by Mike Rosen
Growing up in suburban Chicago, I watched my parents read the Chicago Tribune every day. That example informed a lot both in habit and curiosity. Mike Royko was a famous Tribune columnist, his unique style of grumpy, gruff, everyday-man rhetoric resonated for me and thousands of others. Bob Greene wrote for the Trib for many years until an unfortunate fall-from-grace a few may remember.
When I moved to the ACTUAL city of Chicago post-undergrad, like many I switched to reading the Sun-Times, mostly for pragmatic reasons as it’s easier to manipulate/read on the El in its tabloid format. Within the Sun-Times I discovered Neil Steinberg, as entertaining, unique, and acerbic a voice as any.
A byproduct of that experience is a life-long appreciation for writing. I derive great pleasure in a well-constructed sentence, a salient point, an eloquent, concise, or obliquely comical expression. Precision in writing is an aspirational skill and in that vein, one of my favorite books I reread often is “Lincoln’s Ten Sentences: The Gettysburg Address”. Author Michael Clay Thompson explains in detail the precision, craft, and logic behind Lincoln’s effort to heal our nation. He explains the efficacy of Lincoln’s brevity, his very deliberate placement of phrasing in the past, present, and future tenses. He clarifies Lincoln’s use of word choice, meter, spondees (Google it), repetition, and imagery. I find it fascinating; a summary of the book is here. You can borrow my hardcopy if you’d like, but you have to handwrite a letter asking to do so and promise a timely return.
Impactful words are everywhere for me including some tattooed on my arms. The process of discovering new writing is joyful and it’s not always deep and meaningful. They might be inside a novel, they could be an alliterative song lyric- “A little old lady got mutilated late last night…”, RIP Warren Zevon. For years a close friend and I have texted unsolicited snippets of lyrics we both appreciate.
Last week I heard ‘unclenching the fist of story and certainty vs holding out to the world the open palm of curiosity.’ Author George Saunders wrote it and I think about it daily. Like locating myself above or below the line, am I figuratively or emotionally (or actually!) clenching my fists or opening them to the world? Feels aligned with the 5 ML Suggestions.
Mary Schmich was also a columnist for the Tribune. In June 2000 she wrote about the passing of Jeff MacNelly, her colleague and Pulitzer prize-winning editorial cartoonist whose work was featured in the Chicago Tribune and syndicated nationally. The article is here, I strongly encourage you to read it, she writes eloquently and tells a story much better than I. Her simple message has impacted me for more than 25 years.
Here’s the Cliff Note version–even though we may not know precisely what to say to someone in a time of struggle or need or hardship or impending death, she offers a mistake, her mistake was saying the worst thing of all, nothing. It’s often too late. So I invite you to reach out, say something, anything, text, call, make the effort, stop to chat, attend the funeral– anything before it’s too late. She writes, “The moments of connection people make at important moments in their lives-and what moment is more important than death?–are what make us more than unrelated, free-floating assemblies of atoms banging into each other for no reason and no reward. It’s the efforts and acknowledgments, big and small, made at the right moments, that are reason and reward for our relationships with people.” Is there someone you know, a relationship you have that’s on your mind and you’ve been inclined but hesitated to reach out for whatever reason? I invite you to make the effort. It’s the reason and reward for our connection to each other and before you know it it could be too late. I’m curious about your thoughts, please share below!
P.S. For all of you excited to borrow my book, write to: Mike Rosen, 637 S. 10th Ave., LaGrange, IL 60525. I’ll loan it out in the order I receive requests (lol).
