"600 words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Dad was just doing his best

“600 words by Esther J. Cepeda”

Wrong is easy to spot, but “right” is sometimes trickier.

Ricardo Gonzalez, the 35-year-old Midlothian, Illinois man who is facing misdemeanor child endangerment charges for locking his two and five-year-old daughters in a makeshift cage in his pickup truck was definitely wrong to do such a thing. But his story tells me he actually was just trying to do the right thing.

Gonzalez was not a cruel monster bent on torturing his kids for fun – though there’s no end to those, a quick clip search will show you that parents from all races/ethnicities, socieoeconomic levels and geographies commit terrible crimes against their children. But let’s dig beneath the headlines: here’s a poorly educated guy trying to raise two small children with the girls’ mother – the same woman who, two years ago, had gotten herself in trouble for driving off to the store and leaving one of the girls, then 3, home alone.

So you’re this guy, scraping by on what you can make foraging and reselling scrap metal and whatever else you can find. You’ve got these two little girls who are out of school, you have no one to care for them (a neighbor was quoted in a news story as saying she would have watched the kids but let’s be realistic here, she probably didn’t mean all day every day) and you know well enough not to leave them home alone. You think about taking them with but you figure letting the girls roll around in the cab of the car isn’t a good idea either.

The lightbulb goes off and though you know a makeshift cage in the cab of your truck isn’t optimal you’ve solved the problem of not being able to have the girls near and relatively safe as you make your all-day rounds in the pickup.

Surely Gonzalez didn’t have the cultural or legal awareness to understand that sitting at a gas station with one daughter in your lap while the other cries in your makeshift cage is not going to go over well. In this country a concerned passerby will bust you out to the police. And so it happened.

Given his resources and expertise, was Ricardo Gonzalez abusing his daughters by keeping them as safe and as close as he knew how? I say no. Gonzalez is just one example of someone doing the best he can with what he’s got – people do unwise things out of desperation.

Either way he was clearly breaking the law and was badly in need of an intervention – good intentions aside, children cannot thrive in an environment devoid of familial support, safe shelter, and healthy stimulation, which anyone can see was not a part of the trash picking rounds.

I’ve heard people twittering about this latest sad story for the last two days, none of whom were able to look past what he did to see why he did it.

Some of us – the lucky ones – can cast an eye at what’s going on with the economy, oil and gas prices, and food prices, and cluck about how terrible this natural market correction is even as we get ready to go to Ravinia to enjoy A Prairie Home Companion and a bottle of wine.

For others, desperate times are calling for desperate and dangerous measures. They need help.

Tonight as I clap along to the Powdered Milk Biscuits song, my mind won’t be too far from Ricardo Gonzalez and his struggling family, and I’ll send them my silent best wishes that they can find any help they need to stay together and move on.

There's no need to fear – Hispanic babies are here!

"600 words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Dusty, barren ghost towns all over America? Forget it.

Public care facilities bursting with 80 to 90-year-old white people and no one to care for them? Nope.

An American society crumbling under the burden of too few youngsters to go out to work, play, pay taxes, and buy things – like the population shortage that's currently threatening Europe? Not in my lifetime – or yours, either – thanks to the Hispanic baby boom.

Monday's USA TODAY featured a front page story "Births fueling Hispanic growth" which tells the tale of an American populace buoyed by today's reality: most of the growth in the U.S. Hispanic population comes not from Spanish-speaking, slit-eyed ruffians violating chaste America's southern border, but from people just like me: U.S. born Latinos.

According to the story, this month's edition of the Population Council's demographic journal Population and Development Review reports that not only are Hispanic communities growing more from births than immigration in major Latino cities like LA and Chicago, but between 2000 and 2005, in 221 counties across the country, had the Hispanics not shown up and started families, many towns and villages would simply have started dying.

"Demographically they can't recover unless something like this happens," said Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute, quoted in the story referring to municipalities in the Great Plains, "there's no way older white populations can replace themselves."

Ouch, that one must have stung to Mark Krikorian, from the Center for Immigration Studies, who just released a new book The New Case Against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal in which he "argues that although mass immigration once served our national interests, in today's America it weakens our common national identity, limits opportunities for upward mobility, threatens our security and sovereignty, strains resources for social programs, and disrupts middle-class norms of behavior."

