Sex on the grass

Nice June evening, man meets wife for light supper at Winberie's, at Oak Park's premiere corner, Oak Park & Lake.  Quiet, tasty, reasonable.  Man and wife exit Winberie's, cross Lake to Oak Park's premiere park, Scoville Park.  White kids playing frisbie.  "Look out, people," he hears as one player warns the others about pedestrians.  Man and wife take the pleasant walk up the small hill past the monument and various people lounging on the grass, including interracial couple with little kid.  Pleasant.

 

They enter the library, where he picks up How Capitalism Saved America: the Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, waiting for him on the reserve shelf.  He doesn't even have to go to the circ desk steps away, but checks it out electronically.  Upstairs she is chatting with the part-time librarian, #2 Daughter's first-grade teacher long ago, just retired from the elementary district.  He joins for chatting.  They conclude, look at videos.  He picks one, waits for her at the huge windows overlooking the park.  What he sees horrifies him.

 

A black boy is humping a black girl on the grass.  Both are clothed.  He is holding her down, as if in a wrestling move, bouncing up and down on her crotch.  She wraps her legs around him.  A second black boy lifts a light-skinned, perhaps white girl up from behind, puts her down on her feet.  She wants to get at the boy on the ground.  He prevents her.  She leaves the three, heading to a corner of the park 100 feet or so away where others are congregated.  The humping boy gets up after several minutes.  The humped girl gets up laughing, smoothes her hair, stands there.  He gets her now from behind, standing, and humps some more.

 

"Disgusting," says the wife, approaching the same window.

 

"Let's go," they say.

 

Outside, at the corner of the park mentioned before, a dozen to 15 black teens congregate at the benches, milling about with each other, talking and laughing.  The humping couple is part of this group.  This is the group’s corner.  Elsewhere in the park are kids and adults using the park for their quite different purposes.

Not Boring

No one will ever be bored by this board, By JIM BOWMAN in Wednesday Journal of OP&RF, June 07, 2006

DIFFICULT MEETING: Oak Park Trustee Martha Brock saved the day, or night, at the village board meeting a month ago when she and Trustee Elizabeth Brady changed their minds about who should lead the Colt building redo. Brady had explained herself reasonably enough: matters of substance had combined with matters of politics. There was nothing substantive to add when Brock’s turn came.

But speaking after Trustees Bob Milstein and Geoff Brady, she saved the situation. The other two had called out an editor, a political opponent who had addressed the board, and fellow trustees in a remarkable display of pique, disappointment, and veiled or unveiled animosity, chilling the room, or at the least the one where I sat watching on TV.

Brock rambled a bit but did not hesitate. She got personal but not maudlin and not angrily defensive. Like an earlier speaker, she spoke of resigning. But she accused no one. It was not a masterpiece of argument but a candid, apparently guileless display that cooled things down. She finished, the meeting proceeded, business was completed, everybody went home.

HISTORICAL PRECEDENT: The affair was all about backing into a meat grinder. The butcher’s wife did that. The result was predictable: Disaster. So did our bold if misguided Board Majority back into a public opinion meat grinder. The result? Temporary setback apparently viewed as disaster. Two defected, leaving two others disturbing the ether with ineffectual haymakers.

But all four may take grim consolation from Oak Park political history. Officeholders and staff have had to swallow some bitter medicine over the years. At a hot District 97 board meeting a long time ago, a disgruntled parent asked a board member to step outside. (He didn’t.)

When the library board tried to close a branch, people demanded otherwise. The Village Manager Association, still chewing dust from the last election, lost a much earlier one over the firing of a garbage man. A lawsuit did the same for a hard-charging school board. Former officeholders have left town. You need insulation from the slings and arrows.

LANDMARK ALERT: Meanwhile, Oak Park’s Historic Preservation Commission convenes with statutory authority to declare your building a landmark with all the benefits and liabilities that includes—whether you like it or not.

That’s what Trustee Greg Marsey learned at the May 15 board meeting, where the 400 North Maple block condo development was discussed. Marsey asked and got it verified by Village Attorney Ray Heise, who admitted the coercion written into village ordinance—no, the owner cannot decline landmark status—only after noting that the owner is invited to participate in landmark discussions.

Marsey appeared stunned. President David Pope, trying to wrap up discussion, said he did not want to get into "nuance" at that point. But one man’s nuance is another’s heart of the matter. Someone can start the process for you the owner? And in the end you have to go along with commission and board decision, with drastic implications as to what you can do with your own property? You have in mind neither whorehouse nor shooting gallery nor saloon, but a spanking new building with toilets that work, but it doesn’t matter, or might not matter.

There was more. So clearly was the board moving to stop the Maple Avenue development that Trustee Baker volunteered on the spot to mediate in the matter of developer vs. NIMBY neighbors. He would recuse himself from voting when its landmark status came before the board, he offered, presenting himself as a neutral third party who would bring developers and neighbor to agreement.

But elected officials normally recuse themselves only when past activity indicates conflict, and they do it regretfully. They don’t do it ahead of time so as to adopt a new role that an official considers more important than the one he was elected to fill. Milstein dissuaded Baker from his bad idea, though without saying how bad it was.

Look out, here comes the village board

Something going on here we should know about?

The [OP village] board tabled the discussion on the zoning change until the end of the meeting, when it entered into a closed-door discussion citing "attorney-client privilege," which is not one of the 23 "strictly construed" exceptions that allow public bodies to meet in private.

