Tag: Blithe Spirit

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.

He’s the man

I’m voting a long-term contract for Comcast repairman Ernest, who came to our house the other day and solved a months-old problem that had mystified two repairmen before him.  They didn’t know they were mystified, thinking they had solved the problem.  In fact, if Comcast does not go along with my vote, I am calling for a senatorial investigation.  Our own Sen. Harmon would be a good one to lead this.  Long contract for Ernest!