He goes on, "as the politicians argue about border fences and amnesty, they are missing the bigger picture: the harmful impact of large-scale settlement of all kinds of immigrants, whether legal or illegal, skilled or unskilled, temporary or permanent, European or Latin or Asian or African. Modern America has simply outgrown immigration, and we must end it before it cripples us."

No worries, Mark, according to the experts, immigration to the U.S.' established Hispanic communities is no longer numero uno.

Kidding aside, my curiosity is peaked about Mark's data but I haven't yet read his book so I can't gauge the validity of his sources. Either way his is a viewpoint – about legal and illegal immigrants from all countries alike – is shared by a large minority of people in this country. And the dislike and fear is generally not toward the brown-skinned computer programmers from India, but the brown-skinned peach-pickers from south of the border.

But in my conversations with economists, metropolitan planners, medical and military experts, and demographers I rarely hear such gloom and doom about the, yes, many many challenges that a whole generation of kids born to low-income immigrant children. Rather, the Latino community is seen by these experts as young, ready and able to work and eager to contribute to the success of this country.

Two years ago the Chicago Council on Global Affairs released an independent Task Force report called "A Shared Future: The Economic Engagement of Greater Chicago and Its Mexican Community." It cast a bright light on the multitude challenges – of language, culture, resources – the 83 percent increase in the Chicago region's Mexican population poses while also illuminating such opportunities as a potential 2.4 trillion dollars worth of business and cultural exchanges with the world's 21 Spanish-speaking countries.

Their bottom line was that the Latino community in Chicago, as in so many other states, is the fuel for our economic engine, their words: "play a vital role the region's prosperity and will do so even more in the future." This from people looking to make money, not lose money, on a bevy of social services and law enforcement programs.

Yes, like Bruce Springsteen – who sprung from Dutch, Irish and Italian immigrants – for generations to come there will be millions of Miguels and Marias making America better and proudly singing they were "Boooooorn in the You-Ess-Aayy."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact

eejaycee@600words.com

Say goodbye to XP and embrace change

"600 words by Esther J. Cepeda"

There is no life after death for hard drives – not mine anyway. Having lost everything a few weeks ago, I started anew. Which is how I came to learn a lesson in death, rebirth, change, and surrender through Microsoft's Vista operating system.

I ordered "one of everything" from my favorite PC manufacturer, knowing I was getting all the newest stuff but not predicting that the moment that baby fired up, I'd be reduced to a computer novice, unable to execute the simplest function – "save as" – at the worst possible moment: on deadline.

After several days of chanting "change is good, change is good, change is good…" while bumbling through folder architecture that only vaguely looked familiar, then finally coming to some rudimentary ability to navigate my electronic life, I let go of my self image as "tech savvy" and blew in a call.

"When in doubt, hover," said Adam J. Hecktman, a Director at Chicago's Microsoft's Technology Center, referring to the instantly expanding and, for my taste, waaaay too smart tool bars crowded at the top of Microsoft Word. I sheepishly admitted to him that after about two weeks of typing like a tourist strolls down Michigan Avenue, I finally realized that the circular logo on the top left hand corner was clickable and contained the "save as" function I so desperately needed. Like on Michigan Avenue, there's a lot to look at.

"We call [the toolbars in the office suit] the ribbon. It's laid out so that the tools you need are grouped together by functionality and instantly accessible and fully customizable based on what you're trying to do," he said. Which brought me back to what I was trying to do: that is, the same thing over and over again – type a text document – in the same way I always have, so I didn't have to think about the process, only the final product. But that's not how life is, is it?

Sure, when I bought my new computer I could have ordered XP, and stayed in my comfort zone, but I saw the storm clouds gathering and decided to just get wet now.

"The magic date [for XP] is the 'end of sales' date – June 30, 2008 – but that's not an 'end of support' date. We will continue to provide security updates and other critical updates for Windows XP until April, 2014 – there are some people who will keep their Windows-based PCs for many, many years."

