Mexican ethnic holiday takes on greater meaning for me these days

I am of Mexican ethnic origins (three of my four grandparents were born there, along with one set of great-grandparents) and always have found my background to be of personal interest.

My brother on a baseball-themed trip to Pittsburgh

Yet I have to confess, the concept of the Day of the Dead isn’t one that ever caught on with me. Until now, that is.

FOR THOSE WHO are uninformed, the holiday being celebrated Wednesday night into the early hours of Thursday is a Mexican one whose serious point is that we pay homage to those of our loved ones who are no longer with us – as in they have died.

There are those Mexicans who go so far as to build elaborate tributes to their loved ones. There are others who literally will spend the night tonight at the cemetery, visiting with their loved ones in gravesite picnics that turn into semi-festive celebrations.

I don’t plan to go that far, largely because both of the loved ones who are popping into my memory these days were cremated. I don’t have cemetery plots to visit, and in fact I have my mother’s remains with me.

In my case, my loved ones to remember are my mother, Jenny, and my brother, Christopher.

My brother and mother, in a happy moment

AS IT TURNS out, the anniversary dates of both of their deaths come up around this time of year. In the case of my brother, Sunday was the second anniversary of the aneurism he suffered that almost instantly killed his brain activity, and Monday was the anniversary of the date upon which he was pronounced dead.

As for my mother, it will have been seven years on Nov. 10 since the day she suffered a complication related to her diabetes treatments that caused her to bleed to death.

Meaning this early autumn time period that I otherwise would think of as the conclusion of the World Series and the end of the baseball season in this part of the globe (it’s just kicking into gear in professional leagues that play across the Caribbean) is one in which I find myself remembering my brother and our mother.

One of my mother's favorite family photographs

In that sense, the Day of the Dead takes on a certain convenience factor in that I can remember both of them at once – and know I’m not alone in thinking about death. Although I’d prefer to think of it as remembering the lives that used to exist – and not the piles of ash that they have been reduced to these days.

MY BROTHER (HE was younger than me) only made it to age 45. His was a case of his blood pressure reaching such high levels that he was on medication that doctors were fiddling around with at the time we lost him.

If anything, my brother’s experience has been an educational one for me, since I have developed blood pressure issues and doctors have described my own condition in ways that make it seem I’m at an earlier stage of what ultimately took down my brother.

His life may well be the warning of what could happen to me if I slack off on my own medical routine.

My mother as a child, long before I ever existed. She's with her Uncle Aurelio "Spinx" Salas, and a part of me likes to think he's keeping an eye on her these days

Although I actually feel the need to keep living in part to not embarrass the memory of those before me. Yes, a part of me feels like my mother’s spirit is watching over me, and is prepared to give me a smack or two upside the head should I ever encounter her again for everything stupid I may do with what remains in my life.

MY MOTHER ONLY made it to 66 at the time of her death, and the final decade of her life was a not-so-pleasant experience of constant medical treatment. Being that I’ve barely past the half-century mark of life, I know it won’t be all that much longer before I can say I’ve lived longer than she did.

Unless I’m amongst the ones unfortunate enough to suffer an early ending. One thing I learned a long time ago from my reporter-type person work is that there are no guarantees about life. One can go at any time, and perhaps I should view myself lucky to have survived this long.

These are thoughts passing through my head on this Day of the Dead, and perhaps this essay is my remembrance of family whose absence still leaves me longing – even though I’m fortunate enough that my father remains and is in a place where he can continue to be a pain in the behind. Although I’d give just about anything if my mother could be around in an equally annoying way these days.

But I also suspect my mother would be bothered by this commentary, particularly since I recall she used to get all creeped out at Day of the Dead imagery and thoughts – she’d probably want her memory to be the last thing possible to be associated with Wednesday in any way.

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: On a not-quite-so-related point, I’m still amused by this use of Day of the Dead imagery in this animated sequence from the 2002 film “Frida” that explains just how badly bashed the body of Frida Kahlo was from a bus crash she suffered as a teenager that left her crippled through much of her life.

