EXTRA: Happy 182nd!

Once again, Chicago celebrates the anniversary of its incorporation.

It literally has been 182 years since the date that officials officially declared Chicago to be a full-fledged city. One that the state's big-wigs in Southern Illinois (the kind of people who thought Cairo would be a significant city at 20,000 people, instead of shrinking to its current level of barely 2,000) never thought would amount to much. After all, it's so far from the Mississippi River and from what was supposed to be the dominant regional city -- St. Louis.

BUT WE GREW, oh so much. Recovered from the Great Fire of 1871 to the point there was once a time when some people thought Chicago would become the Number One city in the nation, sprouting out even larger than New York.

But that never happened, and in fact we now face a situation where we'll probably shrink to even smaller than Houston some time in the next decade. By the time we reach our city Bicentennial, the Second City will be Number Four in size.

But not in spirit. For I don't care what anyone else says; a part of me will always regard Chicago as the greatest place to live on Planet Earth. And as for anybody who'd leave Chicago for petty partisan political reasons? Well, they deserve to live in a place like Indianapolis (and I don't mean the boulevard)!

So here's some video snippets about our wonderful city; from the Burnham Plan that set our city's image to the river/great lake combination that are the reason our city is where it is, down to a National Geographic take on our city. And even a bit of phony Chicago history that far too many people take as serious scholarship. Enjoy!

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Annexation into suburbs historically sound, but more likely to p-o people

Mayoral hopeful Garry McCarthy may have history on his side when he talks about Chicago annexing the suburban communities directly adjacent into the city limits, but I can’t envision an idea that would cause more contempt to be felt all the way around.

Once regarded as a suburb with Chicago far off in distance

There was, once a time when the street now known as Pershing Road was the southernmost boundary of Chicago, with Hyde Park Township stretching south to 138^th Street. It was regarded as a place to escape urban congestion and noise, but it became a full-fledged part of Chicago in 1889 and added the bulk of what we now think of as the South Side.

SO IN THAT sense, McCarthy saying that places like Oak Lawn, Oak Park or Norridge ought to be taken into the city of Chicago proper isn’t outrageous. Although I don’t doubt one bit that the people currently living there will regard it as such.

McCarthy claims this is an easy way for the city to see a population increase, while also adding to the tax base. While officials in these suburban communities are quick to claim they have solid bases of life and aren’t the least bit interested in becoming a part of the city’s ongoing problems.

Personally, I happen to think there are many suburban communities that would benefit from being a part of a larger entity – because the local services they are able to offer on their own are usually miniscule.

I really question if there are 130 distinct municipal identities within Cook County – which is the number of incorporated villages, towns and cities within the county. With Chicago being merely one of them.

THE FACT IS that most of the suburbs’ true identity lies in their proximity to Chicago. Whether their officials want to admit it or not, they’re a part of the area.

There is a sense in which a place like Dolton might as well just be another neighborhood within Chicago; something along the lines of Hegewisch.

I also find it odd that officials in Oak Lawn and Norridge, in particular, are speaking out against McCarthy’s concept. In the case of Norridge, it is an incorporated community surrounded on all sides by Chicago. Once one summer, I lived on the Northwest Side where literally all I had to do was cross the street and I’d be in Norridge.

McCARTHY: Looking to boost city population

Although I suspect anybody driving through the area would have no clue they had departed, then re-entered, the city limits during the few minutes they passed through.

WHILE IN THE case of Oak Lawn, the claim I often hear from people who live there is that their community is different because it’s so close to Chicago. One can actually enjoy an urban lifestyle, unlike the sense some suburbs offer of being so isolated from the rest of the world.

It’s like they want Chicago benefits without being a part of Chicago. Which to my mindset is mere nonsense!

There is one thing I couldn’t help but notice about McCarthy’s plan, which may be the aspect that kills off any chance of it being taken seriously. The communities he rattled off by name – the ones that would boost the city population by about 160,000 people – are ones with predominantly white populations.

It’s as though by taking in those towns, he can bolster the Anglo part of Chicago’s population. Is his real sentiment one that Chicago has too many non-white people living here?