Adam and I had a hardy laugh at the thought of there being people "somewhere out there" still proudly running their PCs on DOS, writing manifestos in WordPerfect. Then we laughed hardily at me who has a step-by-step guide to installing DOS on Vista – so a certain video game can be played – sitting on the desk in front of me. Some things, after all, are worth holding on to.

I stopped to think: Adam and I have had full, rich lives in the twenty-two years since Microsoft launched Windows. That's twelve versions, and a whopping six years since the last new opsys, XP, was released. Many, many, lifetimes in the computer world – it was time to get used to something new, and in no time all my pals will be asking me for tech support again.

Until then, I'm meditating on the teachings of Buddha who said, "Everything changes, nothing remains without change." And I'm keeping in mind the words of Adam, my new Microsoft friend, who gave me wisdom I believe I'll be able to carry with me for a lifetime: "When in doubt: hover."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact

eejaycee@600words.com

Diaz the Lionheart

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

You haven't seen the true heart of a fighter until you've seen a man – a heavily unfavored hometown underdog matched against a legend – still jabbing in the 12th round, still counting points, still believing he could win even though half his world has gone red from blood squirting out of the shiny eggplant of an eye that's getting pounded.

You haven't seen a man really fight until you've seen him forget the paycheck, forget the stats, and fight for something more important than his life: his honor.

After David Diaz "won" the WBC Lightweight Title in August of 2006, he didn't shout it from the rooftops. His victory came after he beat a guy in a come-from-behind tenth round TKO, was set to fight the reigning champ, then was handed the belt after a cheating scandal. Not exactly bragging rights material.

Diaz, a Chicago native, three-time Golden Gloves champ and 1996 Olympic boxing team fighter, was welcomed into August 2007's cham-peen-chip "War for Four" bout against Mexican boxing legend Erik "El Terrible" Morales as a minor obstacle in Morales' quest to become the first Mexican boxer to win four world championships in four different weight classes.

The snickers about David's 2006 "victory" didn't get whispered behind his back so much as they were aired out in public. No one was snickering, though, when David won the 2007 fight – in Chicago, in front of a crowd roaring Morales' name – by a unanimous decision, forcing Morales to retire on the spot, grumbling he "was robbed" as he slinked back to Mexico. Of course, it took only moments for the new whisper to become that Diaz only won because Morales was over the hill.

It's now a year later and 32-year-old Diaz (34-1-1, 17 KOs), is still the underdog (4-1) and scheduled to take on Manny "The Mexicutioner" Pacquiao (46-3-2, 34 KOs), a 29-year-old Filipino with a penchant for beating down Mexicans, this Saturday night, June 28, at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

So I had to know: what's going to keep Diaz on his feet through what promises to be a brutal meat grinding between two lefties this time?

"This is the one where I get the recognition," he told me over the phone after a Wednesday afternoon presser in Las Vegas. "I'm fighting a guy who's in his prime – he's pound for pound the greatest boxer in the world. This is the moment I gotta get my star, this is it right here and I've got to go for it."

And, props aside, the money's not too shabby, either. Diaz is looking at an $800,000 payday and the opportunity to make way more in subsequent match-ups. "Winning this fight, with this purse, I’m going to set up my kids for college no ifs, ands, or buts about it," said the guy who's told every cash-mentioning reporter that he is, in fact, currently tooling around the northwest side of Chicago in a '91 Honda with no air-conditioning. "If I capitalize on this, I can set up a bigger purse and for me my family, for my parents, this is a big deal."

It is a big deal – this one's for bragging rights. "The good thing about it is me, Mike (Jabb Gym trainer Miguel Garcia), and Jim Strickland (the ace cut man who kept David's eyeball from popping like a tick last year) and the coaches, we’re together cracking jokes hanging out and just enjoying the companionship," he said. "I'll keep it loose for the next few days, we can start getting all uptight and fussy the night of the fight."

It's an HBO pay-per-view bout but I'll be giving you the proverbial blow-by-blow on this site in real time starting after the pizza arrives but before the intros start at about 10 pm central standard time.

