Serendipity.
One of the 50-cent words of which I’m notoriously fond. Means “fortunate accident.” Seems common enough to me. Plus relevant, regarding the high-stakes struggle of downtown Chicago to remain solvent. An issue where I’m torn.
People discovered they can work at home. The cat is out of the bag. Deal with it. You can work at home. I can work at home, flop my fingers on the keyboard, craft something, call it a day.
What does going downtown do? Besides waste time and money. Sometimes you take the bother and trouble, only to find yourself at a pointless meeting. The last meeting I went to at our Navy Pier office, eight people had signed up for, but I was the only person to actually appear — stupid me — so the presenter did a one-on-one, imparting little of value.
But not a waste. I try to multitask. So while I was there, I took a colleague to lunch at Chef Art Smith’s Reunion, which served up fine jambalaya and biscuits. So there was that.
I’ve been officially permitted to work at home since... 1997. Quite a long time, really. But even though I haven’t been required to go into the office, I still went, ritualistically on Tuesdays, because I didn’t want to be one of those people who never show their face. I found that, go in twice week and you are nevertheless considered “Always there.”
Since I don’t know what my job entails — that is, no beat, no topics I’m supposed to cover — I never know whence my material might come. I once had a front page exclusive literally fall out of the sky, in the form of a chunk of Union Station ceiling that hit a woman in the head as we waited in line for the Madison Street exit, fracturing her skull.
I wish I could draw a line between going into the city and writing something effective. But truth is I can spend the day crawling around Lower Wacker Drive with the Night Ministry, write a column vibrating with tragic urban experience, and the readers yawn and flip the page. While let me share a shopping trip to the Northbrook Aldi, and the online world goes berserk, vibrating for days.
You just never know. A few months back, I went downtown at the invitation of the Chinese consulate, to talk to an embassy official in town from Washington. Was our conversation worthwhile? I can’t speak for him, but for me, there was one memorably queasy moment, when I was enthusiastically explaining The Problem with his country’s approach, and caught myself short, wondering, “Are you really giving advice to the Chinese Communist government?” I thought I was acquainting them with the wonders of liberal democracy, but maybe I was really giving them pointers on how to be more savvy and effective totalitarians.
After the meeting I had a lunch in Ukrainian Village. I could call an Uber. But why not walk? So I’m trucking along Superior Street, when what hoves into view but Gruen Galleries. I hadn’t thought about the place in years. I knew Erwin Gruen, a man of double rarity. First, he had the only fully functioning blacksmith shop in River North, with anvils, forges, tongs, rasps, gorgeous tools. And second, he was the rare German Jew who lived openly in Berlin during the entirety of World War II. Turns out, even murderous Nazi fanaticism had its limits. They never came for the skilled Messerschmitt engine mechanics.
A man was unloading pallets of water — Michael Gerber, current owner of the gallery. He invited me in, and wonder of wonders, the blacksmith shop is still there in the basement. Gruen died in 2006, but his hammer is still sitting on his anvil, as if he stepped away for a moment. Amazing.
You need to trade off. Go downtown, when need be, because you literally never know what you’re going to stumble across. But also work at home, because wonder can be found there too. For instance, being home now, I pulled down “S-Soldo” of my 12-volume Oxford English dictionary and learned that “serendipity” was coined by Horace Walpole in a letter dated Jan. 28, 1754, citing a Venetian fairy tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip,” the heroes of which “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”
“A very expressive word,” Walpole concludes, and I agree.
