Neil Steinberg's blog
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"Africa The Land of Hope and Promise For Negro People's of the World" (detail) by Bisa Butler Thursday was Google calendar scams — at least three, maybe four. The first alerted me that I was scheduled to answer a subpoena. I knew this was nonsense, and knew not to click on anything, so copied the law group supposedly involved and checked. A common phishing scam, designed to get you to react and…
Bess Myerson Bess Myerson, the first and only Jewish Miss America, was crowned on Sept. 8, 1945. In the hazy nostalgia that passes for historical understanding nowadays, people might assume her victory was due to the warm embrace that America gave all things Jewish after the horrors of World War II. It wasn’t. James Loeffler starts his new book, “ Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight…
Did you see that Brad Pitt told Esquire how, after seven years sobriety, he has returned to drinking. At 62, he "got back off the wagon" and is now drinking "in a more restrained manner." Hmm.... That was surprising. Even more surprising are approving reactions like that of the New York Times: "Brad Pitt’s Return to Drinking Is Not Unsafe, Experts Say, but It’s Not for Everyone." Double hmm...…
Just like the Illinois Policy Institute says: Illinois grows more pumpkins than any other state. Is criticism a crime? As fond as I am of teachers, generally, and despite being a good union man myself, I couldn’t help but shake my head in wonder at the Chicago Teachers Union, which I consider a fairly savvy organization, suing a pair of conservative watchdogs, the Illinois Policy Institute and the…
The internet is considered a constant distraction from the "real world" — the solid, fleshy, non-virtual realm of tangible existence. And I suppose that's mainly true. But online can also birddog you toward aspects of living existence that you might otherwise miss. Consider the bottle of Dreft, above. I was writing Monday morning, wanted to take a break, and thought I'd do some laundry, something…
Burying a loved one is much harder than buying a corned beef sandwich. More expensive, too. Trust me, I've done both. When my mother died last year, my brother and I were immediately faced with a series of difficult decisions. She had bought burial plots in Colorado. Bury her there? I pictured the two of us standing in some windy nowhere in Boulder County, at a funeral attended by nobody else. No.…
From "The World is Round," by Rose Wyler (Grosset & Dunlap: 1937) You need to keep your eyes open in this job. Because one story leads to another. When I reposted the 1988 investigation into the bad shape many students were in when they presented themselves to kindergarten at Chicago Public Schools, another memory stirred. Don Hayner and I had to go around to schools and collect — or drop off, I…
Lunch Saturday was at Dolce Arte , a bright and airy Italian restaurant at 3622 S. Morgan in Bridgeport, attached to an enormous art gallery space. My meatball sandwich was just so-so, but the pastries we shared were first rate. Afterward, we poked around, looking at the enormous photographs of David Yarrow — I liked his shots of animals; less so, the staged tableaus of Wild West models and wolves…
My high school had a smoking lounge. But don't let the term "lounge" fool you. There were no comfy chairs, no billiard table, not even any walls. It was outside, behind the school, a weedy area where students would gather before, after, and I imagine, during class to get their nicotine fix. This was in the late ’70s. And if today it seems wildly inappropriate that a public school would facilitate…
My three grandchildren marinate in adult attention. Love, books, toys. I've watch all four parents in action, up close and over time, and have nothing but admiration. They rock. The only problem, as I see it, is that all children aren't given such a leg up in life. Not close. Most stories vanish, but this one has sat in mind for nearly 40 years, and I thought I would post it now, to mark the end…
Tuesday morning found me plunging backward, into the past, looking for the first use of the word "bagel" in the Chicago Record, a short-lived paper of the 1890s, and the Chicago Daily News. The results were not what I expected. "Bagel" first shows up as a name, such as a certain Conrad Bagel, waylaid and robbed by five masked men in front of his State Street saloon in 1893. For 40 years it is only…
There is an old Yiddish tale that goes like this: A village man comes to his rabbi and says, "Rabbi, I have a problem — my house is far too small for my growing family, but I can't afford a new one. What should I do?" The rabbi looks at the man. "Do you have a chicken?" he asks. The man is a little confused. "Yes," he slowly replies. "I have a chicken." "Good," says the rabbi. "Take the chicken…