I asked David what pre-fight ritual I can look for to report as he steps into the ring Saturday, he said: "I always, every time I step into the ring, I just pray and put myself in the Lord's hands and that’s pretty much it."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact

eejaycee@600words.com

See me in the funny papers

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

She came around! I knew she would!

I'm talking about Janis Day, the middle-aged mom on the comic strip Arlo and Janis, a 23-year-old nationally-syndicated comic strip which appears in Chicago's Sun-Times. She'd been struggling, for the last two weeks, with conflicting feelings about her son Gene's co-workers at his new summer job.

In last week's strips, Gene, home from college, is working outdoors with a presumably-all-Mexican lawn care crew. When he casually mentions to mom, and his dad Arlo, that his co-workers call him "gringa" – the Spanish, female form of an arguably derogative term for "whitey" – she got all upset.

Gene assured both Arlo and Janis that his crew-mates were just busting his chops, shared how much he was learning about the Spanish language and their culture, and even wished he had taken Spanish classes is school.

Last Friday, though, Janice was having protective mom thoughts that flirted with the kind of protectionist, almost racist stereotyping that's making things hard on all Latinos these days. She fretted: "I wonder what trash those awful men are talking to Gene today!!" even as they were teaching Gene the value of honoring your mother.

  Woah! I kinda freaked because I've been loving A&J for well over a decade and wasn't sure where creator Jimmy Johnson was going: are those scary Mexicans actually going to corrupt young Gene? Will Janis be proven right to be concerned or will there be a painfully beautiful slice-of-life learning moment for everyone reading? Why even bring such a controversial topic to a fun, 30-second diversion to begin with?

And that's really what I was excited about: Arlo, Janis, and Gene – just as white as 99.9 percent of all other mainstream comic strip characters – interacting with real, live, Mexicans. Stereotypical yard hands, sure, but give Jimmy Johnson credit – this is a huge act of bravery.

Don't get me wrong, I love Lalo Alcaraz, the Hispanic LA Times cartoonist who pens La Cucaracha – also nationally syndicated and, coincidentally appears only a few panels above A&J on the third comics page of the Sun-Times – but his audience is limited.

Some people don't read it because they think "I'm not Latino, it's not for me." Some Hispanics think he's too this or that and also don't tune in for Lalo's brilliant and funny social commentary.

But A&J is read by millions of people of all stripes, colors, and walks of life. This is big!

After Friday, I was on the edge of my seat but the story line was dropped Saturday through Tuesday. My attempts to contact JJ were fruitless, and I wondered if he'd gotten barraged with hate mail for bringing the contentious immigration debate into what's usually a light family 'toon and decided to drop the whole thing.

Unlikely. "Most of them are written so far in advance it's really hard pull back in a day or two, though the newspaper could decide not to run it, I suppose," Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich, and Brenda Starr cartoonist, told me yesterday as I struggled with the lack of new developments in the scary Mexican plot. Mary – no stranger to making waves with the dialogue of her characters (don't get her started on the use of the term "threesome!") – told me she doubted any cartoonist would be influenced either by backlash, hate mail, or even partial censoring.

The chances the writer would change it are very, very small. For a long time, people couldn’t give feedback and that was one of the beauties – it’s not like being a columnist where they can kick you in public – there was anonymity. It’s not like now where feedback is everything to everybody," Mary said. "And there is this notion, that I think is wrong-headed, that comic strips aren’t supposed to offend, this idea that comic strips are for kids – I don’t buy that. There was a time for kids but that’s not who reads the papers. I think readers could be well served with some edginess."

Edginess is good and it turns out I needn’t have fretted so. Today Janis – still crabby in the first panel where she "worries" about the heat Gene’s working in – takes lemonade to his job site and learns a little something about how Mexican lawn care workers respond to kindness.

I like to think Arlo and Janis’ readers will learn a little something, too.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact

eejaycee@600words.com

Black Star Project: shining a light on the darkness

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

It’s June 19th – not even officially summer yet – and the wave of violence in Chicago has already kicked into high gear.

Just in the last two days more shootings, more death. This morning the Chicago Tribune reports two teens, 19 and 15, are dead and one 14-year-old is struggling to live through a gunshot wound to the head.