HECK, I GREW up in suburban Calumet City, whose northern boundary bumps up against Chicago’s Far South Side. Yet Calumet City has changed, developing throughout the years a sizable African-American population (about 72 percent, according to the Census Bureau). I don't hear anyone talking of taking in the suburb's roughly 37,000 residents.

Is McCarthy trying to cherry-pick the kind of people he’d want in an expanded Chicago? If he really were serious, he’d talk about annexing all of Cook County – creating a megapolis of some 5 million people. It would bolster the city tax base and would actually fit into the mindset of many downstate Illinois types who tend to think the whole of northeastern Illinois is all Chicago.

Could this someday become a neighborhood, rather than a village, sign?

Do that, and we’d not only crush Houston’s dreams that they’ll someday be bigger than us, while regaining our spot as the “Second City” by topping Los Angeles’ mere 4.03 million.

Instead, we’re destined to be the 2.7 million portion of metro Chicago, which when you add in all the inner and outer suburbs totals out at over 9 million individuals – none of whom want to give up their community name for the sake of progress.

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Harvey vs Maria? Natural disaster spread thruout southwest, Caribbean

One reason I’ve heard given as to why everybody is supposed to be rooting for the Houston Astros to win the World Series this week is because of the devastation caused this summer by Hurricane Harvey.

The Clemente Award for charitable works

After all, the people of Houston need a moral victory of sorts to boost their spirits following the devastation spread across the Texas city.

NOT THAT I’M badmouthing Houston in any way. I’m sure there might be a few people who would think in such terms – as though seeing the Astros finally win a World Series for the first time in their 55^th year of existence might make up for any losses they suffered due to the storm’s devastation.

But I can’t help but think that such logic trivializes what happened with Harvey (the hurricane, not the one-time All Star Harvey Kuenn). As though Houston is now fully recovered just because they got a World Series victory – and will be able to stage a massive parade through the city as a result.

All of this may well be the reason why the most intriguing moment of the World Series activity that took place last week and this has to do with Anthony Rizzo of the Chicago Cubs receiving the Clemente Award from Major League Baseball.

The award named for the late Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente is presented every year during the World Series to the ballplayer who engages in charitable work aside from his ballplaying activities.

Clemente made ultimate contribution

IN RIZZO’S CASE, he operates a foundation meant to support groups that address the issue of children who suffer from cancer. Last year, his group helped provide some $4 million to fund the Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.

A nice cause. But what does any of that have to do with the World Series or Houston?

It’s that Rizzo received a $25,000 prize for receiving the Clemente Award, and Rizzo immediately donated that money to relief efforts meant to help the people of Puerto Rico – who suffered devastation also this summer from Hurricane Maria.

Which has caused so much devastation and has such a messed-up relief effort that there are large swaths of the island commonwealth remaining without electricity or running water – even though the hurricane struck a couple of months ago.

Clemente replacement a star in own right

I’M NOT SAYING I expect Puerto Rico to be back up and running at full efficiency this quickly. No more than it shouldn’t be surprising there are still signs of Harvey damage in Houston.

But for all the people who try to diminish the significance of what is occurring in Puerto Rico these days for their own cheap political advantage (I’m looking directly at President Donald J. Trump when I make this statement), it’s nice to see someone bring up the relief effort at a time when certain elements would rather focus attention on Houston.

Particularly in a way that really doesn’t do a thing to benefit that city or its people. Like the cliché goes, talk is cheap. These people don’t want to kick in with cash that could help the efforts to rebuild the damage caused by so many storms that struck this summer – Mother Nature really was in a foul mood during 2017!

And yes, Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth – giving our federal government just as much responsibility for overseeing a rebuild there as it has for any rebuild done on the U.S. mainland.

Would you really rather think of Yuli and Yu ...

THE FACT THAT Rizzo would bring up the Puerto Rico relief effort as part of an official World Series-related activity is a plus – particularly since it reminds us all of Clemente – the ballplayer who in his final game of 1972 got his 3,000^th base hit. Only to be killed in a crash months later when he tried to try an overloaded airplane with supplies as part of the relief of an earthquake that struck Nicaragua.

An event that I’m sure would be long-forgotten amongst many of us if it hadn’t have cost the Pirates a star ballplayer – got to get our “priorities” right. Is Puerto Rico worth less to many of us because San Juan (the capital) hasn’t been deemed worthy of a U.S. major league ball club?