Sports are so unpredictable; or, How Dare da Bulls screw up by winning!

I didn’t watch the Chicago Bulls as they began their playoff stretch Sunday against the Boston Celtics, but I did stumble onto some of the pre-game ritual that focused heavily on the fact that Celtics player Isaiah Thomas had a sister who was killed during the weekend in an automobile accident.

Spouting off too quickly?

We got to see the closeup of his game shoes that had her name written on them as a tribute and the moment of silence by the fans, along with the sight of Thomas sobbing. It was supposed to be the motivating factor that would inspire the Celtics to go out and win this game for their teammate in mourning.

DURING THE TNT pre-game broadcast, analyst Charles Barkley came right out and proclaimed the Chicago Bulls to be “losers” Sunday night, and likely of this entire round of playoffs. They have no chance!

The Celtics would just have too many reasons to win, and not just because theoretically they’re a better team.

Now I don’t know if this belongs on the list of ridiculous things Charles Barkley has said during his time as a professional basketball player and post-player career hanging around the game. Heck, it’s not even the dumbest thing he said Sunday – what with his remarks that another player would spend that night in a gay bar.

But let’s look at the actual on-court results for a second.

CHICAGO BULLS 106-Boston Celtics 102.

It’s almost like that moment from the film “Brian’s Song,” when the Chicago Bears learn that teammate Brian Piccolo was seriously ill and they take it upon themselves to say they’ll give Piccolo the game ball.

Didn't get the desired Sunday tribute

Only to cut to the next scene where the Piccolo character belittles his teammates for going out and losing the game! So much for the tribute to and sister Chyna.

Either that, or we can blame the Bulls for screwing up what would have been a touching sporting moment. Or at least something that the sporting fan mentality would want to perceive of as being touching.

SINCE ALL TOO often, that mentality does have a knack of making something out of what the rest of the world would consider nothing.

Now I’m not particularly following the Bulls as they try to work their way through what theoretically could be a couple of months of playoffs leading up to the National Basketball Association championship, to be played in June.

I'll bet MJ could tell us tales about Barkley

I realize this first round against Boston could be THE END for Chicago. The Bulls of the 21^st Century are nowhere near the domineering team they were in the final decade of the 20^th Century.

In fact, managing to win the game that Charles Barkley said they were supposed to lose and had no business even thinking of being competitive in could wind up being the highlight of the 2016-17 season.

THERE ARE STILL up to six more games to be played in this round of the playoffs, and it is totally possible Boston will rebound. In fact, it probably is likely they will rebound, and people will “little note nor long remember” what was said by Barkley.

To steal a thought from one A. Lincoln and his most famed of speeches he made that day in Gettysburg, Penn.

"You're supposed to win the game!"

That we will get to see for ourselves when the Bulls take to the court again Tuesday night for another game against Boston before traveling back to the United Center for Game Three against those mighty Celtics.

All of which strikes me as a bit much attention for a sport that should have had the decency to wrap itself up in March, since playing for an NBA championship in June is almost as obscene as the baseball World Series in November.

  -30-

Disposing of a loved one’s life

There are going to be some very well-dressed gentlemen who choose to shop at Goodwill, on account of my brother.

My brother, in one of the many shirts and ties I disposed of

That’s the conclusion I must come to on account of all the items I disposed of by donating them to the place that operates those second-hand shops meant to help the less fortunate find worthwhile goods at an affordable price.

MY BROTHER, CHRISTOPHER, passed away the day before Halloween last year. While some of his belongings were given to various friends and relatives, I must admit to not rushing into disposing of the bulk of his stuff.

Until now, when I’m forced to. On account of the fact that I’m going to be moving out of the apartment I was sharing with him.

Which is why I spent a good chunk of my day on Monday going through his closet to decide which of his clothes have potential for someone else, and which were merely worn out to the point that the garbage man is the only person who will see them again.

I actually wound up finding some articles of clothing, particularly several pairs of pants, that had been purchased, but never worn. They still had the tags on them, indicating how long ago they were purchased.