Faced with this community-wide epidemic of violence, some look away or gnash their teeth and weep. Some have made a fuss about forming commissions to figure out what to do about murder in their streets. The folks over at The Black Star Project are just out there solving the problem themselves – one kid at a time.

"People say the way to end violence is policemen or with helicopters or automatic weapons. That’s not going to stop violence! If you can teach these young people to read, if we can give them some hope, some vision, and some skills…that’s the only way," Phillip Jackson, BSP’s Executive Director, told me Tuesday afternoon as the media whipped itself into a frenzy over 19-year-old Jose Rivera’s bloody end on a south side playground. "It’s not very popular, it gets almost no funding and people say to me ‘It’s too hard.’ I don’t care how hard it is, it’s the only way."

The "way" to stop the street killings Phil’s referring to is best described by the 165,000 black, Hispanic, and other-wise underserved young students BSP has tutored, mentored, and inspired at public and private schools all over Chicago and its suburbs during a 12-year quest to use education to lift kids above the clamor of their neighborhood’s dangers.

Not to mention the 4,000 parents at BSP’s Parent University program, who get classes and support, in both English and Spanish, on how to guide their kids toward becoming life-long learners.

Oh, and let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands fathers who have come out en masse across 238 American cities on the first day of school to pledge their commitment to their kids' education during BSP’s wildly successful, four-year-old Million Father March.

The Black Star Project is, as I've come to think of them, the most effective, nationally-recognized anti-violence program you've never heard of.

"I try not to do things that are sensational, we do work of substance with all children, even if they're gangbangers," said Phillip, a retiree of Chicago Public Schools' system, "but the newspapers [and television] want more pizzazz – it's only front page news whenever we have a weekend when people are shot and there's a child or woman killed. We're working on solutions not gimmicks so there's almost no interest."

Barriers like media interest matter little to Phil and his team of 5 full-time employees; there's work to be done BSP has put the power of the internet to it. Lucky you if you're one of the 16,000 readers who get their bright, yellow-topped, e-blasted newsletters exclaiming "He who controls the education of the children control the future of that race."

Though that might sound politically incorrect, in reality, the color-blind organization services children of all races and ethnicities but their niche is African-American. "Our board members, mentors and volunteers are diverse – we don't discriminate, we make no apologies," Phil said, "But when you make a concerted effort to reach black boys– the Consortium on School Reform found that of black boys in kindergarden only 3 out of 100 will graduate college by age 25 – then you curtail the pipeline to jails and prisons."

But there is a price to pay for being bold, and nationally lauded but locally ignored. Not being the most quoted, or "go-to" social service organization makes it difficult to get people with money excited about the work that gets done each and everyday out of the glare of camera flashes and TV lights. Though BSP does make up part of their meager budget with earned income from CPS payment for mentorship programs, and enjoy generous donations from The Chicago Community Trust, ComEd, and Toyota Motor sales, the needs are many.

"We need funding stability, I spend 50-60 percent of my time making sure the lights stay on and people are going to get paid rather than spending time with the children but it doesn't matter. I'm going to be leaving this planet soon but what does matter is that the children we leave behind are going to be able to live together, work together, and learn together. That's what really matters."

You want an antidote to the daily "violence in our neighborhoods!!" news drama? Sign up for the Black Star Project's e-blast and get ready to receive a dose of real solutions.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact

eejaycee@600words.com

The power of family

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

Almost everyone dislikes stereotypes, but there are some similarities, some characteristics so strong, that it’s fair to say they're generalize-able across Hispanic culture from all different age groups, Latin American countries, and socio-economic strata. One is love of family.

A few will roll their eyes at this old saw, but some stereotypes really are true. Try this experiment for yourself: next time you're with a group that has a Latino in it, ask each person what they'd do if they won a million bucks. I can almost guarantee you the Hispanic will be the only one to say without hesitation, "Buy my parents a house."

George Burciaga – a Pilsen kid who's hit it big – is no different. He was brought to my attention as a Cepeda "aaahh, life as it should be" subject because his wildly successful Chicago-based tech boutique, SmarTECHS.net, is not a "successful Hispanic business," it's simply a successful business which happens to be Latino-owned.