... when remembering the 2017 World Series?

Thinking of Rizzo is certainly more interesting than much of the World Series activity – unless you’re the type who wants to use the taint of controversy over Yuli Gurriel’s “slant-eyed” mocking gesture to pitcher Yu Darvish to somehow downplay slurs expressed in this country.

I have heard some say that since Gurriel is Cuban and Darvish is from Japan, we should realize that such attitudes are universal, and that the five-game suspension Gurriel will get next season is unfair. Just like they probably think it unfair that Rizzo’s gesture drew attention away from Houston hurricane devastation and toward Puerto Rico.

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Pols seeing Houston as a blessing – Harvey detracts from their problems

President Donald J. Trump is scheduled to be in Houston on Tuesday, getting a first-hand glance at the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey and the severe floods it brought to parts of Texas.
 

Sun-Times more interested in '19 mayor's race

I suspect that if he could any reason to justify his presence, Gov. Bruce Rauner would eagerly catch a flight for the Lone Star State so that he could express his concerns, while also detracting attention from the many messes that exist in Illinois.

AT LEAST THAT’S how I interpreted the verbose statement that Rauner issued on Monday expressing his concern for the people whose lives have been disrupted by the severe flooding that will take years to recover from – and which some may never do so.

Rauner made a point of saying he’s praying for those who suffered from Hurricane Harvey and how the Illinois Emergency Management Agency is prepared to assist other entities in providing relief to Texans.

Of course, I’ve read news reports indicating that relief could come from some 37 different states, and may well wind up including the entirety of the nation.

So for what Rauner needed 158 words to say was a message I could have summarized in three – “We care too.” Or perhaps “Don’t forget me.”

Heart of the disaster

IT’S ALMOST AS though if there was a political god, he would have caused this disaster so as to give political people a chance to have a distraction from the issues that otherwise would make them look foolish.

For Rauner, I’m sure he’d rather talk about what Illinois could do to help Texans in their time of need, rather than the two issues that wound up dominating his share of the news cycle on Monday – signing into law the Trust Act and also the creation of an automatic voter registration program.

Trump-ite perspective?

Both of which are issues that will gain Rauner some praise from urban interests, but will be perceived by the rural Illinois voters whom Rauner thus far has been banking his re-election chances on as him selling them out.

Too many of them are interested in having a governor who will deliberately harm urban and Chicago interests. Particularly since many of them are going to want to believe that making it easier to be registered to vote is bad because you don’t want too many urban voters to be able to vote.

IN SHORT, RAUNER is going to have to cope with many political headaches and there will be speculation over to what degree Rauner’s followers will want to dump on him for what he did on Monday.

Easier for the governor to talk about how he gave Illinois Emergency Management Agency Director James Joseph the order to personally contact Texas officials and let them know we in Illinois care.

Much more pleasant than having to take abuse over immigration policy and wonder if the governor is “selling out” to foreigners – which is the way that conservative ideologues will want to perceive the issue.

How quickly will feds react to Harvey?

It may also be a similar situation for Trump – who has some people believing the reason he issued his pardon for former Maricopa Ariz. Sheriff Joe Arpaio late Friday was because that was when Hurricane Harvey was headed ashore, doing its devastation to Corpus Cristi, Texas, before moving on to Houston.

WHO, IN TRUMP’S mindset, would possibly care about Arpaio when there was a vicious hurricane striking?

Of course, the fact that Trump could focus attention on Arpaio at a time of the first significant natural disaster of his presidency has many people wondering how depraved he could be to do something so repulsive to many at a time when people were about to suffer.

Which is why Trump feels the need to be in Texas on Tuesday. He’s going to want to appear to be presidential. Or as presidential as he is capable of being – which might not be very much.

“The impacts of this disaster will be long-lasting. (We’re) committed to assisting Texas and other states in the Gulf region through the response and recovery process.” A canned quote from Rauner, but one where Trump is very likely to say the same thing later Tuesday.

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No direct route from Chicago to Havana, unless you count the one in Ill.

One of the reasons people brag on Chicago is that our major airport (O’Hare International) seems to have direct connections to just about anywhere in the world one could want to travel to.