SO NO, I’M not going to try to return them to the stores where they were purchased from to try to get a refund. That would just be tacky.

I must admit to having some help from my father, who got a little emotional at times going through his younger son’s belongings. Although I must admit he took it well when he was the one who stumbled across a backpack filled with, what could politely be referred to as, dirty pictures.

Those went into the trash, along with certain other items that just weren’t likely to be in demand. But there were some suits and rather stylish shirts that were totally usable. I got to pack those away for future purchase by someone else.

It makes me wonder if I’m going to stumble across my brother’s clothes on total strangers who, somehow, just won’t carry them with the same sense of style as Chris would have, if he were still with us.

NOW IN MY brother’s case, he had accumulated quite a collection of recorded music, particularly of the pressed vinyl variety. The LPs and a turntable or two are among the belongings I plan to keep.

Perhaps I’ll even learn to associate the song “Little Latin Lupe Lu” with my brother’s memory – on account of the fact that I know he has a copy of the 45 rpm recording. In fact, he has several hundred singles, to go along with LPs and CDs accumulated through the decades.

Yet I’ll admit it is the stuff that I had to make the decision to give away or throw away that most caught my attention on Monday.

While I wasn’t operating under any delusion that my brother was still amongst us, it seemed like on Monday that he departed me yet again

IN FACT, THIS now puts another decision solely into my hands. When our mother passed on, she was cremated – which was her wish. Yet we never could decide the proper way to dispose of the ashes.

We figured we had time to think about this and come up with something appropriate. Now, it’s my call – particularly since the scattering urn is also amongst the possessions I have inherited.

So I’m going to be busy for the next few days, what with trying to move my belongings, weed through my brother’s possessions and decide the final resting place for my mother’s remains.

Which is why I’m taking the rest of the month off from the duties of publishing commentary on this weblog. Somehow, the ineptitude of Gov. Bruce Rauner and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, to put together a state budget seems a little less important during the next few days.

  -30-

EXTRA: We’re all flying blind. But that won’t stop us from rants and rages

How long will it be before we think of Paris in such a cutesy way again?

As I write this, I must confess to not knowing the scope of the violence that occurred Friday night in Paris.

At least 100 people who were hostages-turned-targets killed in one lone theater, while it seems there were explosions in a sports stadium and at least four or five other incidents.

THE DEATH TALLY was at about 140. But by the time you read this, it could be higher. Much higher. A part of me is cynical enough to wonder how close to 1,000 fatalities we’ll see. If we’re talking multiple incidents, it could go high – particularly if there are more incidents yet to come.

Of course, we’re all suspecting Arab terrorists – which is a phrase too many nincompoops string together too easily. I’ve heard way too much speculation about ISIS. Way too much in that I have yet to hear a fact about who might have done this, or for what motivation.

The group in the Middle East that, to my mind, puts in my memory banks that silly mid-1970s TV show about a woman who fought crime by summoning the strength of the Egyptian goddess Isis.

Perhaps we could unleash her on the people who have coordinated these attacks? Problem solved!

MY BIGGEST HOPE is that people appreciate the scope of what appears to have happened, and the significance.

A part of me already wonders if the happenings of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York and Rosslyn, Va. (never forget the Pentagon) have been surpassed in significance. Will the same ideologues who liked getting worked up with their “Proud to be an American” song lyrics and “U.S.A.” chants (which ought never to be used outside of an Olympics athletic event) realize this event was meant to take a shot at the entirety of the Western World?

Could the power of Isis defeat ISIS?

That date just over 14 years ago would have been just as bad if the target had been the Tower of London or Buckingham Palace rather than the World Trade Center or the Capitol building (which was spared because of those passengers who attacked their attackers, remember?)

Perhaps it is likely in coming hours and days we’ll learn stories of how the violence could have been much worse – but how people made their bones (and perhaps gave their lives) to save others.

THAT WOULD AT least give Friday’s events some significance.