When the board returned to open session at 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, [President David] Pope explained the board’s position before a unanimous 6-0 vote to direct the village attorney to prepare a "findings of fact" on down-zoning the block. Trustee Greg Marsey left the meeting before the vote was taken.

The findings of fact would replace those prepared by the [village] Plan Commission in its recommendation to deny the zoning change from R-7 to R-6, which is a more restrictive and less dense residential zoning designation. The change, if it were to affect the planned condo building, would lower the four-story building by one floor and reduce its 11 units to nine.

Plan Commission, butt out.  Meanwhile, historic preservation took a hit when the relevant village commission denied landmark status to two buildings on the 400 N. Maple block

Commissioners expressed sympathy with preserving examples of more pedestrian architectural styles and with the neighbors’ plight in trying to prevent the character of their neighborhood from changing. However, most of the commissioners at the meeting found that the buildings are too badly dilapidated to retain historic architectural characteristics.

Falling-down buildings need not apply.  But landmarking the third would stop or slow down the condo development.  Neighbors are looking for “cultural”-historical reasons to save it — as if their interest was piqued in the first place by issues of crowding and making their block less livable or at least less cozy.

Meanwhile, the developer has made his plans under the wild assumption that zoning on books matters.

[Bob] Allen said he’s already spent a lot of money getting the project ready to be built, having not held back because he intended to build within allowable zoning.

But he faces a zoning change after the fact:

For weeks, Village Attorney Ray Heise has told the board that any zoning changes made now would not apply to a project for which a building permit application was received prior to the change.

Monday night, Pope would only say that the applicability of the zoning change, if approved, would be "subject to internal operating procedures of the village, village codes and state laws."

Which with $1.50 or so will get you a Green Line ride downtown or even to the South Side.  You can trust this village board as far as you can throw it. 

Trustees Geoff Baker and Robert Milstein were the most vocal in pushing the board to consider setting aside the Plan Commission to deny the zoning change request.

"I’m not going to sit by and let inappropriate zoning affect anybody," Baker said.

Milstein said the board needed "to send a new message in Oak Park that historic homes and peoples’ neighborhoods will be protected."

In other words, we can change that law if we want.  Or, to paraphrase the Red Queen, words mean what I want them to mean, period.

Crime and punishment

Tough, bold, smart Oak Park police catch a bad guy.  Breaking news from Wed. Journal:

A suspect in the rape and armed robbery of several woman in River Forest accidentally shot himself in the head during a police chase Monday night in Oak Park. The suspect died several hours later

Cops had him in the dark in Mills Park, but he

might have slipped through were it not for the instincts of off duty Oak Park detective Sgt. Juan Paladines. Paladines, who was driving in the area in his personal car, turned on his police radio when he heard the commotion. He then parked near Home Avenue at Washington Boulevard and waited. Within a minute Paladines spotted Patillo crouching behind a garbage can. When Patillo started moving south bound on Home, Paladines exited his car and followed him, radioing his position and asking for assistance. 

 

Rookie Oak Park officer Stephen Struska was the first to arrive on the scene, and joined Paladines in the foot pursuit in the 400 block of Home.

 

Struska passed Paladines, and was about to reach out and grab Patillo, Scianna said, when Patillo pulled a hand gun. He attempted to point it over his shoulder and shoot Struska. Unfortunately for Patillo, he fired too soon, and shot himself in the side of the head.

Wow.

Secret proposals, payoffs, divisiveness, scorched earth? OP is hot: Today's Wed Journal column

NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS: Is it kosher for the village not to reveal development proposals (RFPs), as it did when Wednesday Journal asked for them in the matter of Colt building renovation? These are secret proposals? What about the soon-to-be-approved protocols of participation? Would the proposals be revealed to participants? One good thing: this refusal spares our village board any second-guessing by citizens with their own ideas. This is only right. Who are these citizens anyway? What trees do they plant?

 

PAYOFF: What about Whiteco paying off the village for honoring its agreement? It’s coughing up $400G for unnamed and so far nonexistent village housing programs, to say nothing of another $200G in environment-friendly additions to the already agreed-on building. That would be your cost of doing business in Oak Park, insofar as this village board is a very sensitive creature, and kid gloves are in order. It’s not under the table, anyhow.

 

TAKING OFFENSE: And hey, since when is it not kosher to ask about conflict of interest, as board President Pope asked a few weeks ago about who would plan the Baltimore Colt redo? You can’t even ask? Trustee Milstein was "offended ... deeply offended ... angered," as if he’d been told his mother wore army boots. Trustee Baker found it "repugnant." But what have board members got better to do than ask about conflict of interest? It’s what legislators do.

 

NAME GAME: These two are of the board majority, but that’s too tame a phrase for the poets among us. "Milstein majority," in honor of its stormy-petrel spokesman, does have a ring to it, though editor-columnist Trainor has the fetching "fearsome foursome of Bob [Milstein], Baker, Brock and Brady (the killer Bs)." The poets love it. But Milstein’s the man, poetic or not, so we should go with the other one, MM.

 

Indeed, board meetings and local papers offer us no small array of Milstein moments. For instance, the opposition Village Manager Association (VMA) was part of Oak Park’s "growth machine," until "swept out of power," he said some months back. Yes!

 

When this paper’s doughty editor criticized the MM, Milstein said the editor had been "smoking something," making a thinly veiled reference to hashish. Worse, this editor is a writer of "divisive columns," he said.