 

There won't be any direct flights to Marti Airport in the near future

The only reason for having to make connections with flights in other cities is if one chooses to do so in an effort to save some money.

SO WHAT SHOULD we make of the fact that the federal Transportation Department, in its review of proposals for direct flights from the United States to Havana, Cuba, didn’t think any routes connecting O’Hare to Jose Marti International Airport were worthy of consideration.

Federal officials considered more than 60 proposed routes, but only gave their tentative approval to 20 of them. None of which involved a connection from Chicago to Cuba.

Both United and American airlines had desired permission to have such direct flights between the two cities.

But as things now stand, people wishing to fly American will have to go to the airports in Miami or Charlotte, N.C., and transfer there to a flight to Havana.

USING UNITED AIRLINES will entail a trip to Newark International Airport on the fringes of New York or, in what could be considered an insult to the Second City, a flight to Houston – where the transfer to a Cuba-bound flight would be made.

Considering that Houston boosters already are obnoxiously claiming their city will surpass Chicago in population to become the nation’s third largest within another decade, could it be that someone is already anxious to acknowledge the Texas city as somehow superior.

Even though when one considers the entirety of the metro areas, Houston and its suburbs will still remain smaller than Chicago metro for a long, time time.

It does seem odd that O’Hare International wouldn’t get a direct flight – considering that it used to be capable of boasting to be the world’s busiest airport and is still one of the most significant airports in the United States.

BUT APPARENTLY OUR Cuban ethnic population in Chicago (about 23,000 of the city’s 2.7 million residents) isn’t sufficient enough. Federal officials were interested in putting the direct to Havana routes in cities that have the large numbers of Cuban exiles and their families.

Maybe they think those are the only people who would want to travel to Havana, now that our own government is making a serious effort to try to restore relations between our two nations.

So much for the idea of business interests that also would want to have access to the Caribbean island nation and would think that the future economic development would create opportunities that would be beneficial for both nations.

Or maybe it just means that O’Hare’s days as being a leading airport for the United States are in the past. Even though there are many people whose trips to various places across the country mean catching a connecting flight at O’Hare.

COULD IT BE that the only “Havana” in Chicago’s future is the one located in Illinois? As in the Mason County city of some 3,200 people where Peoria is the largest nearby city of size – and whose own access involves a series of Interstates and county roads that would discourage just about anyone from wanting to actually visit the place.

Or perhaps we should consider focusing on the town of Cuba, Ill., in rural Fulton County. Or perhaps a trip to Cuba Township, the suburban place located near Barrington.

They seem to be the only such places in our future.

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How times change, while some try to keep things the same no matter what

Thinking back to my own years in high school just over three decades ago, I can’t help but wonder how different the reaction would have been had anybody brought up the idea of transgender students.

District engaged in confusion over transgender issue

I suspect that back then, the knuckleheads of the class would have thought they were doing all of us some sort of service by taking such a student and sticking his/her head in a toilet. If not just administering a beating.

THE SAD THING is that the school’s administration likely would have taken their side, and figured that the transgendered student already going through enough confusion in life brought all the abuse upon themselves!

So learning about the situation in Township High School District 211 in suburban Palatine makes me wonder just how far have we as a society progressed?

For it seems there is a transgender student who wants to be able to use the locker room facilities of the gender that the student identifies with – rather than the one the student was actually born to.

I could envision officials of the past wanting to think that student a trouble-maker and trying to find an excuse to suspect the student. It seems as though this high school wanted to try to cooperate.

ALTHOUGH THEIR LEVEL of cooperation comes in so low that it seems to be insufficient. Making it highly likely that federal authorities will wind up having to resolve this situation.

For that student already had filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s civil rights office, seeking the right to use the locker rooms at the high school. The school had suggested the student could use that locker room, but only if that student changed clothes and showered in private.

Locker rooms are now more than just a smelly place to change

The Chicago Tribune reported Monday that federal officials notified the school district their solution is inadequate. Supposedly, a written, more-detailed explanation will be forthcoming.

Although the district said in its own statement that the federal government hinted that their proposed solution is “inadequate and discriminatory.”

PERSONALLY, I’D BE inclined to say it’s just convoluted – because the idea of banishing this particular student to use of the locker room in private probably would do nothing more than reinforce the sentiment of some who want to think this particular person is some sort of freak who needs to be kept in isolation.

