Walking, jumping, visioning [?]

A WALK IN THE PARK: I think I was a hate-crime victim. Guy called me a white faggot as I walked through Scoville Park in the gloaming a few weeks ago. I didn't stop. He and his friends were irritated at my NOT stopping. They were desperate for my attention, and I refused it. This was my offense, and so I got victimized. Or was I?

All the guy did was toss out a "white faggot" to an unassuming white fellow trying hard to mind his own business. I had passed them earlier. One was jawing at another, three or four others stood chatting each other up. It's a free country, I thought, go ahead and jaw. I got a few steps past them and heard, "Hi, brother." Who, me? I'm not a brother, I thought -- except to an octogenarian in Gurnee and a septuagenarian in Arlington, VA -- and kept walking.

Again the call: "Brother." I'll bet it's me, I mused. But out of 40-year-old misty memory came a guy yelling, "Hey, you with the collar!" in an open field at 13th and Loomis on a midsummer night in 1966, as helmeted police gathered all down Roosevelt Road. The caller had me cold, I wore the clerical collar. I ignored his cry for attention. Twenty-something and intent on mischief, he had an audience of five or six teen-aged boys, to whom he would have given a lesson in how to deal with the likes of me. No, thanks, I muttered, continuing my way towards the Baptist church at the other end of the project, where do-gooders were gathering ineffectually.

Ignoring this Scoville Park greeting came easy, therefore. But my response rankled, and when I returned 15 minutes later heading the other way, I was accused incontinently of being "a snob" who "wouldn't talk" to them. I was "Sherlock Holmes" in my floppy hat (heh). I was told to commit an indecent if not impossible act. These were truly disgruntled youth. Later on Lake Street, I ran into them again. This time they tossed the N-word at a fellow African American, who was also told to commit an indecent if not impossible act. Now I ask you, were we all victims of hate crimes?.

JUMPING TO CONCLUSION: You hear a lot about the school achievement gap, but what about the basketball gap? White kids can't jump, but so what? So they don't suit up or if they do, they warm the bench. That's what happens to the American dream in a dog-eat-dog society. Look, white kids are grossly underrepresented on basketball teams not just in Oak Park and River Forest but nationally. I say enough. Let's train our sights on this gap too. And nuts to this can't-jump stuff, which is transparently racist. It's environment, folks. How many white fathers shoot hoops with their sons?

THROUGH A PRISM DARKLY: The Oak Park District 97 strategic plan draft calls schools "the educational prism through which students realize meaning and purpose in their lives." It says they are "to guarantee that each student achieves optimal intellectual growth while developing socially, emotionally and physically." That's all?

How about the prism through which students realize how to read, write, and do long division, not to mention shut up when teacher is talking and otherwise cooperate for the more or less common good? And who says schools are a prism in the first place? In what respect are they "a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light, the exact angles between whose surfaces depend on the application"? Beats me.

As for "realizing" -- learning? achieving? both, splitting the difference? -- the meaning and purpose in life, oh my. Are these schools or houses of worship? And there's a guarantee of optimal growth? Listen to that carnival barker. Maybe we would all pay more attention to a plan that made more sense. Or did not belabor the obvious, favoring "a culture of inclusion that respects and promotes diversity." This deftly undercuts the powerful exclusion and uniformity lobby, but it's also grand language impossible to disagree with, reeking of groupthink and lack of imagination, cobbled together in meetings. The good news is, it's a draft. So hello Baby, give us rewrite.

OP's industry, found at last!

Nickel Real Estate is moving into the double or triple storefront space where once was Logos Books -- and long ago in the 30s a place called The Shop, where OPRF-ers hung out wearing saddle shoes.  The father of a high-schooler in those days might warn against "Shop boys.” One did, anyhow. Seeing the Nickel sign in the window provided the shock of recognition for an OP-watcher: Of course! Retail out, real estate in! It's as simple as that.

We don't want no stinkin' stores that sell things. We want real estate offices to manage and sell our REAL PROPERTY. Some villages and cities make things, so do we. We make houses and landscapes — and schools and parks and library to go with them. It's one big conspiracy to elevate property value. The better the parks and schools and library (and cops and firemen and garbage collectors), the more incentive to make big houses and condos that sell for lots of money which in turn generate taxes. Why didn't I think of that?!

(By the way, Nickel can't be found via Web. Strange.)

Disputed condo development . . .

. . . in 400 block of N. Maple has townhouses next door, on NW corner, Superior. Across the street is a house garishly festooned with anti-war messages, including a banner in German stretching its width. This is Oak Park’s best-known incipient development because it’s too big for neighbors’ taste and they have been complaining and the village board has been discussing.

