You be the journalist

     While the best columns are often those written the quickest — I think Friday's well-received Maureen Dowd snarkfest took an hour to write — others can be pawed over for days, weeks, or even months.
     It was in December that I interviewed Daniel Kyri, a star in the "Chicago Fire" procedural drama (I keep wanting to call it a "soap opera" but that could have negative connotations). I'd never seen the show before, but he plays an openly gay firefighter, and I thought it might be worthwhile to compare and contrast what he had to say with the thoughts of an actual gay firefighter, if I could find one.
     That got the thing pushed into the slow lane. But — mirabile dictu — my old friend, Larry Langford, at the Chicago Fire Department did actually put me in touch with a real live 28 year veteran of the CFD, Lt. Paul Clark, who is indeed gay. I interviewed him in January.
     I knew that incorporating the two interviews would take some effort, and slow-walked that challenge until I finally decided that putting it off forever was not a success strategy. It was time to shit or cut bait, as we professionals say.
     So I began pulling the column together last week, and tried to get a draft Saturday, to lessen the Sunday morning strain. The column will run Monday.
     In doing so, I had to consider something Clark quotes one of his fellow firefighters saying about the gay pride pylons on Halsted Street: "'Can you believe the city put these up for these fucking fags?'"
     The question being, how much of that goes in the paper?
     Left to my down devices, as a believer in poet Robert Lowell's dictum, "Yet why not say what happened?" I would print the whole quote verbatim and let the complainers complain (the way some readers, already in my spam filter, took exception to the three interjections of "Jesus!" in Friday's column, never considering that the Galilee carpenter isn't my lord and I have no obligation to honor their theological view of the cosmos any more than they respect mine, aka, not much).
     But as I sometimes tell readers, I just work for the newspaper; I don't run the place. Nor do I set style. I follow it. So I knew what I called "the obscene gerund" in my apology regarding Dylan Thomas; a locution I borrowed from a Doonesbury cartoon about Frank Sinatra (from 40 years ago — Jesus!) wouldn't fly. It would end up as "f—-ing." (I found "obscene gerund" so funny in that context I used it in the blog version of the column, even though here, it isn't necessary, as swears are permitted by the boss, aka me).
     But what about "fags"? Such curse words have been dashed even more lately, the result of mission creep stemming from "the n-word," general societal cowardice, and a desire to thwart social media algorithms that will increasingly tag you as a hater and shutter your account if you use derogatory words under any context.

     The word also falls victim to an alarming tendency to whitewash the past. And here the left and the right have drifted so far from center, away from faith in the value of frank confrontation with reality — in my view — that they've begun to converge. Both the MAGA crowd and Blue State lefties posit the existence of timorous souls who will be crushed if exposed to the weight of the nation's true hateful past, and feel obligated to bowdlerize the past on their behalf. To lighten the load, as it were. Children and the profoundly sensitive are preemptively given the final say in vetting acceptability. I hate that.
     I tried out "f—-ing f-gs" but that reads to me as cursing out dried fruit. See, that's why I avoid euphemism. Very quickly readers have no idea what you're talking about. Then I considered "Can you believe the city put these up?" without the final clause at all. But that softens the insult so much you wonder why Clark remembered it a quarter century later.
     At this point I wanted to consult my editor, John O'Neill — oh right, he was let go last week.
     Seeking clarity, I went into the Sun-Times NewBank archive and found the word last appeared in a 2014 column about the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting protest buffer zones around abortion clinics:
     "A law aimed to prevent the Westboro Baptist Church from showing up at military funerals with their neon “GOD HATES FAGS” signs would end up stopping people from showing up at Bruce Rauner rallies with “RAUNER’S A FRAUD” signs, and we need more, not less, of those," the author wrote.
     If that writing sounds familiar, well, that was written by me. Seeing myself as the Welcome Wagon for obscenity — not a single colleague writing over the past 11 years felt the need to use the word — took the wind out of my sails. Or maybe someone wanted to use it and wasn't allowed.
     So take it out? Self-editing is the path not only to confusion, but tedium, and I decided to offload responsibility and let whoever draws the short straw Sunday morning and has to edit my column be the one to figure it out. (My editors opted for the nearly-indecipherable: "f—— f—-s.")