It even brings to mind the old “separate, but equal” status that used to be used to justify separate restroom facilities for non-white people.

I’ll be the first to admit this is an issue that confuses many people. It’s not one that I particularly identify with – since I have never had any real confusion about my own gender or any desire to be opposite of what I was born with.

But my own personal sentiment of thinking that people have a right to mind their own business – and not have other people mind it for them – makes me think we ought to sympathize with such people.

ALTHOUGH THIS ISSUE gets confused by the fact that most of the law concerning the rights of transgender people is geared toward adults. Someday, this person will have the law on their side.

Until then, they’re going to be stuck with suffering even more than the typical teenager does. Which is a real shame.

A ;major league' fossil?

Particularly since there are those who will want to interfere and “turn back the clock” so to speak. Take the attitude of former Houston Astros ballplayer Lance Berkman, who is opposed to an equal rights ordinance that Houston is contemplating, calling it a “bathroom ordinance” that would, “allow troubled men to enter public bathrooms, showers and locker rooms.”

Maybe he would think the Palatine high school district is justified, perhaps not even tough enough. Although he strikes me as someone who thinks he’s still in high school – and that the way of thinking from some two decades ago still applies.

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Are we headed for brawl with Houston?

The Reuters newswire service felt compelled Monday to report a story that has been hinted at by many entities for years – Houston will someday have more people living there than Chicago.

Chicago will always have edge over Houston

The one-time Second City (only to New York) will someday have to settle for Number Four – and most likely sometime during our lifetimes.

REUTERS REPORTED THAT by the year 2025, Chicago’s population (currently about 2.7 million) will be 2.5 million. Whereas Houston (which in 2010 had 2.1 million people) will be about 2.54 million people.

It will go New York City, Los Angeles, Houston THEN Chicago. Which on a certain level makes me want to wretch.

Not that it really makes any difference. I wouldn’t want to live in any Texas city, and certainly wouldn’t think of Houston as being superior to Chicago on any level. Just as I don’t really think of Los Angeles as superior to Chicago just because back when I was in college it managed to surpass Chicago in population.

Although I can already hear the Texas-type boasts (that always come across as insecurity at its worst) about how wonderful this makes Houston – except for those people from Dallas, who will probably be more appalled by this news than anyone from Chicago will be.

OF COURSE, THERE is a factor in all of this growth that explains how a southwestern city could possibly be larger than Chicago, or any Midwestern U.S. city.

Space!

A bi-state region with that big huge lake ...

Houston has space surrounding it. Room for it to grow that can be incorporated into the city proper. Evidence that it is located in a region that could accurately be described as the middle of nowhere (just like Las Vegas, Nev.).

Whereas Chicago has been hemmed in on all sides by Lake Michigan to the east (an asset that I’m sure Houston would kill to have) and suburban communities in all directions.

THERE’S NO SPACE for Chicago proper to grow. There is room on the outskirts for the suburban area to continue to grow. In fact, metropolitan Chicago is getting larger even though the city proper is shrinking.

... will always be superior to city in the desert

The Census Bureau indicates that back in 2010, Houston and its suburbs have some 5.95 million people. By comparison to Chicago, which the Census Bureau offered an estimate of having some 9.73 million people in 2011.

I don’t doubt that Houston’s suburbs will get larger and the gap will close.

But it’s very likely that come 2025, Houston’s city population will be slightly larger while Chicago’s metro area population will remain significantly larger. I can already hear the arguments that will arise, particularly from Texas-types who will resent the idea that anybody challenges their claim to being Number Three when you could argue they remain Number Four!

WHICH WILL MEAN that Chicago will have to settle for being the largest city in the Midwest or Great Lakes regions – because it’s not like St. Louis, Milwaukee, Detroit or Minneapolis/St. Paul are on the verge of surpassing Chicago anytime soon (if ever).

Now I don’t want to come across as mocking Reuters. Although I’m not sure why this is news now. Estimates that Houston will someday have more people have been spreading around for years now.

Just as it was long expected that Los Angeles would surpass Chicago by the time it actually happened in 1984 (New York is so much bigger than anything else that nothing is likely to surpass it anytime soon).