 

This has to stop, any fair-minded person will agree. And while we’re on the subject, isn’t it grand that we have no divisive trustees?

 

Two months ago Milstein burst forth with 1,145 words in defense of his majority, taxing developer Taxman with putting out an "unprofessional, scorched-earth press release that debases the integrity of the board." His sole VMA opposition on the board, Ray Johnson, he said "will milk every ounce of this [Colt controversy] for his re-election campaign." Johnson, moreover, wants to be "the knight in shining armor."

 

The tax appeal process—a county process?—favors businesses and apartment building owners; it’s "an onerous old-boys network."

 

These are the words of a man with a mission. We need people like that in village government.

 

Wait. That’s not right. It should read, "We need people like that in village government?"

 

HOUSECLEANING: Meanwhile, on the school scene, District 97 Supt. Constance C. apparently was not born yesterday. When she hit the ground running last fall, fresh from Zion, she called for an audit of business and personnel operations and found dirt under the rug. Better to find it now than later, when she herself would have some explaining to do. Is this standard for a new super? I don’t think so. But what a good idea in this case, when she succeeded a super of many years tenure, under whom matters got sloppy.

 

FP CALLS: And then there’s the YMCA getting ready for its big move to Forest Park, where there will be room to roam and then some. The market had to be part of that decision. Sitting on expensive land with no room to roam is a nice incentive to sell and move.

 

It’s not expensive? So why is Time & Money restaurant—sorry, Thyme and Honey—also moving to FP? Because a big building is coming to take its place, something in line with that land’s market value. Oak Park is hot, you’d better believe it.

St. Edmund rising

St. Edmund RC Church -- Oak Park's oldest, it says on a sign out front (apparently antedating St. Catherine of Siena's move from Pine & Washington many years ago) -- has reduced its debt from $1.1 million to $375,000 in a year, says the pastor Fr. John McGivern in the bulletin.  He's been there 18 months.  Weekly collections etc. mean no debt is being incurred.  Fr. McG cites "some very generous donors, the reallocation of some underutilized funds . . . two bequests, and the fine fiscal management of the [parish] Finance Council."

 

Donors can set up automatic direct debit and automatic credit card contributions, so "you'll never have to worry about your weekly envelopes again!".

 

A recent "Elegant Evening at the [Brookfield] Zoo netted $66,000.  Weekly collections have to average $13,500.  Apparently they have been at that level, in view of ongoing lack of indebtedness. 

 

All Oak Park should be glad about this.

A word to the wise in village government: Stay out of politics

Today’s Wednesday Journal column

What the heck was Oak Park village board President David Pope doing boosting a Democratic candidate by telephone, as reported in this newspaper? What the heck was he doing at the Dem candidates’ beauty contest at the library Feb. 11, where he was sighted from the podium and given a big hand? Doesn’t he know about the rise of the VMA (Village Manager Association) in the ‘50s as antidote to political-party shenanigans (hiring), in that case Republican?

The VMA floated and won adoption of village-manager government, taking government employment out of the hands of elected officials. These latter turn politicians when running for election. Otherwise, they are citizens with better things to do who decide to do this anyway, namely set policy for the village with nothing in it for themselves. Elected, they hire one person, the manager, who hires everyone else. Political-party candidates, on the other hand, get to hire lots of people if they win. It’s the nature of the beast.

A friend of mine some years back moved here from Northlake, where he’d been mayor. Came election time, he rang doorbells for Democrats, his chosen party. Chatting with the Oak Park Dem chairman at a post-election party, he was asked where he worked and named the major ad agency where he was office manager. End of conversation. The Dem chairman expected to hear a government agency, not an ad agency, as the man’s place of employment. Implication clear to my friend? As a campaign worker not dependent on victory for his job or promotion therein, he didn’t matter. Or he could show up on amateur night.

No skullduggery is suspected of Pope here. Rather, naivete. Oak Park is full of true-believing Democrats and (less full of) Republicans, who give their all as volunteers. That’s the kind of Democrat Pope is, I trust, but what of the appearance? Yes, his candidate, the presumed reformer Forrest Claypool, seemed untainted. But behind every reformer who wins is an army of people who depend on him for their jobs. Not in Oak Park. Here it’s the manager who hires and fires. Trustees should butt out of such matters, and that includes the feisty, provocative, uncivil Robert Milstein, recent subject of a barrage of commentary about him and unionized village hall employees and his offensive references to the manager and others.

As for Milstein and the unions, his critics hasten to say he has the right to join their protest, meaning legal right, I assume. What other kind I cannot imagine. Put it this way: If after joining the protest, he wants membership in the League of Wise Men in Village Government, he has no right to claim it. To call him imprudent and wrong-headed for doing it is to say nothing about his right to do it, which is a very red herring. Same for Pope and his phone calls for Claypool: He had the right to do it, but that’s beside the point. Not every right is to be claimed all the time. I mean, when husband or wife doesn’t feel like it now and then, it’s unwise, even unfair, to insist. Right?

MEANWHILE, IN CHURCH ... Did you hear about the worshiper who came late to Mass and got trampled at Kiss of Peace time? He was tackled by the deacon in full regalia and woke up some minutes later being sprinkled with holy water hoarded in anticipation of the upcoming Easter Vigil. He has learned since then to get with the program or else. A word to the wise is sufficient, he’s been told.

