When do corporate identities for professional sports stadiums go too far?

SeatGeek Stadium.

You just know that name is going to bring about derision amongst Chicago sporting fans for the Chicago Fire professional soccer club.

SeatGeek the stadium off in the distance from the Loop

BUT IT SEEMS the Fire (not the actual blaze from 1871, but the team playing in a stadium built for their use out in suburban Bridgeview) will allow their home pitch to be given that public identity with the coming of the 2019 season.

This is the final year that their stadium will carry the name Toyota Park.

Which as far as I’m concerned isn’t really a loss, since I don’t care for building names that are meant to be nothing more than advertising for somebody else’s product. I’d love it if the building in which the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks had never been given a name promoting the interests of United Airlines.

But at least that was a Chicago-area entity. Unlike Toyota, which sells their products throughout the Chicago area, here but doesn’t really make them here.

Soldier, or Soldiers? Front room, or fronchroom?

COME 2019, IT will be SeatGeek Stadium. And yes, I’m sure there will be some people anal retentive enough to argue about whether there ought to be a space between “Seat” and “Geek,” or whether the company’s desires ought to be respected and the name spelled out as one word.

For the record, I had to look it up, since I had no idea what SeatGeek was. It seems it’s a website (seatgeek.com) where one can go to find tickets to various types of events. Including sports.

And including professional soccer.

A corporate identity of nearly three decades

It seems the company is an official Major League Soccer corporate partner, and the Minnesota United, Portland Timbers, Seattle Sounders, Sporting Kansas City and LAFC (a Los Angeles-area team that competes with the more traditionally-named Los Angeles Galaxy) have partnerships.

I SUPPOSE WE should also include the Chicago Fire on that list, since the company has now bought the right to have their identity on the Fire’s building.

For what it’s worth, Bloomberg Markets reported that the deal could result in payments of up to $4 million annually to the Chicago Fire. Not a bad sum, although I wonder how seriously people will take a name like “SeatGeek.”

It makes me wonder if Chicago Fire fans will go out of their way to refuse to use the name and come up with their own identity for the stadium out in the southwestern suburb (not far from Midway Airport, if you must know).

Although I wonder if SeatGeek could surpass Guaranteed Rate Field in terms of an unpopular identity for sporting fans to use. Yes, there are many Chicago White Sox fans who haven’t come to terms with the latest corporate name the White Sox bought for themselves two years ago.

Is baseball's sporting superiority in large part because "Sox Park" ...

THERE ARE MANY Chicago Cubs fans who go out of their way to deride the stadium name, and for all I know they will refuse to let SeatGeek Stadium somehow become a tackier name than Guaranteed Rate. Just because, in their mini-mindsets, the White Sox have to rank at the bottom.

Although when it comes to Chicago stadium identities, I always thought the most off-beat debate concerned the home of the Chicago Bears and the great number of allegedly hard-core fans who persist in calling the building “Soldiers Field” rather than the proper “Soldier.”

... and "Cubs Park" make sense?

By comparison, I’m sure there will be some sports fans who will show derision for professional soccer (mostly because they don’t comprehend “real” football, which ain't da game da Bears play so badly these days) by refusing to acknowledge the Bridgeview stadium altogether.

It’s a shame that all sports teams can’t be like our baseball clubs – where there are some people who steadfastly call the stadiums “Sox Park” and “Cubs Park” regardless of whatever name appears on the marquee. That would make sporting sense, even if it wouldn’t generate the million-dollar payoffs for the teams themselves.

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Can Chicago support more pro soccer? Does North Side want its own team?

Does professional soccer in this country have visions of playing off the South Side/North Side split that exists in our city – with each side having its own team to root for?

Architectural rendering of new stadium to attract Amazon.com, United Soccer League to Chicago

Some people seem to have such dreams, although it’s questionable whether the baseball dichotomy that exists in Chicago could ever be recreated for another sport.

ADMITTEDLY, THIS IS all theoretical.

It comes about because part of the Chicago proposal for trying to encourage Amazon.com to build their second corporate headquarters here is to erect a stadium at a site along the Chicago River’s north branch on the fringes of the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

It’s meant to enhance the neighborhood that could be the site of the Amazon.com facility – an effort to make it a hip and happening place (and yes, I suspect the only people who would find this upgrade worthy are the types who would use terms like “hip” and “happening”).