These population shifts don’t change the true character of either city, or the fact that in a Chicago vs. Houston brawl, our city will be able to claim a World Series advantage – our White Sox did sweep the Houston Astros four straight games back in ’05. Nothing changes that!

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No news ‘anchor’ won’t bother me

On the one hand, I once remember hearing about someone in management at a news organization complain that the company would be so profitable on its current revenues, “if only we didn’t have to pay for reporters.”

On the other, I got a kick out of reading Variety, where television executive Lee Abrams saying, “we’re trying to get away from Barbie and Ken sitting behind a desk chit-chatting with each other with their nice teeth.”

ABRAMS IS THE senior vice president and chief innovations officer for Chicago-based Tribune Co., who is developing the idea known as “NewsFix” – which I would guess is meant to be the 21st Century take on a newcast format.

It is being mocked because Abrams’ format calls for no news anchor. There won’t be some perky blond paired up with a man (either an older white man to give a sense of experience, or a minority to provide a sense of ethnic balance) sitting behind a desk while giving us introductions to stories that were written by someone else.

We have had jokes that it will be an empty set. No people. Maybe even no reporters. The perfect cost-efficient newsroom run by nobody.

Actually, what it seems like is that the “anchor” will be reduced to just a voice, who will read transitions from story to story, which will largely consist of video clips. It seems like the idea of actual people putting together the news is what he wants to eliminate.

VARIETY (THE LONG-time newspaper of the entertainment industry) says Abrams in part is trying to create a newscast that replicates the experience one has when they log onto a computer and use the Internet to try to find out information about events taking place in the world today.

They skip about and go from story to story, often from site to site – incorporating various news organizations. The “anchor” that puts these stories into a coherent picture is the person’s own mind because they have a certain logic as to why they look for one story, then try to find something else they think is relevant, then perhaps stumble onto something unexpected while looking for yet a third news item.

It sounds like chaos, but I’m sure officials are figuring it will appeal to those people who want to think they’re not relying on anyone else’s news judgment but instead employing their own to make sense of the society around them.

If anything, it will take more news judgment on the part of television stations that use this new format to make the randomness of an Internet news search appear to be organized, rather than truly confusing to people.

IT JUST WON’T give people who work in television news broadcasting as much face time.

I’m sure that will be a blow to some professional broadcasters who went into television because their ego is assauged by the thought that everybody can see their face and that they have the potential to become mini-celebrities.

Yet I have to admit I don’t care.

The emphasis on the visual, no matter how trite, is why I never got into the idea of working in television news. There are times when I find the Barbie-like look of the female anchor that has become a part of every news equation these days to be a distraction from the content of the news copy she is reading.

WE DO RUN the risk of turning news shops into places where deep, booming baritone voices prevail, and those who can’t sound like the “voice of God” while reading the news will get weeded out of the news business – no matter how much they comprehend the copy that is before them.

There is one thing to keep in mind. Tribune Co. broadcasting may be Chicago-based, but we’re not going to see this on WGN-TV any time soon. Variety reported that the new format will be tried on the company’s station in Houston, and may be considered most likely for stations that are lingering at the bottom of the local ratings.

WGN has too much going for it these days to be tinkered with, whereas a “going nowhere” television station has nothing to lose if the reality of NewsFix turns out to be much more bizarre than the rhetoric we have heard.

If anything, it might be something that Tribune Co. would try in Chicago if they owned WBBM-TV, the station that last week told us their latest change is to bring back “Bill and Walter” as the anchors of one of their evening newscasts – hoping the masses will think it is once again the 1970s when Channel 2 News was the undisputed leader in local news broadcasting.

THAT COMPARISON DOES strike me as having one similarity – Channel 2 is going back, in part, to “the voice” of Bill Kurtis (whose voice is so prototypical anchorman-ish that he narrated the 2004 film “Anchorman” starring Will Ferrell) to help give their news credibility. Just envision if WBBM were to try a NewsFix using Kurtis as the voice of their narration?

A half hour of Kurtis giving us the news, minus one minute for a Perspective read by Walter Jacobson – giving us his latest take on how big a goofball Rod Blagojevich has become.

Sound ridiculous?

It certainly couldn’t be any worse than what the people of Houston will soon be subjected to when they tune in to KIAH-TV.

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