Because as things stand now, Friday will be just a gruesome day that will get some people all worked up as they camp out in front of their televisions and argue over which station they want to “spin” the factual tidbits that are spilling out of Paris while officials try to seal off their borders.

Which I think is a petty reaction, in part because I’m already reading the anonymous reactions on assorted Internet sites from crackpots who are determined to turn Fridays happenings into some sort of anti-immigration diatribe.

Yes, there are those who are already spewing trash about how “all those Mexicans” are now going to follow up what happened in Paris, France with (perhaps) an attack on Paris, Texas.

SOME PEOPLE WILL spew ideology no matter what the circumstance.

They’re the ones we really ought to be concerned about as we try to figure out what happened in France and as we join in the international mourning scene.

From 9/11 to 11/13 – which date will be next to gain an “infamous” stain?

  -30-

An adios to my hermanito – he definitely will be missed for some time

My brother (wearing the Mexico City Red Devils jersey) and I with assorted cousins this summer. The jersey was among the quirks of his personality.

Friday is quite possibly the worst day of my life. I lost my little brother.

Christopher I. Tejeda (I for Ignacio, who was our paternal grandfather) suffered a serious stroke Thursday afternoon – so much so that we were told by medical officials to give up any hope of a full recovery.

WHEN EVEN MINIMAL body reactions and reflexes were lost, the decision was made to let him go – and my brother was pronounced dead at 1:39 p.m. A memorial service is likely to be held in a couple of weeks, but nothing is even close to being scheduled yet.

Now it’s not just because he was my younger brother (only 45 – I’m 50) that it seems so unfair that he could go so suddenly. He and I went out for a Thursday morning breakfast and afterwards he wanted to take a nap.

Where it seems he suffered the aneurism that killed his brain functions so quickly that doctors say it was unlikely he realized what hit him. (And yes, it's the old City News Bureau reporter-type in me that catches so much detail over what could be regarded as a "cheap" ME).

But my brother is going to be missed for so many reasons – and not just because he was actually splitting the rent on my current abode.

HE MAY HAVE been my little brother, but there was nothing about him that ought to be in the diminutive – which makes the headline of this commentary something of a gag I’m sure he’d get.

When our mother suffered a downtown in her health that made the final decade of her life difficult, it was Chris who stepped up to take care of her and make sure her needs were met and her life was as comfortable as can be for someone who was being kept alive by kidney dialysis treatments that were excruciatingly painful.

As much as I’d like to say I had a role in her care, I know full well she would have been a lot worse off it not for my little brother.

Heck, he even was capable of bailing me out from time of time – particularly during those times of my adult working life when I had job layoffs (there have been three such periods, and for all I know I could someday face a fourth).

THEN AGAIN, THE life of a freelance writer is such that the next paycheck often gets easily delayed – and it was my brother who was the fallback until the time I wound up getting compensation and he could then get paid.

He actually had a kind-hearted nature that also translated into a work ethic – he had several jobs with companies that sold home repair products and services, to the point where he developed some skills of use around the house.

And among the items I will inherit from him will be a fairly awesome set of tools – some of which I probably will need some training in how to use (since my own tool kit consists of a hammer, some pliers and a few screwdrivers of assorted heads and sizes).

Yet even though he was at an age when many people were more than willing to settle for their lot in life, he was still looking for the way to move up on the professional scene. Lazy, he wasn’t!

PERSONALLY, HE WAS a baseball fan, and one of the New York Yankees even though by childhood birth he should have been a Chicago White Sox fan. He stuck with the Yankees even when they went through their 15-season streak of mediocrity to downright suckiness.

But it wasn’t blind faith he felt – he was the first to admit this year’s Yankees squad wasn’t good enough to deserve a World Series appearance. Although I suspect that somewhere in another realm, he’s prepared to get disgusted if the New York Mets actually win.

Now for those of you who have a problem with my writing this commentary, I say tough. It’s one of the advantages of having my own site to publish.

It’s kind of like those t-shirts that say someone traveled somewhere exotic, and all I got was a crummy t-shirt. My brother was a worthwhile soul who deserves a lot more out of life than this crummy copy – even though that’s the best I can give to him on this day.