Concerts could be held there, and there’s talk of trying to get the United Soccer League to expand its operations with a team in Chicago that could actually play its games there.

IT SOUNDS NICE, except that Chicago already has a professional soccer team – the Chicago Fire of Major League Soccer. Which isn’t exactly an attendance-leader for the league, and usually provides ammunition for the NASCAR-type mentality people who want to think soccer is too foreign to be worthy of any support on the sporting scene.

The existing Toyota Park of southwest suburban Bridgeview

The Fire, when they originally were created back in the 1990s, played their matches at Soldier Field. But when that stadium was renovated into its current state, the Fire used the need to find a new home as an excuse to get their own stadium.

Which they now have out in the southwest suburb of Bridgeview. I’ve been to Toyota Park for a few matches. It’s actually a nice facility, and does the team some credit to have it available at their control – unlike Soldier Field, where the Chicago Park District always made it clear the Chicago Bears were the primary tenant and others would have to play second-fiddle.

But it has created a situation where some people living in the northern reaches of the Chicago area want to believe that a team playing its games at 71^st Street and Harlem Avenue is too distant.

Is 20 years of existence strong enough for Fire?

WHO WANTS TO have to travel south, particularly that far south, to see a soccer match?

Although I’d point out (as someone native to the South Side and surrounding suburbs) that the region stretches as far south as 236^th Street before you reach the southernmost tip of Cook County.

But there’s speculation that a United Soccer League franchise based on the north side, particularly if on the fringe of a trendy, upscale neighborhood, could try to market itself as an alternative. Even though the United Soccer League technically is a minor league that ranks below Major League Soccer on the sporting scene.

Chgo soccer hasn't been same since Sting ceased to exist

Some could argue we have the same scene with baseball, where the Chicago White Sox have been ever since their creation in 1900 a team that marketed itself as the face of the South Side, and with the Cubs upon their moving to what is now Wrigley Field back in 1916 as the North Side team.

BUT LIKE I said, it was a conscious decision of Charles Comiskey that he had the Sout’ Side team. The Fire would become the South Side team of default, with the hoity-toity types of the North lakefront deciding to watch soccer matches in their own neighborhoods – that is, if they ever get such an urge.

Personally, I played a little soccer in high school (no, I wasn’t any good at it), and my own memories also included rooting for the Chicago Sting of old – that now-defunct team that actually won North American Soccer League championships in 1981 and 1984. To me, I’d like to have the Sting back, rather than any of these new teams.

White Sox fans still think "Ugh!"

But that’s not about to happen. We’ll have to see what becomes of this new team talk – particularly if Amazon.com winds up choosing some other city and the motivation for building a new stadium up north withers away.

There would be one interesting bit – since a North Side team would technically be a minor league club, and it would create the state where players would “move up” to the Chicago Fire down south. Similar to when Ron Santo was traded from the Cubs to the White Sox in 1974 and was greeted with fan banners reading, “Ron Santo, Welcome to the Major Leagues.”

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EXTRA: We're 180!!!!!

Happy Birthday, Chicago!

For an ol' gal of 180, you're holding up quite well, no matter what incredibly derogatory comments the current U.S. president continues to make about you. Probably because he's jealous that he doesn't have local ties to our city like the previous president did (and no, that ugly tower he erected on the shores of our namesake river doesn't count as a local tie).

YES, IT IS the 180th anniversary of the date upon which Chicago was officially incorporated as a city. It is a place that could easily have been wiped off the map following its Great Fire at age 34. Instead, it rebuilt itself into a place that truly qualifies as one of the intriguing cities on Planet Earth.

And we can now start the countdown, 20 years and counting, 'til we can have Bicentennial celebrations for the Second City (which may actually have sunk to 4th by the time that date comes about).

Not that it matters much; because many of us will always enjoy the wonders that exist at the southwest corner of the shores of Lake Michigan.

And now, we'll enjoy the musings of gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt playing our city's song.

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Soccer returns to Soldier Field?

It would be intriguing if the Chicago Fire could take over Soldier Field for a few days next summer.

Soldier Field has had varied uses throughout its existence

And no, I don’t mean I want to burn the stadium down. It may look hideous and freakish from the outside. But it still is a 60,000-plus arena that has housed many sporting and other historic events during its nearly century of existence.