As for trampling and being trampled, astute observer Bob O. notes the differences of opinion about kissing (or shaking) for peace among Catholics and suggests a solution: Have the ushers greet people and ask, "Kissing or Non-kissing?" They could then direct people to one side or other of the aisle. Good idea!

Catholic unionism

This from National Catholic Reporter on Chi area's Resurrection Health Care, which took over Oak Park's West Suburban Hospital a few years ago and has lots of other venues:

From the pope on down to local clergy and parishioners, the Catholic church has defended the rights of workers for decades, and in a 1999 document the U.S. bishops specified that hospital workers in Catholic facilities "have the right to organize themselves for collective bargaining and to be recognized by management for such purposes." Citing these teachings, many in the Catholic community of Chicago have sided with the workers trying to unionize Resurrection Health Care.

It's a story on attempts to get Cardinal George to pressure Resurrection H.C.  But as hospitals fall and users complain -- consider black West Siders protesting Advocate Health Care's partial closing of Bethany -- is C. George going to guarantee health care to users of West Sub, which turned in desperation to a buyer, and to other hospitals squeezed by costs?  (His man says he's staying out of it.)  And is there a connection between being non-unionized and surviving?  Ask U.S. automakers, whose market share has eroded while they pay exorbitant amounts to the select few who belong to the UAW.

 

As for Catholic teaching, it was hijacked by the Jesuit ghost writer Nell-Breuning 80 years ago, with popes going along sans any more authority in the matter than a tenured radical on a U.S. or Euro campus.  This is true Catholic leftism, and there's no better sample of it than NCR, which gives 1,479 words to this story, done by a writer from Toledo.  From Toledo?
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Posted by Blithe Spirit to Oak Park, Home of Edgar Rice Burroughs at 3/14/2006 11:13:15 AM

Oak Park village board speaks out

What is the Board Majority really thinking?

JIM BOWMAN

Wednesday Journal of OP&RF, March 1, 2006

Watching the Oak Park village board on TV, you see people walking on eggs with each other, except when Martha Brock has to take a breather, and then there’s nothing to do but watch Robert Milstein’s hair grow. Isn’t it time to translate for them and help them tell it straight?

Take the Board Majority (please) in the matter of buying the Baltimore Colt building for us at the low, low price of $5 million, plus maybe another building for $2.5 mill. Wouldn’t it be a relief for all concerned to let it all hang out, as they say in therapy? Let’s do it, citing nay-sayers and then reporting what the Board Majority-Milstein, Elizabeth Brady, Brock, and Geoff Baker-can’t say.

The Baltimore Colt decision-the building really was named after the Colts a long time ago-gives a "blank check" for historic preservation, says down-with-Colt Trustee Ray Johnson. "When I heard ‘History Matters,’ I didn’t realize they meant ‘at all costs.’"

Board Majority: You weren’t listening!

"I don’t know where this is going," said Johnson. "I’ve asked the question, and you don’t get an answer; you get blank stares."

BM: We’re tired!

Pro-Colt trustees listened only to "the few extremists" in their New Leadership Party, said Ed Baehrend, owner of a Wright-designed house.

BM: Hey. If it’s not moving, preserve it!

"Why anyone would bother to participate in another lengthy process," when consultant, steering committee, and developer have all struck out, escapes Jon Hale, of Forum Oak Park.

BM: Hey. We’re Oak Park and they’re not! Do they want our business or don’t they?

"Rebuilding the Colt building would represent ... a dogmatic, single-minded focus on historical preservation at any cost," said the Business and Civic Council.

BM: We don’t care!

A new 10-step process for issuing the Colt-rehab and other requests for proposal (RFP) "need not be burdensome or consume an inordinate amount of time," said President David Pope, pouring oil on troubled waters.

BM: You have a problem with burdensome and inordinate?

The BM kissed off the superblock citizen committee months ago, tipping their hand, says Jon Hale, of Forum Oak Park.

BM: You don’t get it. We don’t want no stinking committee advice! Let them put their stinking advice where the sun don’t shine!

The citizen committee’s plan was delivered after months of listening to citizens, developer Taxman’s architect, and village-hired experts on traffic, development and historic preservation, reported Wednesday Journal.

BM: How many times do we have to say we don’t want no stinking committee advice?!

Meanwhile, the BM has a trick or two up its sleeve in the contest being enacted before our very eyes on TV sets and at village hall. Consider recent public remarks and letter to the editor by BM member Milstein-and, if you don’t mind, piquant responses by my friend Jake (not his real name), who has been pestering for recognition.

 Milstein urges us "to rescue [by use of eminent domain power] areas of Oak Park [held] hostage for multiple decades."

"I’ve got just the bozos for you," says Jake. "As soon as you’re ready, let me know. I want to help."

 He would like "an architectural contest."

"No, no, no, no," says Jake. "Let’s have a musical. One of us can be Judy, I’ll be Mickey, the other kids can be lots of other people. Somewhere there’s an old barn and ..." (I shut him up.)

 He wants a definitive idea of what’s best for Marion Street.

"This one I like," says Jake, who adds that he has spent his entire life looking for a definitive idea of something and is willing to pursue this goal "or at least watch others pursue it."

That’s it, then. Pretty good day for me. I liberated village trustees from cramped board-meeting style. I got Jake off my back. Where Jake goes next is anybody’s guess. Same goes for the trustees, I suppose.