  -30-

Will Facebook outlive us all?

I woke up Thursday morning to the sight and sound of a CNN-like news anchor type saying she thought it was bizarre that Facebook would feel the need to create an option by which people can easily turn over control of their pages after they are deceased.

I might have been inclined to agree; personally I don’t see a need to care about what becomes of the odd smatterings that appear on my own Facebook page once I am gone. But I have the experience of my aunt Charlene – who managed to figure out a way to do what Facebook says it will now allow many others to do.

IN THE CASE of mi tia loca (she would have laughed at my sarcastic description), she died about a year-and-a-half ago. But her brother also had access to her account, which means he has taken to making postings on her behalf.

I literally recall the day she died because I learned about it on Facebook. I happened to stumble on her page on a Sunday morning, only to see that a posting was made an hour earlier that read simply, “I’m in Heaven.”

Her brother later that day posted some details about her passing, all written in a first-person voice as though it were my aunt writing. Later, some video shot during her wake was posted on the page.

Since then, her brother has taken to posting various old photographs of my aunt, along with notices about the project that had become the focus of my aunt’s life in her retiring years (she had a career teaching in the Chicago Public Schools) – her “traveling Mexican museum” as she called it.

IT REALLY WAS a collection of the various artifacts and knickknacks she had compiled during her life’s various trips to Mexico; which she would periodically put on public display.

As a tribute to my aunt, her brother has kept the collection and occasionally sets it up (the one time I saw it, it took an entire banquet hall in Chicago to contain it) – using Facebook to let people know when those occasions will occur.

It sounds more bizarre than it is. It actually comes across as an interesting way of remembering my aunt – particularly when my own Facebook page gets an update from her page and I can have a quick, but pleasant, memory of her.

Somehow, I doubt my aunt is alone in having something interesting to say even after they’re gone. Let’s only hope that the people who get picked to carry on someone’s Facebook legacy have enough tact not to try to settle old grudges with someone once they’re no longer capable of defending themselves.

CONSIDERING HOW MUCH the rest of Facebook and the Internet is capable of being taken over by people with no sense of personal decorum, it is always a very serious threat.

Reading trashy updates about the dead is about as boorish of behavior that one could engage in. Let’s hope that this trend of Facebook pages outliving the people whose lives they were a part of is not something that has to be stifled because of those of us who can’t control the worst tendencies of our natures!

It should be said that I have no intention of delegating anybody to carry on my own Facebook page (which consists largely of posts from this weblog to expand the number of people who are capable of reading it). I don’t plan to try to figure out a way of filing copy from the great beyond.

As far as my own page is concerned, I’m inclined to agree with the musings of a few reporter-type people I know who said (on Facebook, if you must know) that a final posting of a simple “-30-” (the old typesetting symbol for ‘end of story’) is the best way to go.

  -30-

Quinn gets chance to create one last political headache for his critics

Pat Quinn has just over one month left in his time as governor, yet he’s going to create such a political firestorm. There’s just no way he could leave on a quiet note.

It is because of the death early Wednesday of Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka – one month before she was to be sworn in for her second term as head of the post that cuts the checks to pay the state’s bills.

BECAUSE OF THE fact that she’s in charge of the office that keeps state government running financially (the state treasurer oversees the state’s investments), there needs to be a comptroller to ensure the government keeps running.

So to those people who, for politically partisan reasons, want Quinn to sit back and do nothing and defer to Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner until he takes office Jan. 12, that ain’t a gonna happen.

Quinn gets to pick a new state comptroller to finish out the remainder of the term to which Topinka was elected to in 2010. None other than the Illinois Constitution gives him that authority.

Although ideologues usually don’t care what some stinkin’ piece of paper has to say – they’re going to rant and rage that Quinn has no right picking anybody because of his electoral loss in last month’s elections.