I’M REFERRING TO the Chicago Fire professional soccer team that plays in Major League Soccer. That league has an all-star game every year, and Crain’s Chicago Business reported Monday how officials are negotiating with Chicago for use of the stadium. City officials have put a hold on Daley Plaza and Millennium Park’s Wrigley Square and Harris rooftop for the end of July – which is when the all-star game is scheduled for.

Even though the Fire themselves play in a stadium they had built for themselves about a decade ago out in suburban Bridgeview. For the all-star game (which likely would pit U.S. stars against a foreign team that would view the event as a chance for a U.S. vacation trip for its players), they want the vastness of an outdoor stadium with the massive capacity of a Soldier Field.

Considering that Bridgeview’s Toyota Park barely seats over 20,000 people, it’s quite a difference.

It was always part of the reason why I thought it a mistake that the Chicago Fire left the city for a suburban location back in 2006. I know the argument the team makes – that their crowds fit perfectly in their new stadium, but would get lost in the vastness of a Soldier Field.

YET A PART of me has always thought that the team ought to be striving for the level of success that they could pack ‘em in at a Soldier Field – rather than settling for the smallness of Toyota Park; which I’ll admit is a nice little stadium that I’m sure many second-rate teams would love to have as a home facility.

Soldier Field, when configured for 'futbol'

Perhaps having an all-star game at Soldier Field could be a first step toward moving at least a part of the Chicago Fire schedule back to the near South stadium, thereby creating the potential for Fire officials to start thinking of ways to attract the kind of crowds that would fill Soldier Field to an intimidating presence.

That will be when soccer can truly claim to have “arrived” in this country – when they can draw the kinds of crowds that the New York Cosmos of the old North American Soccer League used to draw (77.691 for a match on Aug. 15, 1977 against the now-defunct Fort Lauderdale Strikers) on occasion.

Or perhaps something like the 61,308 that the Fire themselves drew to Soldier Field for a July 23, 2011 match against Manchester United – an English team!

NOT THAT THE idea of soccer (real football, as opposed to that phony kind the Chicago Bears play ever so badly these days on the Soldier Field turf) ought to be considered alien.

'94 World Cup ceremonies at a jam-packed Soldier Field

I still recall when the World Cup international soccer tourney was played for 1994 with the United States as its host – and how Soldier Field was used as the site for the opening ceremonies and for several first-round games.

Germany and Spain fans, in particular, got to see their teams each win a match, then play each other to a 1-1 tie.

There also was the Copa America tourney, which in the past was for a championship of the South American continent but this year was expanded to include North American national teams.

HOSTED THIS YEAR by the United States, some of the matches were played at Soldier Field, with both Chile and Argentina both managing early round wins on the path to the championship game (fans in East Rutherford, N.J., got to see the championship game between the two, with Chile winning ultimately on penalty kicks).

A nice-enough stadium, but it ain't Soldier Field by any means

Heck, there even was a U.S. matchup against Costa Rica at Soldier Field, with a 4-0 victory for the Stars & Stripes on Soldier Field turf.

If you want to be honest, hosting a Major League Soccer all-star game would be a lesser event than those. Yet it still would be nice to see something involving “the beautiful game” taking place within the Soldier Field bowl.

At the very least, it would be a relief for Chicago sports fans who have come to associate Soldier Field with the weekly dose of agony every autumn as we watch “da Bears” lose, yet again!

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Is it really history? Or just the past’s trivial garbage cluttering our present?

As a person who spent his college years studying history, I am familiar with the arguments made about what exactly is appropriate for academic study.

'Wisconsin Steel' kept many Chicagoans employed

Did we focus way too much of the past study on the antics of now-dead white guys? Did we miss out on the stories of regular people of the past – particularly those of a more-intense melanin content level in their skin complexions?

My grandfather cleaned up well after week in steel mill

OR ARE THOSE people who make such an argument going so far to try to legitimize their own stories that they’re bringing up trivial points – rather than letting us know what was truly significant in our past.

Now I don’t doubt that some people use historic study not so much to comprehend who we as a society were, but to try to legitimize what they want to believe – and downplay people whom they’d prefer not to have to acknowledge at all.

My own thoughts about history are to say that none of my elementary or high school history courses taught me a thing of significance. And the sad part is that many allegedly-educated people don’t take much in the way of history courses beyond that academic level.

History? Or not?

All of this came to my mind this weekend because of my touristy-type behavior. I spent part of Saturday wandering about Chicago with camera in hand, collecting stock photos I can use to illustrate my writings here about various aspects of the Second City.