Democrats on parade

If all but one or two of the Democrat candidates who spoke at the library today were to look hard at their names for an "s" and immediately place a line through it top to bottom, that would be just fine. It would be better if they would write "public" or "your and my" in brackets before the "s"  That way we would understand each other and be off to a rousing primary in March and an even more rousing general election in November. As it was, they were very interesting to a free-market Republican like me.

State Rep. Deborah Graham, unopposed in March, said she's for "affordable" housing and low-cost (cheap) health care. Chris Welch, state rep candidate opposing incumbent Karen Yarbrough, analyzed public-education problems as lack of "resources." (Wait. I want to draw two vertical lines in that word.) You say, "Money is not the answer"? Welch does not buy that. In addition, he's against high ATM fees and two kinds of loan, "predatory" and "payday." That is to say, he wants a ceiling on rates. (Bankers for Welch are meeting in the phone booth across the street.)

Rep. Karen Yarbrough, now in her third term, wants "housing" for the "homeless" by way of "subsidies." She is against smoking in public space but is for Gov. Blago's "AllKids" health care plan. (And be sure to add that vertical line to the "s" in Kids. Thank you.) She is also opposed to the high prices of things but is sadly realizing that her constituents don't know how to tap into "the state," which is why she tries and will keep trying to "bring Springfield to the people." (This calls for a mountain-to-Muhammad comment, but people are edgy lately about such references.)

Michael Nardello, who lives a few blocks north of North Avenue, where he is a precinct captain, opposes Sen. Don Harmon in March sans organizational endorsement. He's director of finance for the City of Chicago's Dept. on Aging, whose budget dropped from $35 million to $28 million in recent years (he said how many years, but I did not catch it), with neither reduction in services nor layoffs! Lacking support from "party leaders" to whom others must report, he will report only to those who elect him, he said. (This, though not original, is a good line. Harmon right after him simply stated the opposite: he reports to the people too.) Nardello took a shot at the state's "taxing system," said it imposes "unfair burdens," a position which should appeal to all taxpayers.

Harmon, who is OP's Dem committeeman, put in a word for national Dem chairman Howard Dean, saying he is "pleased with the results" of Dean's party chairmanship (putting himself at odds with those national Dems who are not pleased, especially with what Dean has done with their money). Harmon praised the $180 million he got for early childhood ed, a job-training center in Austin, his work to raise the minimum wage (the apple of most Dems' eyes), and four or five other achievements which he rattled off with aplomb, ending with something called "open-source council" which I will look up some day but not now. Harmon also favors "programs," a Dem staple, to solve housing problems and lower the price of "gas and gasoline," with attention to "gouging."

Rep. Calvin Giles said it would be hard to tell his 12 years' achievements in the two minutes given each candidate. (Not and still have time to recount his problems with the state election board, which had him off the ballot until he ponied up a batch of fines.) He too rejoiced in the $180 million for early childhood. (What would early childhood do without it?) And he emphasized his access to (once smoke-filled) "rooms" as a "senior legislator," where he performed as "a champion for education." He looked ahead to the jobs that would develop from expansion of O'Hare Airport and the Eisenhower Expressway -- $300 million in projects. He wants to "get people pre-qualified for these jobs."

LaShawn Ford, his opponent in the primary, is actually a businessman, whose real estate offices are in four locations, he said. As such, he "knows what it means to get things done." He noted the closing of Austin High school, wondering how "this person" Calvin Giles can claim to be a leader in education problems in view of this closing. He emphasized providing "all taxpayers" with "the services they need."

Sen. Kimberly Lightford has four years in office and chairs the senate education committee. She's for more "construction dollars" for public schools but opposes the No Child Left Behind act as "unfair and underfunded." She objects to putting schools on a watch list from which it takes two years to get removed and opposes giving "the same test" to students "less proficient" in language as is given to the more proficient. She's for raising the minimum wage and wants to "index" businesses that don't pay it.

Her opponent in March, James T. Smith, began by reciting the preamble to the state constitution, "We, the people," etc., to what purpose it was not clear. In any case, it set Calvin Giles and Kimberly Lightford trading sotto voce comments in plain view of all -- candidates sat in chairs facing the audience -- and chuckling during much of Smith's two minutes. To make matters worse, as Smith asked us to "believe in the power of one," the Democracy for Illinois sign taped to a free-standing chalk board behind him began to slip. The more he talked, the happier Lightford looked, in fact. Smith soldiered through, oblivious to the distractions, until at almost the very end of his time, he uttered the words no man or woman would be expected to utter in this gathering: "Don't throw money at the problem." (I was so shocked to hear this and was so distracted that I can't say what problem he was addressing. However, I did make a point of telling him later how brave he was to say it.)

With that the formal session was over. Candidates were expected to "plunge into" the crowd, which they did. I remained seated in the front row except for one foray in direction of Eric Davis, who had chaired the meeting superbly, to ask about him and his organization, Democracy for Illinois. It's part of Democracy for America, which Howard Dean founded. These, in short, were Deaniacs who held this very informative session. Davis is an architect, he told me when I asked. The local DFI people draw 20 or so per informal session on first Wednesdays at Buzz Cafe on Lombard Avenue, he further told me.

Him I wanted to talk to, in part to commend his performance, and so identified myself as a Wednesday Journal columnist. To someone I did not want to talk to, he identified me as from the Journal, which made me a target for publicity-seekers. I hate that and showed it to two women, consecutively, one of them Mila Tellez, a library trustee elected last time around with support from Davis's group, he said. Meanwhile, Calvin Giles had spotted me taking notes and come for me, still seated, to shake hands and inquire as to my affiliation. I said I take notes wherever I go -- I sure did not feel like explaining Blithe Spirit to him -- and finally revealed myself as a WJ columnist. That satisfied him, and he was gone.