     And yes, I did pause, and worry, whether by using "obscene gerund" I was plagiarizing Garry Trudeau. And decided that credit was impossible — it would ruin the passage — and you can't really plagiarize a two-word phrase, any more than if I refer to "household words" I'm stealing from Shakespeare, who uses the term in "Henry V." 

     Of course you can get in trouble with this thinking. Years ago I ended a column "Isn't it pretty to think so?" and a reader sincerely accused me of plagiarizing the last line of "The Sun Also Rises." I had a reply, along the lines of, "I just assume everyone knows it — if I ended the column 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' would you accuse me of plagiarizing the Bible?" But it also reminded me to be careful about that kind of thing.  So if anyone is under the illusion that the life of a writer is carefree, let me assure you it is not. There is a lot to worry about.

The perfect baby gift

     People don't listen. And if they do, they tend to dismiss whatever doesn't jibe with what they already believe. 

     When dealing with my boys — and now their spouses — I try to break that pattern by actually attending to what they say, consider it, and weigh whether it might be true, even when I'm dubious.

     For instance. Almost as soon as our daughter-in-law informed us we'd be grandparents — in my memory, it was the next words out of her mouth — she instructed us that under no circumstances were we to kiss the baby, at least not on the head, at least not for the first six months. Because: germs. And bacteria. And disease. From us.

     Before these words had echoed away, I was online, checking the veracity of her claim. Because: really? Since when? Turns out to be true. I mentioned this last month. 

     It wasn't true when our boys were born in the mid-1990s.  Then, we were doing our parental duty if we didn't leave their carriers on top of the car and drive off. And I imagine it won't be true 30 years from now, when other concerns crowd to the forefront. Whether to implant the chip in their heads like everybody else, I imagine.

     Okay, fine, no worries. We'll withhold our kisses. Don't want to infect the baby. I didn't object beyond a crushed little, "But we can kiss a little socked foot, yes?"

     I tucked the information away, and forgot about it. We'll worry about it in June.

     But a few weeks back, I was looking for art to accompany something I'd written on the Suburban Cook County Tuberculosis Sanitarium District. Not many photos online. So I was glancing at old tuberculosis posters, and noticed a poster warning parents not to kiss their children.

    An idea bloomed. Perfect. I snapped into action.

    So I was ready when I attended my first baby shower last weekend, for the pending granddaughter. I'd never been to a baby shower before — they tend to be all-female affairs. 

     But my older son felt like being there — he's going to be a very hands on dad — and that opened the door to invite all the men in the family. We had a good time, nibbling beef tenderloin sandwiches and drinking mimosas.

     We didn't need to worry about a present — there's an online registry to choose from and, besides, we were going to the trouble and expense of the party, which is present aplenty.

     But I had still gotten a gift — one of those old TB posters I'd looked at, transferred to a onesie. There are businesses online that do that, and quickly too. 

     I would never be so bold as to claim that my gift was the hit of the shower, nor cast shade upon all the lovely little baby ensembles and complex bottle warmers and such the couple were given by others. But I will say that my present earned the biggest laugh of the afternoon. Score one for zayde. 