 

I EVEN MADE a stop at a museum – the Chicago History Museum up in Lincoln Park.

I have been there many times before, and have my memories of grade school field trips burned into my brain. Those dioramas of old Chicago scenes and the various artifacts that survived the Chicago Fire of 1871 – I will never forget the sight of those charred cookies found in the rubble that somehow were preserved.

But I couldn’t help but notice many new exhibits and artifacts on display that I suspect would never have made the cut at the museum of the past.

I never wrote on a typewriter that nice!

 

My own favorite was the sight of letters from the old Wisconsin Steel Works sign on the factory that used to exist at 106^th Street and Torrence Avenue in the South Deering neighborhood.

A PLANT I heard about many times growing up because it is where my maternal grandfather, Michael Vargas, got a job upon coming to this country from Mexico as a young man and wound up working there until he hit retirement age.

Somehow, I doubt the museum of old would have been too obsessed telling me about Fort Dearborn and the “massacre” to have spent much time telling me about the Southeast Side steel mills that were a significant part of my family’s lives (both of my grandfathers worked in them) and many other Chicagoans.

And as for that exhibit about the ’68 Democratic Convention and the protesters – hippie posters next to a light-blue police helmet? It would have been ignored in the past, unless someone felt compelled to try to write history to erase the phrase “police riot” from its description.

Would modern-day reporter-types 'get it'

Personally, I was intrigued by the exhibit the museum now has about ordinary objects and how even they tell stories about who we once were.

WHY ELSE WOULD I have had the chance to see a telephone booth (no sign of Clark Kent approaching needing to change his clothes) or a typewriter put prominently on display?

Although I can already hear the rants and rages of the alleged historic purists saying there’s nothing important about a phone booth – although I’ll admit to still finding myself engaging in an old reporter-type habit of looking for a public payphone anywhere I go.

Just in case news breaks out and I have to call my editor – while first calling the receptionist “sweetheart” – to report the details.

 

I also have to wonder what they thought of the sight of the exhibit about food and "Chicago-style" hot dogs -- allowing people to turn a giant wiener into their own personal favorite concoction.

Let's really upset the history 'purists'

BEING IN SUCH a touristy mood perhaps made it all the more appropriate that I also included a walk to, and through, Millennium Park – which I have to confess that until Saturday, I had never actually visited.

I got to see those pictures of people who periodically spit fountains of water, while also checking out the new ice rink that appears too clean and pristine for Chicago, lacking the grit and makeshift nature of the old ice rink that occupied the Block 37 space by the Daley Center all those years.

Then, I did the ultimate geek tourist move – I took a photograph of myself off the reflection of the Cloud Gate sculpture. More commonly referred to as “the Bean.” At this rate, it will be soon that I’ll be espousing the merits of the Chicago Cubbies like all the other touristy-types who don’t have the nerve to set foot on the Sout’ Side.

 

Historic artifact? Or moment of silliness

I was far from alone in having such a picture taken. People from all parts of the world who happened to be in Chicago on Saturday were doing the same.

WHICH MAKES ME wonder. Will that photographic image itself become a historical artifact that will show future generations what people would do upon visiting Chicago?

Or is it just trivial evidence that I had nothing better to do Saturday afternoon?

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EXTRA: 85 years since 'massacre,' yet I just want to watch Marilyn Monroe

It has been 85 years since the violent outburst in a garage at 2121 N. Clark St. that we now think of as the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. Yet all I can think of on this Friday is Marilyn Monroe.

Yes, the curvaceous beauty to whom all Hollywood glamour for all time invariably gets compared.

A PART OF me wants to pull out my copy of “Some Like It Hot” and pop it in the DVD player.

Let’s not forget that the film starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon was set largely on board a passenger train and in Miami Beach. But it started in Chicago with their two musician characters inadvertently witnessing the grisly killings.

Hence, they have to get out of town before they’re killed off. So naturally, they dress up as women, get hired by an all-girl band (Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators) and wind up encountering Sugar (played by Monroe).

Yes, it’s total nonsense. Just the other day I stumbled across a Monroe documentary that said much of the humor of the film was in the preposterous notion that Monroe’s character would not be immediately able to tell that “Josephine” and “Daphne” were really men.

BUT IT DOES put a humorous touch to that ugly day. It certainly comes across as more entertaining than the 1967 film “The St. Valentine’s Day” massacre, which was a slightly-fictionalized take on what supposedly happened.