On Thursday George is set to be honored as Illinois' Small Business Person of the Year, and not for nothin', either. He leads a team of 24 tech wizards of all races, ethnicities, and backgrounds in a 10-year-old, 9 million dollar venture that offers Information Technology services to businesses all over the country. And he started it all out of his two-room apartment as a 23-year-old.

"I started off consulting as an intern at a financial institute and one day I asked my boss: 'If I came in as a business would you hire me?' He said 'yes' and a week later I walked into his office with my incorporation papers and he allowed me the opportunity."

It took the thirty-three year old Burciaga all of two seconds to tell me why he even dreamed of getting into technology – a field well-known to be seriously in need of qualified Latinos – and why he decided to take the risk of being a business owner.

"It had nothing to do with technology! I was raised in Pilsen by my grandparents who were very poor and my entire goal was to move them out of their neighborhood. Pilsen at the time was not the Pilsen we know now – my uncle was shot in the street," Burciaga said. "I saw my grandparents taking a beating by working two jobs and dealing with the drugs and violence... I simply saw the technology niche, which wasn't oversaturated, as the opportunity."

Niche?

"Well, at the time there weren't a whole lot of IT companies, not even just by Latinos, back then [late 90's] it was a fresh, new, cutting-edge market and was not oversaturated. Today I'm trying to build the Latino growth within IT, it's very low as it was then, but we're a great firm that happens to be Latino, not a Latino firm that became great. I never leveraged that and said, 'Hey, I'm Hispanic.' I kicked the door open and I do a hell of a job."

Indeed, he's done such a good job that in April of this year he was also named the second place winner in the National Small Business Person of the Year Award, which came with a trip to DC and dinner with the President ("He congratulated me and then gave a really long speech on the importance of small business to the country").

And now that smarTECHS.net is a resounding success, and the grandparents got their dream home, George is off to open opportunities for other kids to follow in his footsteps.

"We're launching 'smarTECHS on Campus' at Robert Morris College this fall. We're creating IT residents who train like doctors do in a hospital. We'll be opening a 3,000 square-foot facility on campus where the kids will train, then they'll come to us for 10-12 weeks and we'll fill their skill gap before they leave school by putting them right in the line of real fire with real clients who will participate.

It's an opportunity to connect people and actually bring technology into the community; I'm so excited about it."

I'm sure his family is thrilled, too.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. editor's note: neither Ms. Cepeda, nor www.600words.com, pays for or receives free of charge, technical assistance, production assistance, or even unpaid advisory from SmarTechs.net, or any subsidiary or representative thereof. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Hatless "Drunkard" doesn't give up his ship

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

For those who followed columnist Neil Steinberg's public meltdown in September 2005, when he was arrested on charges of domestic battery, the money shot of his new book "Drunkard: A Hard Drinking Life" comes early:

"We are arguing just outside [Kent's] door. I'm yelling, she has the phone… she's dialing…she has the phone up against her head and I suddenly swing, an arcing, open-handed slap, knocking the phone hard against the side of her head."

There, on page 22, Steinberg pulls back the curtain on an episode that made headlines from the pages of his own paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, to the front page of rival Chicago Tribune and even his old haunt the New York Daily News, making a spectacle of the sometimes wicked, sometimes sweet curmudgeon from Berea, Ohio who climbed the ivory tower of journalism into a four-times-a-week column at a major American newspaper.

The slap that changed everything.

The slap that changed readers' image of Steinberg, 48, from doting dad to two young boys and devoted – if oft-times bumbling – husband to a beautiful lawyer, into a stereotypical sauced newspaper man and, worse, wife-beater.

That slap confined him not only to jail – if only for a night – but many nights to a cold guest bedroom, and sometimes even to chillingly welcoming bars where fellow journalists revel in the tradition of downing drinks once deadline is met.

And the slap wasn't even the worst part! There was the indignity, sure, but there was also the parade of disappointed friends and family, clueless counselors, way-too-Jesus-y AA devotees and, of course, glorious, ever-beckoning alcohol which, if you don't drink much, you might not notice is almost literally everywhere.