Noteworthy Chicagoans fete famous East Coast author

     So the wife and I went out to a party downtown Wednesday night. Which is unusual for me, because I normally don't go to parties, through an effective combination of a) not being invited and b) not wanting to go, as parties typically involve conveying myself somewhere and encountering unfamiliar people. I'd rather be home.
     But my close personal friend Christie Hefner invited me to a book signing at Carnivale, the big, fun Latin American restaurant on Fulton, and while that still wasn't enough to make me want to go (by "close personal friend" I mean I like Christie and we had lunch once at the Cliff Dwellers Club), it prompted me to ask my wife if she was interested (I recognize the burden of being married to me for — Jesus! — 34 years and try to enliven the torpor, when I can). To my surprise, she said, yes, in fact, she would like to go to the party.
     Which still might not have been enough to get us there. But Christie (now that I think of it, we've also had dinner, at the gorgeous, if narrow, Venetian palazzo on Michigan Avenue belonging to auctioneer Leslie Hindman) is nothing if not efficient, and her assistant prodded me until I finally RSVP'd that we were going.
     At Carnivale, we were met at the door by owner Billy Marovitz, who I've known since he was a sprite, having been a close personal friend of his uncle, Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz (and by close personal friend I mean we had lunch together at the old Standard Club, and he came to my apartment on Logan Boulevard to marry my brother, Sam Steinberg, to his wife of — Jesus! — 35 years, Yuri).
     The room was packed, and I noticed several well-known personages, including former Gov. Pat Quinn and former TV political reporter Mike Flannery, who I considered speaking to. But he didn't look in my direction, and the moment passed.
     I can't hope to read the books piled on the floor by my night table, not if I took three months off from work and did nothing else. So getting another book was not high on my list. But having had — Jesus! — nine book parties myself, albeit more sparsely attended than this, I have a moral code that can be described as "Buy the book!" I hurried up to beat the crowd to acquire the book being feted, "Notorious: Portraits of Stars from Hollywood, Culture, Fashion, and Tech," getting in line right next to beloved icon of Chicago journalism Carol Marin.
     Due to some quirk of personality, I introduced Carol to the author, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who, perhaps being in the middle of a long, exhausting book tour, looked up without exhibiting signs of interest or comprehension. She read my name off a Post-it note, wrote it with a Sharpie, then "Star power!" and signed her own name, "Maureen." No last name. Which, in many years of attending such events, I can't recall any author ever doing. Maybe she considers herself in the ranks of Cher and Madonna and similar mono-named cynosures. Or maybe she has arthritis or something. I probably shouldn't speculate.
     The talk involved Marovitz asking questions, and I would discover later when I began reading, Dowd repeating whole paragraphs from her book's introduction, almost word for word. While I wasn't in my reporter mode, I like to show that I'm sometimes out and about. She said, "Hollywood and Washington are twin capitals of illusion.” So I snapped a photo and sent that line to my 2,860 followers on Bluesky.

To continue reading, click here.

A furry pink nest to incubate the fabulous dreams of youth

 

    Bean bag chairs. Remember those? Great vinyl sacks of styrofoam pellets, in banana yellow and candy apple green. The style originated in 1968 by a trio of Italian designers and called the Sacco chair and considered "one of the icons of the Italian anti-design movement." That original chair was more pear shaped, and considered haut decor enough to find itself into several museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art.

    By the early 1970s, it was shaped more like a squashed tomato, and available from Sears. I remember wanting one, vaguely, without ever going so far as to express that desire to my parents, whose tastes ran to Scandinavian design, for themselves, and ranch oak, for us children. They must have loved ranch oak — a dark style of wood. I had a ranch oak bed, dresser, desk. I hated it.

     I probably didn't want the chair so much as the lifestyle that went with it. My pals and I would recline on my bean bag chairs, listening to Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer and be cool.  I think I was too cool to even want the bongs that went along with that.
    That thought came back to me as I was walking Kitty one morning last week, and came across this hot pink monstrosity set out for the trash. A quick Google image search identified it as a Himalayan Pink Faux-Fur Hang-A-Round Chair, available in the Teen section of Pottery Barn, which goes without saying. A 12-year-old girl's idea of what adult female elegance might be. My heart broke a little, seeing it, while admiring the damn-what-the-neighbors-think panache of whoever set it out. I'd be embarrassed.