I ALREADY HAVE read assorted commentary about how, if Quinn does get to sign off on a “Comptroller for a Month” position, he ought to defer to whatever Rauner wants to do. Even though when then-Gov. James R. Thompson had a secretary of state appointment to fill in 1981 when Alan Dixon moved up to the U.S. Senate, he picked fellow Republican Jim Edgar for the post rather than respecting the fact that voters picked a Democrat for the post.

Which means the idea of respect for party politics isn’t going to happen. It’s ridiculous to presume it will happen.

You’d think the fact that Quinn’s appointment will only run through mid-January and that Rauner himself will take office with a major appointment to fill (who gets to be comptroller for the four-year term running through early 2019 that Topinka was just elected to) would please those people.

But it won’t. Some people, particularly those who are trying to rewrite state law to call for a special election, are just way too eager to pick issues to complain about.

I’M NOT ABOUT to predict here who’s going to become the new state comptroller – not for the next month, nor for the next four years.

I’ve heard the political wisecracks about how Quinn likely won’t pick Sheila Simon to fill the post that she ran for, and lost, last month. After all, her refusal to continue to serve as Quinn’s lieutenant governor was a fairly prominent snub – perhaps the biggest of the now-complete campaign season.

I’ve also heard the names of “Tom Cross,” “Dan Rutherford” and “Evelyn Sanguinetti” all tossed about as possible picks by Rauner, along with the possibility of putting Topinka's chief of staff in the constitutional post.

The idea being that Cross came so close to winning state election (running for treasurer) that he ought to get some sort of post, while Rutherford serving as state treasurer has some sense of what the state’s financial situation truly is.

THE IDEA OF Lt. Gov.-elect Sanguinetti as comptroller is the most amusing to me – one person suggests that it would save the state some money in salary because Rauner could then go without a lieutenant governor during his gubernatorial term.

Of course, if that happened and Rauner wound up being unable to finish his term in office, that would make state Attorney General Lisa Madigan next in line to become governor without having to be elected. A thought that I’m sure would make the ideologues wretch in disgust.

Personally, I'd rather have someone as inexperienced as Sanguinetti in a do-nothing position like lieutenant governor, than being in charge of making sure bills get paid close to being on time. But maybe that's just me.

It will be intriguing to see who Quinn picks for the “Comptroller for a Month” post. Somebody will get to be a state constitutional officer for 31 (or so) days.

SIMILAR TO THOSE people who remember the week-long stint that David Orr once served as Chicago mayor in between the death of Harold Washington and the appointment of Eugene Sawyer.

Which was only significant in that it makes him the answer to a trivia question for political geeks.

  -30-

EXTRA: Imagine it was just a dream

The death of John Lennon on this date 34 years ago still has a touch of unreality in my mind, emphasized by the fact that when it happened, my initial reaction was to think it was all just a dream.

I recall being back in high school at the time that Lennon died at age 40 by a deranged fan, of sorts, who shot him outside the luxury apartment in New York City where he lived with wife Yoko Ono.

WHAT I RECALL was getting home from school that day feeling particularly sluggish, to the point where I laid down on the bed and wound up drifting off to sleep.

Later in the evening, I woke up briefly and saw a television set turned to the news, where the announcer told that Lennon had been shot just an hour earlier.

I was feeling so groggy that I quickly drifted off to sleep again – this time for the night. I woke up again the next morning. In my mind, I thought I had dreamed that the news was reporting Lennon’s death.

So when I started telling other people about my “dream,” they quickly corrected me to let me know that at least part of my night was reality.

WHICH MAKES ME wonder at times what kind of “career” Lennon would have had if he had lived through the ‘80s and beyond?

His “Double Fantasy” album sold well, but we have to admit that most of the people who bought it only did so because of his death – he was shot three weeks after it was released.

Would he have come up with anything on his own that would top his 1971 hit “Imagine?” We can only imagine what would have come about from the man who gave us such songs as a Beatle as “I’m A Loser” and “Nowhere Man.”

It’s just too bad that I can’t wake up from my “dream” of several decades and find out that it wasn’t reality at all. At the very least, maybe it would have spared us "Wham" or "Oingo Boingo."