It was not that easy getting rid of Tellez, who came at me wanting to know if I was a Democrat or (mere) citizen. From a newspaper? A citizen, I told her, smiling wanly and turning away to look at space. She invited me aggressively to the Democracy for Illinois sessions at the cafe. I remained looking at space until she retreated, muttering "You're welcome" when I hadn't said thanks for her invitation. Why did she say that?

Blackjacks, gaps, bears, rats

DEFENSE ... Crime rate is down in Oak Park, except for assaults, thanks in part to increased locking of doors. Is there an equivalent for anti-head-knocking? Probably not, but wouldn’t it be cool? There could be village-sponsored classes in use of the blackjack, for instance, widely publicized for deterrence’s sake.

Classes would teach how to pick the right size and heft, where to conceal it, how to wield it: A quick swipe here (think credit card at Dominick’s), a roundhouse swing there (think Paul Konerko), or a mere brandishing, showing it to the head-knocker (think tank parade in Red Square).

It’s legal if you can prove self-defense—you’d need witnesses—because it’s not illegal. Look it up.

TWO GAPS THERE ARE ... The Gap I like is the one where I get dashing $8 pullover shirts that are warm and cozy, long-lasting, and in my view stylish. The one I don’t like is the one between black and white kids in schools, which by the way is being approached the wrong way, as if white’s all right and blacks are stepping back.

The black parent with a sixth-grader reading at first-grade level has a problem—whether whites have the same problem or not—is my point. Better to concentrate on the thing to be done, whatever it takes. It’s not a race but a quest, to be pursued even if it’s you by yourself on a desert island.

Comparisons are odious, as Sir John Fortescue said so well 600-plus years ago, and as did many after him, including Marlowe, Donne, Cervantes in translation, Goldsmith, Burke, and Shakespeare, who played with the expression, having Dogberry in "Much Ado about Nothing" observe that comparisons are "odorous."

The thing to do is go all Martin Luther Kingly color-blind and save race-discussion therapy sessions for village hall or the library. School is for solving learning problems, not social problems.

GO TEAM GO ... My lucrative Wednesday Journal contract forbids me to name the Other Paper in this column, much less to praise it. But it recently offered a gem which I cannot ignore, in an article about That Building on Lake Street. Said building got its name when it changed hands some time back and went to the owner of the Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts, who called it the Colt Building!

I am amazed that this hasn’t come up in debate about restoring or destroying it. Preservationists should consider jettisoning that name in favor of Charger or Forty-Niner or—that’s it, Bear! Would developers be so cavalier about the matter if it were the Bear building they were condemning to the wrecking ball? I don’t think so.

One family has to be glad of the name change, however. It was once the Goldberg Building, for leaseholder Sol H. Goldberg, whose descendants are spared the indignity of the present discussion, not least of them "The Goldbergs," of radio and television fame. And don’t tell me they are fictional. I heard them on radio when I was home sick from school, with my own two ears.

PROFESSIONAL SECRETS ... All I did was say nice going about his recent column on gay games, and Oak Park writer Byron Lanning told me a lot about his working methods in an e-mail. In fact, he pretty much spilled the beans:

"I couldn’t have done it without my research staff of learned pigs, my prose coach of several hundred chimpanzees randomly banging on Hermes 3000 typewriters in my basement, and my copy editor Edward, a white labratory rat with a genetically altered brain," he said.

I’m getting me one of them rats.

-- Jim Bowman in Wednesday Journal of OP&RF, 2/1/06

===========

Update, from Inside Report, 2/7/06:

It’s the infamous ‘seniority memory gap’

Viewpoints columnist Jim Bowman alluded to the $8 shirts he buys at The Gap (as in the clothing store) last week in his column as an intro to comments on The Gap (as in the minority student achievement gap). Worked very nicely only [he remembered] (post-deadline) that he buys his $8 shirts next door at Old Navy, which may be more accurate, but doesn’t work nearly so well in a column. "I swear I didn’t fudge for the sake of phrasing," Bowman said in an e-mail last week, blowing the whistle on himself. He even signed off "Abashed on Ontario." Well, we believe him, mostly because we’ve been victimized by a Gap (as in the "senior moment" variety) or two ourselves lately.

The upshot is, don’t go to The Gap looking for cheap shirts.

How much for that bottle in the window?

A wild story comes out of Franklin Park, where lives Oak Parker Democrat, State Sen. Don Harmon's Republican opponent in the fall election, Jim Rowe.  Rowe called police the other night after a window in his house caught a bottle or decanter with threatening note at 1:30 a.m. and gave way to the bottle. 

 

If you go here, you can view ABC-7's report of two days ago which has Rowe, an asst. state's attorney who appeared at the Republican candidates' forum at the Oak Park library Saturday 2/28, saying he had no trouble on his block until he ran for Harmon's senate seat. 

 

Earlier, his SUV's tires were slashed and Harmon campaign literature left on the windshield.  Harmon denies everything and says his people would never do it but wants police to investigate, which they are apparently doing, having taken with them the message-carrying, window-breaking decanter to check for prints.

The anti-Stroger

We've had quite the circus . . . in Cook County over the past few days.