So why – why?! – would anyone who'd gone through that miserable trial relive it nearly three years later, again so publicly, as he steels himself to embark on press engagements in support of his sixth book "Drunkard: A Hard Drinking Life", published by Dutton.

"People ask me if I'm embarrassed about it," Steinberg told a crowd of family, friends and award-winning journalists at an intimate book party in downtown Chicago Wednesday night, "but I tell them: 'I wasn't embarrassed to down every drink in sight, why would I be embarrassed to talk about how I got myself out of it?'"

A few days before, he'd answered my first question – why!?! – in his inimitable Steinbergian tone: "If you don’t write about something, then it's lost and I thought it was valuable to remember this," he said as Sun-Times news men and women flitted in and out of his office. "I really did it because I really wanted to redeem this experience. As Dante said, if you've got to go to hell you've got to take notes."

Some notes!

Harrowing, painfully lonely notes. Notes no one wants to fess up to when the hangover hits. Notes you wouldn't wish on an enemy. And yet, notes that at the most unexpected moments ring brightly, reverberating with hopeful – and really funny – timbres.

"I was writing it as it was happening, so I like to think they're fresh," he said. "The editing was excruciating – that was as difficult, if not more difficult, than the writing. At the time [of recovery] the book was the one thing I could control. I couldn’t control the drinking, the law, or the case but I could control the book. During the editing I had to really battle to keep control if it."

And was it worth it?

"If I wrote ‘Ulysses’ it was," he says, reasonably tired of pondering it. "Given the pain, ‘The Sun Also Rises’ would not have been worth it to me, I would have much rather avoided the whole thing."

"That said, I feel I did the best I could with a bad situation. I at least rose to the occasion and didn’t move to a Red Roof Inn and continue drinking. At least not yet."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Chicago columnists unite!

"Pregunta del Dia" by Esther J. Cepeda

"Pregunta del Dia" translates from Spanish into "Question of the Day" and today’s comes from K.C. (not of the Sunshine Band), a Lemont, IL reader who asks:

Q. I looked at your "events" page and so what’re you doing June 18?

A. Oh, K.C., bless your heart! Now I don’t have to contrive some way to plug this performance (and great timing, by the way).

Next Wednesday I’ll be moderating a pre-performance panel featuring my Sun-Times pal Neil Steinberg, the Tribune’s incredible Rick Kogan, Accessible Contemporary Music’s Executive Director Seth Boustead and The Moving Architects’ choreographer Erin Carlisle Norton.

You see, ACM and TMA are putting on two performances of "1,001 Afternoons in Chicago," a live, newly-composed music and modern dance piece interpreting a few of the stories of legendary Chicago newspaperman Ben Hecht.

Who?

Yeah, I didn’t know either, but Hecht was – during the 1920's – a writer at the Chicago Daily News who challenged himself to write a short story each day and publish it in the paper. Despite how ridiculously unlikely it would be that any editor today would allow such a thing – apparently back then newspapers actually printed more than five "column inches" on any given topic – Hecht’s stuff was wildly successful, spawning the "1,001 Afternoons in Chicago" column.

Was he "the Royko of his time?" Perhaps even better. Hecht was such a rock star in Chi-town he left for New York City, then to Hollywood to screenwrite movies (Scarface, A Farewell to Arms, A Star is Born) before being tarred, black-listed and…well you’ll just have to come to the panel Wednesday June 18 at 7:30 pm at the Music Institute of Chicago, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston to hear much more, but suffice it to say, the guy who once wrote this:

"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock."

was fascinating.

But never mind all that, the real star of the evening will be the collaboration of Accessible Contemporary Music’s sounds paired with The Moving Architects’ corporeal expressions mixed in with video, all telling a selection of Ben Hecht’s stories.

New music sometimes scares people but I find if I can listen to it a bit before I experience it onstage, which you can do at http://www.acmusic.org/concert_1001.html (read some BH stories, too), I can really get into it live.