But one that got bogged down in so much factual matter that it becomes dreary at times. It gives evidence to the old cliché, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

That film certainly did.

When it comes to the latter film, what I most note is that it gave us Jason Robards as Capone – some nine years prior to giving us the award-winning performance as the Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee in “All the President’s Men.”

HE WENT FROM playing a man who later got busted by the Internal Revenue Service to being the man who helped take down a political hack of a president.

Interesting material. Although I’d still rather watch Monroe – who showed us her humor as well as her curves.

The real thing!

Even if it’s not, strictly speaking, a historic moment film. Although if there is a moment in Chicago history that I’d like to see someone try to make a film out of, it is the Chicago fire of October 1871.

I realize that 1937’s “In Old Chicago” starring Don Ameche already gave us one take. Yet I wonder what could be done now, with the additional knowledge we now have that acquits the reputation of the O’Leary family and with the visual technology that could make the burning down of nearly an entire city a true spectacle to watch.

COME TO THINK of it, I think I’d still rather see the interaction of Curtis and Lemmon in “Some Like It Hot.” It has its humorous moments.

And it also gave us what might well be the funniest ending line of a film (by comedian Joe E. Brown) ever when Lemmon’s “Daphne” character finally whips off his wig and reveals he’s a man.

“Well, nobody’s perfect!”

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Our cinematic image preservation also gives Illinois some economic benefits

I’ll be the first to admit that I get a kick out of film and television productions where I can recognize Chicago in the background – even if it’s a Chicago of the past.

There’s even an otherwise-forgettable Bruce Willis film “Red” from a few years ago that I only remember because its story chose to have its tale of international intrigue wind up in the Second City – of all places.

POLITICAL CORRUPTION AND murder on a world-wide scale being resolved here. As if we didn’t have enough local political hacks and plots to contend with.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Because Gov. Pat Quinn on Tuesday tried to score himself some political points by boasting of the number of entertainment projects that are made in Chicago.

He cited $358 million being spent during 2013 – creating the equivalent of 4,200 full-time jobs. Which is nearly double the $184 million that was spent during 2012 – which previously had been considered a record-setting trend.

Are we in Chicago just that entertaining? Or gritty looking? Or are we generic enough that we can pass for the set of just about any place on Planet Earth?

I’M NOT GOING to get into the economics of it so much. All I know is that I find it amusing when I suddenly see a location on the film screen (yes, I still prefer the idea of seeing a film in a theater, rather than putting money into a red box to get a copy) that I routinely pass through.

Sometimes, even some fairly obscure spots that I’m amazed anyone else has ever heard of.

Heck, I know how residents of the Bush, a little subsection of the South Chicago neighborhood, still go on about how a little storefront once passed for the "Curl Up and Dye," a neighborhood beauty salon where actor Carrie Fisher could be seen reading technical manuals about flame-throwers and antipersonnel mines in her on-going plot to kill John Belushi's "Jake Blues" character in "The Blues Brothers."

 

For his part, Quinn went Tuesday to the set of “Chicago Fire,” a new television drama about firefighters in our fair city – which had better not dare think it could shoot anywhere else. Although anyone who ever saw the Blues Brothers sequel – “Blues Brothers 2000,” knows that the only thing worse than actor John Goodman trying to be a Belushi-like character was the sight of Toronto trying to think it could resemble Chicago.

OF COURSE, MUCH of the reason why so many productions are willing to come to Chicago is because the local government likes the idea of being used as a background for so many stories.

It’s quite a change from the days of “M Squad,” a 1950’s-era police cop show where actor Lee Marvin’s “Frank Ballinger” character gave us an image of a tough cop so over the top that one could argue that Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” character was a wimp, by comparison.

An image that helped influence then-Mayor Richard J. Daley into thinking that “Hollywood” attention just wasn’t worth the “bad” press!

Watching those “M Squad” episodes now, one realizes how limited the Chicago settings were – because film crews were usually trying to elude the authorities who would have cited them for the lack of a permit (that the city never would have issued).

IT’S NOT LIKE the later year films such as “The Blues Brothers,” which might be a simple-minded film with a sketchy story line – but which also used so many gritty Chicago scenes that the film truly is a tribute to a Chicago that isn’t truly with us anymore.

