American League. Not to forget the Browns and Cavaliers, who were worse. Following sports seemed like digging a hole and staring into it. A waste of life.
     Working for a newspaper, with a whole department — the most important part, to many readers — dedicated to chronicling and celebrating sports, I felt safe occasionally raising an objection, or at least a counter-narrative, to the hullabaloo. I was proud to be the guy who almost asked Michael Jordan who he was. Proud that, the night the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, I attended a lecture at the Field Museum on tattooing in Polynesia. I wasn't alone; why not spread the word: you're allowed to ignore this shit.
     But sometimes I do manage to scare — or at least worry — myself, such as a few days ago, when I learned of the existence of Shohei Ohtani, the star on the Los Angeles Angels who signed a 10-year, $700 million contract to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
     Ohtani is both a powerhouse batter and a fireballing pitcher — a sui generis combination in baseball, something that even I find interesting, which was the distressing part: the idea that, by generally ignoring sports, I was missing something worthwhile. Maybe sports isn't "The same thing happening over and over," as I like to say, and Ohtani is evidence of that. Maybe I've been negligent. Heck, I didn't even know the Los Angeles Angels were a team — when did they stop being the California Angels? (in 1996; quite a while ago, really. Though in my defense, they then became the "Anaheim Angeles," and who could be expected to note that? They started calling the team the "Los. Angeles Angels" in 2005).
     Well, there's no harm in making up for lost time — heck, even I dragged myself to the United Center a few times to see Michael Jordan play (and LeBron James, to please my wife). I could see catching a game at Wrigley Field to lay eyes upon Ohtani. 
     Why? There might be something to say about it. I could argue that American baseball has been becoming more Japanese for a while now. I went to a baseball game in Tokyo, back in the 1980s: the Nippon Ham Fighters versus the Sebu Lions at the Tokyo Dome, aka "The Big Egg." That part I remember. While of course none of the actual play sticks in mind, I do recall being impressed by the food — Bento boxes and sushi rolls, which can be found at many American ballparks, finally having moved beyond peanuts and Cracker Jack. The crowds were also segregated into cheering blocks, like at college football games, and at times entire zones of the stadium would leap to their feet and start chanting (Nippon Ham! Tatakai! Katsu! "Nippon Ham! Fight! Win!") Maybe if we started doing that here, it might cut into the dolour of the games.
     Anyway, my interest is piqued, if only to see what a stunningly bad investment that $700 million turns out to be. Even not following sports, I have the conviction that as soon as star athletes get a gigantic payday they generally shut down and are never as good again. Ohtani is 29. His elbow is already hurt from last year. I better go see him in 2024, because who knows if he'll even be playing afterward. Heck, Sandy Koufax retired at 30. So maybe there is something to this sports stuff after all, occasionally. Or not.