If I could even begin to describe the music along with the movement, it would take me 1,001 words and I still wouldn’t do it justice. I could try to convey Seth and Erin’s enthusiasm but I might overload you with breathless quotes like: "This project celebrates the golden era of journalism, when the newspaper was part of everyone’s daily routine!" Oh, if only there were millions more Seths around to save printed newspapers from certain extinction.

Don’t fret if you can’t make it next Wednesday – or if you don’t need the geeky newspaper-lovin’ pre-performance fawning – just don’t miss this Saturday June 14 ‘s show. It’s at 2 pm in Curtiss Hall of the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave. on the 10 floor. It’ll be a perfect afternoon of "Afternoons."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Eight national views on Chicago's Olympic Hopes

"Pregunta del Dia" by Esther J. Cepeda

(WASHINGTON, DC) "Pregunta del Dia" translates from Spanish into "Question of the Day" and I posed today’s question to my fellow Columbia University American Assembly Next Generation Project Fellows as we took a cocktail break during our three-day bull session on U.S. Global Policy & the Future of International Institutions in Washington, DC.

Q. Now that Chicago has been named one of four finalists – Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro round out the list – to bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, what do you think about Chicago city residents who might be skeptical that an Olympics will be no more than a big hassle whose funds and energy could go to other projects?

A. I asked several of the amazing brainiacs I was with, wondering if any of them would even care. In this ultra-elite group?– of course they cared! Here's what the country's best, brightest, and really young leaders had to say:

· "How much infrastructure is there – that would be my first question – but it would be great for global policy. The violence there? – it's horrible, but I don't think it'll have any effect on the bid." – Julie Schumacher Cohen, Legislative Coordinator, Churches for Middle East Peace, Washington, DC

· "Would da co-ach light da torch? It seems to me Chicago is always the second city for some reason, but it's a world-class city and this could be the opportunity to showcase that. Frankly, Atlanta is half the city that Chicago is and this is a tremendous opportunity for the city to show it's on the first tier with New York and L.A." – Tim Graczewski, Director, Strategic Alliances & Corporate Development, Intuti, Mountain View, CA

· "It's the perfect way to showcase the city! Largely, Chicago's self-esteem problem is the reflection of our own feeling of being the 'second city.' Of course, getting chosen is the number one big challenge now, then if we're chosen, getting the players to come through with funding, there'll be construction issues, opportunity for strike issues – it's phenomenal. We don't want to be like Greece, hopefully." – John M. Syrek, Citizenship Program Director, McCormick Foundation, Chicago, IL

· "It could be a lot of fun, I lived in LA during the last Olympics and it was fun and generally a good thing. If you do it right, it could show people that they don't have to drive anywhere for two weeks, though O'Hare could be an impediment. Will there be a 'Barack Obama Stadium?'" – Andrew Gettelmen, Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, Boulder, CO

· "I'm from Vancouver, Canada and all I can remember from the Olympics was what a pain in the ass it was when things were shut down for construction."- Michael Levi, Fellow for Science and Technology, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, NY

· "People in the American press have been criticizing China saying its build-out disenfranchised the community because they were focused on revenue rather than rights. The question is, can we take this golden opportunity to put that rhetoric to practice and get capital and development to play a role in bringing communities to life?" – Mohammad Hanif Jhaveri, Chief Executive Officer, Hera Capital, Dubai via Texas

· "An Olympics puts the city that achieves that stature on the global platform. Chicago is ideally poised – not just from an infrastructure and cultural diversity aspect – to be a positive influence on global policy after that. A by-product of the Olympics could be a theoretical reduction in violent crime. The Olympics could mobilize the citizenry to be involved and have a tremendously positive impact. And it is a privilege – you are representing all the cultures in your city. Tell all your people to empower the youth with that." - De'Edra S. Williams, CRM Lead Consultant, Wipro Technologies, Dallas, TX

· "Chicago is a great U.S. representative! I ran the Chicago Marathon and it represented the world. All the neighborhoods had not only the American spirit, but also were so multicultural. Many American cities have that, but Chicago has that distinctiveness, that sense of diversity that comes into play." - Brett House, Policy Adviser & Senior Macroeconomist, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY

Note: the International Olympics Committee members will pick the 2016 host on Oct. 2, 2009.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com