Similar to the old “Call Northside 777” film starring James Stewart as a Chicago Times reporter. Those scenes of Stewart wandering about the Back of the Yards back when it was a Polish enclave truly are something – along with other scenes depicting downtown sites that we have to think twice about what is there now.

In short, films that make the “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” moments at Wrigley Field or the Art Institute look just a bit simple, and lame, by comparison.

Although one of my favorite Chicago-based films to watch may well be “Medium Cool,” a late 1960s film that definitely is dated in its sensibilities and its look.

BUT HOW MANY other films could give us real-life moments of the now-infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention (it helped create an image that resulted in us getting Richard Nixon as president) and the protests that spouted out as a result of its presence in Chicago?

And how many other films could give us a candid moment with one of its own camera crews getting caught in the teargas that police used on said protesters?

Although the beauty of Grant Park throughout the years also manages to come through, despite the chaos that took place within it.

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It feels great to be publishing again

There is bound to be somebody out there who will take offense and accuse me of exaggerating the significance of my predicament, but I can almost identify with the mood of those Chicagoans who were alive in the final days of October 1871.

It was earlier in that month that a fire allegedly started in a barn managed to grow out of control and devastate much of the city, and the people of Chicago in those days would have been justified had they just thrown in the towel and moved elsewhere, leaving the remains of a frontier town to become a ghost on the shores of Lake Michigan.

INSTEAD, THEY REBUILT. In the process, they created one of the great cities of the world. I’m not sure my attempts to rebuild the Chicago Argus (and its sister weblog, The South Chicagoan) will achieve the same level. But I feel the same spirit in wanting to resurrect the sites that were attempting to provide intelligent commentary and analysis of the happenings of Chicago (and of the world, as perceived from Chicago).

Insofar as what went wrong, I must admit it has taken me several days to figure out, and even now I only have a partial understanding of what caused the Chicago Argus and South Chicagoan to be shuttered for fivedays – it was only a few minutes ago that I regained control of the sites.

Basically, I wrote a commentary late Wednesday about Starbucks’ franchises in the Chicago area. Then, I went to bed.

When I woke up Thursday, I discovered that the passwords that allow me access to the editorial content were no longer working (which is why I did not provide an update indicating that the number of Starbucks’ stores in the Chicago area being closed was significantly increased in the hours after I published my say on the matter). It also is why I did not trash Gov. Rod Blagojevich for making a mockery of law enforcement problems with his ridiculous talk of National Guard tactics being used in Chicago.

THE EXPLANATION I received eventually was that Google shut down my account when it detected someone trying to use the e-mail account connected to the sites to send out the enemy of every Internet user – spam.

Because of Google security measures, I was unable to resurrect my ability to access either weblog.

Now as best as I can tell, none of the commentaries published during the past seven months have been tampered with. The archives of both sites appear to be un-compromised.

Of course, I have not re-read every single word I have written at these two sites, so there’s always the possibility that some clown decided to try to rewrite me, for kicks or to satisfy some sort of ideologically-inspired grudge.

THAT’S WHAT GETS me about this whole affair. I’m not sure what to think of the motivations of the people who started a chain reaction that resulted in the sites sitting idle for a few days.

Is this the equivalent of some computer geek who thinks he’s showing off his technological skills by messing with someone else’s site (like the time the New York Times had their website tampered with and turned into a promotion for soft-core pornography), or is this someone who disagrees with me (I know they exist, they are good at sending me excessively lengthy e-mails telling me I am full of caca for what I write).

Am I really dealing with the equivalent of white supremacist groups who like to print up their fliers, insert them into copies of a newspaper that have not yet been sold, then have the gall to complain their views are being censored because they can’t force their view on someone else.

All I can say is that I have started again, and I intend to resume the previous publishing schedule. It feels good to know that commentaries and news analysis will resume early tomorrow, and will continue to be published daily through Friday, with a feature-y piece for the weekend.

I LIKELY WILL never know the exact motivations of the people who caused the site to die for a few days. If it is merely a computer geek, then this is just sad. If it is somebody’s idea of a political statement, then it is pathetic.

Regardless, I have never been the type of person who lets sad or pathetic individuals get the best of my work. I only hope whoever did this doesn’t have delusions of having a Hollywood film made about their activities.

Even though the City Council later absolved her of any responsibility, Mrs. O’Leary and her cow wound up being the focus of that fictionalized version of the Great Chicago Fire from 1937 known as “In Old Chicago.”

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