    Because such novelties grow old. I never did own that beanbag chair, but those who did soon came to regret doing so. "The beanbag chair became a summary cliche of the 1960s. It was freedom in a brand-new bag — but it offered so much freedom it quickly led to stiff limbs and deadened buttocks," wrote Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov in their 2005 Blobjects and Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design. "In the end, the beanbag chair was a miniature parable on the limits of freedom."

     I hope somebody picked it up, and that it's embellishing the bedroom of some scrap dealer's 10-year-old daughter, like a promissory note from the adult world — someday, my dear, you will manifest your own style, and be fabulous and colorful and take your ease in wacky, furry chairs. 
     If you see it and just have to have one, well, bless your heart. Pottery Barn doesn't carry them anymore. But Walmart has a chair very much like it, the Mainstays Blair Plush Faux-Fur Kids Saucer Chair, for $32.98, which is a perfect price for furniture for that short period between the time kids are too energetic to arrange themselves into such a sling, to when they slink off to college and put away their childish things. It also comes in gray, peach and white.

     Those machines aren't ruling the world quite yet. The downside of using company web site for blog research is that achingly stupid store algorithms can't differentiate between momentary professional interest and actually being a potential customer.

     

Geese are smarter than people

 

     What do geese know that we don't?
     The value of organization, for one. While the structure of the United States government, built over centuries, is being torn apart in a matter of months, we can still look up and see those tight Vs in the spring sky as flocks of  Canada geese return north.
     Though many geese never leave the Chicago area. A pair showed up at my feeder last week. Most of the birds we get are "LBBs" — little brown birds, sparrows, wrens, finches — shamed by the occasional red cardinal. My feeder has also been visited by everything from ducks to hawks, which, of course, are not interested in the birdseed, per se, but the wildlife below — bunnies and squirrels — scavenging what falls from various beaks.
     The geese were nibbling at those paltry leavings when, big-hearted fool that I am, I went outside. The geese removed themselves to a safe distance and I grabbed a heaping scoopful of seed and tossed it on the ground. There. Bon appetit.
     Have you ever watched geese eat? I hadn't. One goose would plunge its face into the seeds, happily gobbling. The other wouldn't. It stood guard, head on a swivel, looking left, then right. This went on for several minutes. Then they'd switch.
     "Sentinel behavior," said Michael P. Ward, an expert in conservation and bird behavior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Trying to detect predators. A lot of things want to eat birds, and they're better working together, taking turns."
     Cooperation. Looking out for each other. Another practice that has fallen on hard times in the human world.
     One doesn't get a goose expert on the phone every day. I seized the opportunity.
     That flying V formation? I assume it's to keep the flock from getting separated.
     "No, it's actually aerodynamics," Ward said. "The wind goes around the lead bird. The bird in the very front of the V pays a cost."
     There is no designated head goose. They take turns at the point of the V. Again, sharing the burden.
     I suggested more geese are sticking around Chicago due to global warming.
     "That is definitely correct," Ward said. "Winters in Chicago have become more mild. Geese learned to take advantage of human food. Geese are hanging out on people's roofs. In Chicagoland, the majority of them are staying. Then you have birds that come down from farther north."
     The geese seem to weigh the chance of starving to death in Illinois — where snow can cover the fields they like to forage — against being shot by hunters in Kentucky.

To continue reading, click here.



"People see geese as this dumb bird that gets in my way, but if you actually start studying them, they make decisions and have strategies," Ward said.

Just hold it in your lap.

Ema in Glenview

     "Let me be surrounded by luxury," Oscar Wilde said, "I can do without the necessities!"

     And generally that serves. But every now and then the lack of a particular necessity catches you off guard.

     Sunday night the kids took us out to dinner to thank us for throwing their baby shower. We went to Ema, a hip new Mediterranean spot in Glenview, and while usually I go casual almost everywhere, my daughter-in-law wore such a lovely plum-colored dress, I rose to the challenge and put on a gray sport coat, gray dress shirt and black jeans. 

      It was raining, hard, so my Burberry raincoat and fedora completed the ensemble. 