. . . another indictment was handed down from US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's office, charging a subsidiary of technology giant Siemens AG with defrauding Cook County. The company and two of its executives are accused of entered into a phony partnership with a minority owned business to win a $49 million contract with Stroger Hospital.

Only a few days later, the Chicago Sun-Times revealed the county's corruption watchdogs, the inspector general, auditor and ethics director and members of those offices, had made numerous contributions to President Stroger's campaign fund. It's little wonder that scams that defraud the taxpayers of Cook County like the Siemens scam at Stroger Hospital seem to slip through the cracks.

President Stroger . . . promised not to accept [any more] campaign contributions from these . . . officials, whose primary task is to investigate claims of corruption in Cook County government or other "sensitive officials".

. . . finally, there's the strange story of Vincent Jones, a relative of President Stroger and a member of Cook County Recorder of Deeds Eugene Moore's political organization. Mr. Jones is accused of roughing up a Forest Park man who declined to have political campaign signs placed his yard. Police report that Mr. Jones became belligerent and threatened to have the arresting officers "politically taken care of".

That’s from the web site of Tony Peraica, the star of last Saturday’s Republican beauty show at Oak Park library, where he made the top of the (ballot) program, gave a crisp, intelligent, easy-listening talk, answered qq, and then had to run.  (He had an easy act to follow, it’s true: acting OP GOP chairman Richard Willis, who, apparently conscious of Oak Parkers’ reading problems, was kind enough not only to flash sentences on the overhead but also to read them to us, word for word.)

Peraica is an immigrant (from Croatia), having arrived here 34 years ago at 13 after losing both parents, speaking no English.  He’s a Cook County commissioner, since 2002, when he took 53% of the vote over a 14–year incumbent.  He’s going after John Stroger’s county board chairmanship and playing anti-corruption melodies to a fare-thee-well.  His www.votetony06.com web site is a winner.  It includes “Tony’s blog” http://www.votetony06.com/blogs/, which makes good reading.

So? Then where's Oak Park?

You were wondering where Greek Town is, you thought on Halsted south of Eisenhower or thereabouts?  You should have asked Chi Trib’s Pamela Sherrod, who locates “Chicago's predominantly Greek neighborhood near Oak Park.”  Kidding you not, am I.  It’s in an article, “Living lean in a 'stuffaholic' world” as it ran in the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times 1/21/06.

Later, from Len:

Well, it's only 10 minutes on the Ike..

and then there's papaspiros... a neighborhood in itself.
(Not to mention George's, Thyme and Honey, Maple Leaf...)

OR maybe she is thinking about the neighborhood around Assumption Greek Orthodox
Church on [Central] next to Loretto Hospital.., must have been a Greek
neighborhood onceuponatime.

True.

Just kids

Is it possible OP police chief Tanksley would prefer not to have told Chi Trib — “Crime Drops in Oak Park” — that the 61% of OP’s 58 assault victims in 2005 who are juveniles were a case of "kids having a problem with other kids”?  A few years back, one of those kids, son of the elementary schools superintendent, needed eye surgery after being attacked in Whittier playground by kids from Austin.  If reported assaults, as Tanksley said, do not appear to be gang-related, they are something else bad that should not be dismissed cavalierly.

Kids at play

Veronica Micklin, of 1001 Wenonah, has great things to say about neighborhood life in Oak Park.  For a look at “children, independence and play,” she says in a letter to NYTimes, come to

the south section of Oak Park, where we live. My son, who is now 18, still walked over to his friends' homes to play when he was home over holiday break, rather than call them on his cell phone. Here the kids draw with chalk on the sidewalk, ride their bikes and walk to the playgrounds and parks. They play whiffle ball in backyards and throw footballs on quiet Sunday streets. Kids walk to school--grade school, middle school and high school! The sound of a ball hitting the pavement under a garage-mounted hoop is stronger than any ring that can be downloaded!

Readers Respond: Taking the Child Out of Childhood - New York Times

Not everybody loves learning

For a lot of smart kids, they provide confidence and validation that are hard to come by in the day-to-day environment of middle school and high school, where academic skills are seldom on top of the heap in terms of recognition.

That’s Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, in Slate Mag two years ago, talking about spelling bees and other contests and making top-drawer sense.  He reflects problems that were front and center in Oak Park’s elementary & junior high District 97 back when our kids were in school, in the 80s and 90s.  How to validate academic skills, yes.

He said it while reviewing the documentary “Spellbound,” about the National Spelling Bee, but linked it while discussing actress-producer Patricia Heaton’s new documentary, “The Bituminous Coal Queens of Pennsylvania,” about a 50–year-old talent and beauty contest in SW Pa. — Patricia Heaton, of course, having been Raymond’s wife on TV in “Everybody Loves . . .”

The coal-queen film is also about people and coal mining, which “has shaped this area of the country, instilling a strength and pride in its citizens.”

Unhappy in Oak Park

This lady didn’t like it in OP,

the only place [she] ever lived where she didn't feel welcome.

"They were so suspicious of the Eastern establishment," she said. "'Harvard' [her alma mater by way of its women’s college, Radcliffe] was a dirty word. I always voted Democrat, but there was only one other person in Oak Park that I know of who did. I was scared to death to mention it to anyone."

Still years before the Civil Rights movement, [she and her husband, Rev.] Martin [Sargent] — fed up with the racial intolerance they saw around them — began to organize ways to document the racism, mostly by bringing black people in from Chicago and having them try to shop at segregated local malls.