If the developer were to trade it for the also much-discussed Colt Building on Lake Street a few blocks away, as he is reported in Wed Journal to have said he might, his fame would go off the charts for at least 15 minutes, probably 15 months until he had completed transformation of the Colt into lavish condos with shooting gallery on first floor — just kidding, all you literalists out there.

Do those anti-war signs and banner violate an ordinance somewhere, somehow, by the way? Remember the Greek restaurateur who was given a hard time because he ran Greek letters across his garish awning on OP Ave. across from the Green Line stop? Commercial establishment, yes, but do we want garish signs on residential blocks? Especially one where neighbors have made such a case against a new building with too many units? I don’t know the answer, as one or other trustee has said he doesn’t know the answer to other, less pertinent, conundrums.

As for Trustee M., one who has said he does not know answers, for him I have some characteristically good advice: Go easy on your trademark frontal attack at board meetings or you lose your shock appeal. Getting in the face of the mild-mannered board president, for instant, suffers from the same law of diminishing returns that devalues currency. From respect born of discomfort, other trustees’ response could degenerate to there-he-goes-again. It’s a problem.

As it is for bloggers, who on the formality scale of one to ten come to two or three.  They have no time for vast ideas, only half-vast ones, it seems.  I don’t know the answer.

Meddling?

The developer having trouble with the OP village govt in developing an 11–unit condo building on the 400 N. Maple block has OP village govt. pretty well figured out:

"They're putting a lot of effort into controlling real-estate development," Allen said, adding that real-estate development goes with the market. "It takes care of its own." [Italics added]

This is it with markets, which government in general should leave alone.

Meanwhile, Wed. Jnl had the amazing information that Allen has said he was willing to swap his Maple Ave. property for the much-discussed and -debated Colt Building on Lake Street!  It’s one of more than a dozen village-owned properties intended for development by someone, somehow.

“In general,” because the extraordinary does arise, and like the U.S. homeland since 9/11 (somehow not attacked), OP (somehow) has not gone ramshackle like Austin to the east.  Many factors enter into both results, but to speak of OP alone, we may wonder if 1970s-style interference does NOT apply in 2006.

In any case, the board zoning allows Allen’s 11 units, and it’s too late now to stop him without spending too much money.  The village manager and staff think so, and so do I, which with $1.75 will get any one of them downtown on the Green Line.

Young black men in park at 5 p.m.

06-12-12 6:06 PM

Six or eight black kids of late high school age in Scoville Park when I walked by in the darkness about 5 p.m. on way to library, they on and around a bench opposite the monument, I on the winding path. One was going hot and heavy at another, venting. Others stood listening and chatting. the loud one was not threatening the other. As a group they were not threatening anyone.

I walked on by, glancing at them as I walked. One called out after I had passed them, "Hi, Brother." I didn't turn, partly because I wasn't sure he meant me, partly because I usually keep going in such situations. It's an instinct, as when I kept going in the open field at ABLA Homes on Roosevelt Road on the summer night in 1965 (ck) when rioting was under way over fire hydrants turned off and other matters. An adult called to me as I passed a knot of teen-aged boys: "Hey! You with the collar!" referring to me in my clerics. "Come 'ere."

I didn't but kept going toward the church at the project's southwest corner where various do-gooders were gathering. It was seven or so, and light out. But I was not about to make the young men's acquaintance at that point, even if I was a worker with youth and a teacher.

So this time I kept going even after the young man yelled again, "Brother." By now I was pretty sure he meant me but figured I did not want to turn around. He was being cheeky, I felt. But he was also being friendly in a rough way. I kept going.

Returning 15 minutes or so later on the same path, I passed the group again. They had me pegged now for a snob, no doubt about it. "White fagot," I heard as I walked guy. "Wouldn't talk to us." I wore a floppy hat: "Sherlock Holmes." The gorge was rising now: "Fuck you."

None of it was threatening. They spoke in surly, hurt fashion. I kept going again.

Ten minutes later I was returning down Lake Street heading for the park, in the block east of the Oak Park Avenue intersection. Some of the young men came along. There were others on the sidewalk. One of them had stopped another black guy, older than they by a few years and alone, two or three doors from Oak Park. One of them who had just passed me turned and yelled to the other: "Let the nigger go," he yelled. "Fuck the nigger."

A black couple also passing them looked fearful. But we not in the group, and certainly we whites, were the target of no attention at this point. We were part of the scenery, period. There wasn't even so much a threat of violence in what they said as simple cheekiness. Oddly, the group members were not unattractive, and this isn't any Stockholm syndrome I experienced or am describing. Instead, there was something going on among them that deserved attention. Can't prove it and from what I describe you wouldn't think so. Still, something was going on.

Einstein Bagels, To Be or Not To Be?