      We'd been to Ema twice before  — a lovely room with big plants and interesting wicker light fixtures. There is a curved window as you walk in that I thought was a coat check, but was actually a station for take-out. As maitre d' showed us to our table, I asked her if there was somewhere I could put my hat and coat.

     "We don't have a coat check," she said. 

     "Do you have a coat hook?" I countered.

     "No," she said. 

     So I draped my coat over my chair, and set the hat down by the wall. 

     Which worked fine. Although Ema is a sprawling place, and it struck me they could designate a corner to hang coats. Tuck a hat rack next to one of those plants. Georgie V's, a far less ostentatious establishment, manages a line of coat hooks by the bathroom.  They come in handy. I used one Monday.

    Ema does have a family bathroom, beautifully outfitted with a granite sink and golden lighting, which I appreciated when I excused myself for insulin injection purposes. It seemed odd that they would go to the trouble and expense to create and decorate this lavish little extra room, but fall down on the job in the coat hook department. And Ema is a Lettuce Entertain You Restaurant, which are normally so detail-oriented, down to the Italian conversation they used to pipe into the bathrooms at the old Scoozi on Huron. 

Ema honey layer cake

      Oh well, a small thing. The appetizer spreads are excellent — better than the main courses — paired with warm soft pita bread. We were too full to indulge in dessert, but the honey layer cake we had before is memorable enough to make me regret that. The service is excellent, the coat policy notwithstanding. Our dinner was festive, and while I can't imagine it'll replace Prairie Grass as "our place" — unless I can go back in time and meet the chef 26 years ago — we'll definitely be back as circumstances dictate. Though I'll leave the coat in the car when we do. If a guest asks, "Is there somewhere I can put my coat?" the answer can't be "No." It isn't hospitable. Maybe they could use the nonspecific 3 percent surcharge they tack on the bill because they can to buy a few hooks.

'Secret History of the Rape Kit' reveals past, future

Photo by Jaclyn Nash, courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History

      We remember feminism of the 1970s without also recalling exactly what women were being militant about: their voices being muffled, their power minimized, their issues ignored.
     Pagan Kennedy's new book, "The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story," is a disturbing journey back to the bad old days of Chicago a half century ago. And maybe, the way we're going, a glimpse into our future, too.
     The book begins with the sexual abuse of the author, trauma both specific and universal. "The warnings of sexual assault carried inside them an even more demoralizing and insidious message: This world is not for you."
     Then Kennedy settles into the story of Chicagoan Martha "Marty" Goddard, whose life changes after volunteering at a phone hotline for homeless teenagers.
     "I was just beside myself when I found the extent of the problem," Goddard said. "The runaways were pregnant, homeless, suicidal, strung out."
     She realized she had "stumbled upon a dark and terrible underworld."
     Police would arrest young women, for solicitation or vagrancy. The abuse that had sent them fleeing into the streets wasn't considered. "No one talked about the crimes that had driven those girls out of their homes."
     It was "a culture in which cops played pranks on victims, making them the butt of sick jokes. At least one officer persuaded a woman to strip naked, so that he could photograph her wounds as evidence. He then passed the photos around to his buddies, as if they were porn."
     Mayor Richard J. Daley deployed a taunt when the subject of corruption arose — "Where's your proof?" — that served double for rape victims. It was her word against his, and everybody knew who was trustworthy, who unreliable.
     The solution was to collect evidence immediately after these crimes, which led to the rape kit, a box filled with swabs, combs and other equipment designed to collect evidence after a woman — or man; 9% of rape victims are men — was assaulted.
     Goddard championed the kit for both its practical and ideological value: "It's true power came from a new set of ideas," Kennedy writes. Ideas starting with: What happens to women matters.
     The kit was named, not for Goddard, but for a Chicago police sergeant, Louis Vitullo, and unpacking that fact brings us back — and maybe forward — to a world where women carry less authority than men. Having a man's name made the kit more acceptable to law enforcement that, frankly, couldn't be bothered investigating sexual assault.

To continue reading, click here.