It was a difficult time for the Sargents in many ways, and a time of change. They had their first two children before Martin was reassigned to a church in Foxborough, Mass. — a place where they felt more at home.

This would have been in the mid– to late 40s.  She is Barbara Sargent, 84, interviewed in the Bath, Maine, Times-Record News, “in her stately living room with her dog sleeping on her lap.”  She had grown up in NY City, daughter of a Lutheran pastor in mid-town Manhattan across from Central Park, where a flock of real sheep was tended by a real shepherd.

In Massachusetts “they felt more at home.”  Then there was Maine and Paris, France, where she thrived.  They got to know Martin Luther King.  She got over her Oak Park experience, apparently, which is nice.

Pro-choice is best

 ... when it comes to education

By JIM BOWMAN

January 4, 2006, Wednesday Journal of OP&RF

Columnist Jack Crowe says let’s talk about school [Viewpoints, Dec. 14]. OK, don’t blame me. It was his idea. He has middle schools in mind-public, or government, schools. The latter is preferred by ex-UIC Prof. Herbert J. Walberg in his and Joseph L. Bast’s Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming Our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America’s Schools because they are funded and run by government agencies. That’s a cruel and heartless way to refer to our beloved school staffs and leadership, but let’s do it this once.

Let’s also put an interesting question: Can government schools be competitive? They must be, you say. Most kids go there, don’t they? But they are a monopoly as to funding, and we have found that monopolies do nothing for competition. Remember Ma Bell?

Competition happens, however. Ask any real estate broker selling a neighborhood. This is school-to-school competition, aided and abetted by published test scores. It happens within schools, too, in the choice parents have about middle-school subjects-typing? chorus? art? French? Spanish?-and even about teachers. There could be more of this: you could have homework classes and non-homework classes. Parents could choose. This would be a pro-choice program that even conservatives would approve.

Or teachers could declare for phonics or not, and parents could choose. Or for drilling in fundamentals vs. enrichment. For memorizing poetry or not. As freshmen at Fenwick in 1945, we memorized poetry-"The stag at eve had drunk its fill, where danced the moon on Monan’s rill," "I wandered lonely as a cloud," "‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,

But spare your country’s flag,’ she said." And much, much more. Our lives were never the same. Mine wasn’t, anyhow. We gave speeches, too; every freshman took speech, like it or not.

In this pro-choice environment, teachers would still run classrooms, out of which parents could butt. But parents would choose this or that in general terms. They’re the ones who have to live with the kids anyhow. Let them decide.

Some do it already, big time. They say no to government schools, paying their money and taking their choice at schools called Grace or Ascension or Calvary [No: Oak Park Christian Academy is the day school at Calvary church: better here wld be Alcuin or Waldorf, to name two].  Others skip school buildings completely, like Cindy Miller, on Wesley Avenue. She and her husband Jay and other couples do it themselves. Jay, an engineering consultant, teaches physics. Cindy’s friend Pat Larson teaches Latin and history. Cindy teaches literature. As many as 15 kids might be in a session, from five families. These are mini-schools, or as one observer put it, "private schools on the cheap."

The kids get out, as to see "Nutcracker Suite" at Morton East High School. The Millers’ oldest is an Eagle Scout. Their oldest daughter has taken acting classes at Village Players; she’s in her second season as a Lyric Opera supernumerary. Another son is pitcher and shortstop with a local traveling team. Another daughter takes violin, another guitar.

Home-schoolers’ reasons run a gamut. For the Millers, members of Calvary Memorial Church, where home-schooler parents meet regularly, "the Christian element" is the big thing. Cindy Miller has found it’s "good to cater to" each child’s progress. The experience has also been good for "family dynamics," which in their case are super-dynamics-the Millers have nine children, from two to age 19.

The nine have been home-schooled since birth. She and her husband, unsure at first, were willing to try it. If it didn’t work, they were willing to pack their first-born off to kindergarten. So it went with the other eight: schooling began when they were born. It progressed seamlessly. As for truancy issues and the long arm of the state, which in some places can be quite intrusive, Illinois law is liberal in the matter. Home-schooled kids are to be taught core subjects in English for a required number of days, but no reporting is required. It’s a fairly pro-choice environment.

Perils of home schooling in Joliet

Egad!  The ink hardly dry on my Wed. Journal column due out tomorrow (if my tardiness deadline-wise does not delay it), which I close with reference to Illinois’ liberalism in the matter, not prosecuting home-schoolers for truancy, I hear from the Home School Legal Defense Assn. (HSLDA) about a Joliet family hauled into court: 

In Illinois, homeschoolers only need to teach the same branches of instruction in the English language that are being taught in public schools . . . ever since an important state Supreme Court case [in] 1950 [that gave them private-school status].

Nonetheless, certain school districts tend to demand more of homeschoolers than is actually required by law. . . .  The Will County Regional Superintendent's Office sent a truant officer to contact the [Walters] family.

He said the kids — all four but one “chronic” — were truant.  HSLDA complained immediately, but the truant officer went to the local prosecutor, who charged the family with truancy. He said the chronic required "supervision." HSLDA found the truant officer in violation of a statute requiring written notice of truancy before charges were filed. The father asked for a continuance, the judge refused, not allowing the father even to ask.  The kid had to be in school the next day.

The mother went to the district the next day.  Once the regional superintendent saw she had a teaching certificate, lesson plans and plenty of books and was told of the truant officer’s failure to file proper notice, he called the state's attorney and got the case dropped.