Reader G. asks my position on Einstein Bagels' remaining in OP. Well he might. I was the Northeast River Forest correspondent from Einstein's, at Harlem & North, the OP corner, for several years in the late 90s, sharply and keenly observing cops on break and other fauna -- always sympathetically, to be sure, as when they were gearing up for an uproarious Fourth in North Austin.

Alas, I have not developed my position on Einstein's, which is preparing to evacuate. For that I must consult my Filthy Capitalist Mindset, neatly balancing my deep love for community values with my Filthy Capitalist desire for maximized profits or at least enough to allow one even to stay in business (and lots of bad guys, including Great American Bagels, to name one, would like to see E. Bagels get out of their darn way), in OP or anywhere else. It's a bagel jungle out there, you better believe it. 

Talking

At Bread Kitchen, couldn't help noticing woman gesticulating to another. Giving gang signals? Describing dance moves with hands? Daydreaming with finger tic? Lunacy?

None of these, but SIGN LANGUAGE, it finally dawned on observer who couldn't help noticing. Theirs was animated, soundless conversation.

Using sign language has its pros and cons.  But if you want to learn how, you can start here.

There is also lip-reading. The most famous lip-reader I know is Henry Kisor, recently retired Sun-Times book editor. He had an editor once who barely moved his when speaking. Didn't stop Henry.  Nothing did.  He also  wrote a book about being deaf.

Shocked in OP

UK Guardian-Observer's Dan Pearson, who writes about gardens and gardening,

was shocked to see these vast, low-slung Arts & Crafts family homes littering crisp expanses of lawn in the wealthy Oak Park area on the edge of [Chicago]. Not a prairie in sight, but impressive nonetheless.

Shocked meaning delighted? I think so.  He is writing about prairies as having a comeback:

A way with the prairies [subtitled:]

When intensive farming muscled in on the American midwest, vast wildernesses were trampled in the rush. Now, says Dan Pearson, they're rising again

So he is glad to see OP’s big lawns — contrasted, we know, by Hemingway with its narrow minds — as a good sign, in fact “impressive.”

Pearson refers to FL Wright and prairie style architecture as “developed in [Chicago] suburbs.”  But he “had only known [Wright’s] wonderful, iconic Fallingwater [in Western Pennsylvania], cantilevered over a cascade in woodland,” before seeing what any of us can see any day on Forest Avenue and elsewhere in OP & RF.  So he was “shocked.”  Meaning delighted.

Busing

Among “anomalies” cited by Chi Trib in an article about school busing is OPRF High School, which “won an exemption from [state] busing requirements by demonstrating that adequate public transportation was available.”  It’s busing by Pace in the two villages or (healthily) hiking.  And since nonexistent school buses do not get stuck in snow and ice, the high school never calls classes off for weather reasons.

Meanwhile, the eastbound Metra train drops a busload of Fenwick students every morning.  That school draws them from far & wide.  And those who keep going downtown on their way to St. Ignatius find a bus waiting for them at the Ogilvie Center.  Or did a while back.

Go polar Saturday

Hey, kids of all ages, Tom Hanks's "Polar Express" is showing for free at the Lake Dec. 9, 10 in the morning. It's a grrrreat Christmas movie, part of Downtown OP's (ahem) "holiday celebration." Which holiday is just between us, OK?

But militant-Christian crack aside, the movie is marvelous. I know. I saw it Friday night on Channel 7. Kids even of an advanced age can use it to remember the realities, or ghosts, of Christmases past. Don't remember a better cartoon -- it's semi-cartoon, product of our digital wonderland -- and even the scary parts (parental presence required) thrill without chilling (I don't think, but can't be sure). Shades of "Snow White," seen when just out as a young lad.

What makes the 46% tick?

Is tribalism the issue in the matter of mainstream Dems supporting Todd Stroger, son of stricken Cook County board president John Stroger, in the recent election that gave him 46% of the Oak Park vote? This was a vote cast in the face of uncontested overwhelming evidence of budget-busting favoritism in hiring of friends and supporters with minimal regard to competence and other standard criteria, not to mention honesty in handling other people’s money.

Our ranking Oak Park Dem, state Sen. Don Harmon, was named in an 11/22 Chi Trib editorial with many other ranking Dems who endorsed Stroger.  We may assume family matters for him, though Oak Park has traditonally shown a civic sense that counts for more than one’s tribe. It often does, anyhow, but not for the 46%.

That many do not care about hiring people with minimal regard for competence, etc. Tribalism may count among us also, but more likely livelihood or career — or those ol’ social values. Chief among these is the right to abort a fetus, with gay-rights issues not far behind followed from a longer distance by gun-banning and other such matters.

This is an interesting conflict, between social liberalism and political reform. It leads to asking if it is progressive — a cherished liberal description — to support the hiring of the incompetent or less competent because they will plant signs on street corners and knock on every door.