  -30-

Is a “Ferguson” incident inevitable somewhere in the greater Chicago area?

We’ve all been inundated with reports of the violent outbursts taking place in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, where the police killed a young man whom they’re now claiming was a suspect in a convenience store robbery.

The outbursts have become so intense that Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has sent in the state troopers and even called in the National Guard to try to restore order to the community located to the northwest of the city.

NOW I’M NOT about to engage in a 600-word diatribe about the ineptitude of the local police. Nor about whether the behavior of local residents borders on criminal itself? You can find many other pundits who will eagerly engage in such debate.

What intrigues me about this incident is the way in which it seems so likely that we’re going to get something similar occurring in the future in a community that is part of the Chicago metro area.

I’d like to think I’m wrong. I’d like to think I’m over-reacting. I’m sure the apologists for police will send me rants telling me how ridiculous I’m being.

But there are just too many circumstances about this incident that make me wonder how long it will be before we hear of something similarly stupid happening in a place like suburban Riverdale or Blue Island, or perhaps across the state line in Hammond.

I PICKED THOSE communities off the top of my head – they are places that not all that long ago had significant white populations, but have now become majority African-American in their composition.

Which makes me wondering if the long-standing, but now a minority, white populations there could take a similar attitude in support of their police if some sort of incident were to break out.

Just this weekend, I caught part of a conversation about the Ferguson incident that included one person whose cousins had once lived there. He claimed the incident was so out-of-character for the Ferguson he remembered – a peaceful community where middle-to-lower income people raised families.

But it was a place where white people lived back then – unlike the current composition where 67.4 percent of the 2010 population of 21,203 people are African American.

THAT IS WHAT provoked the anger in Ferguson to the shooting earlier this month of an 18-year-old by a police officer. It didn’t help that for the longest time, police tried keeping the officer/gunman’s identity secret – then made sure to unveil it as part of a larger statement that tried to claim the 18-year-old was a robbery suspect.

Stealing some cigarillos from a convenience store; not exactly the second coming of John Dillinger.

The matter is now under investigation, and I won’t be surprised if it turns out that police are somehow cleared of this. We should realize that the reason we permit police to carry weapons in public is because we expect there to be instances where they will use them.

And sometimes, unfortunate things happen that just don’t cross over the legal definition of what constitutes criminal behavior.

IT MAKES ME recall an incident in suburban Calumet City from a couple of years ago – one in which a boy with a form of autism was shot to death by local police. That incident, too, caused some outbursts – albeit none with the physical violence of Ferguson.

Rev. Jesse Jackson made his appearance in Calumet City to try to bring back peace and comfort. But the local officials were eager to do as little as possible.

Once an Illinois State Police investigation came back with a finding of no criminal charges against the officers, that became the end of it. Aside from the lingering resentment in the community that likes to talk of its Polish immigrant origins but is now 70.6 percent African American.

Maybe we got lucky that we didn’t get such an outburst a couple of years ago and that “Calumet City, Ill.” didn’t wind up on the map of public opinion. But how much longer can we be that lucky before something stupid happens in our state?

  -30-

Life way too short for some people

My belated condolences to Illinois Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, who this week lost her daughter, Lisa – who suffered a massive pulmonary embolism.

RADOGNO: Our condolences

What makes her death particularly tragic was not because of who her mother was. Or even her boss – she worked on the D.C.-based staff of Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. It was her own age, or lack thereof.

SHE WAS ONLY 31. Lisa should have had a full life ahead of her.

Although the real question is to wonder what exactly constitutes a full life. It can be so short, or so long, or anywhere in the middle. And nobody knows exactly when their “end” will come. We truly have to appreciate every single minute.

Personally, I’m a little more sensitive to this issue these days on account of my brother, Chris. My younger brother has actually spent this week in an area hospital (we think he might wind up being released on Friday).

I had my own scare this week thinking there was a chance I could lose my little brother (he’s barely 44), even though every time I’ve seen and spoken with him this week, he’s claimed he felt fine – not at all out of the ordinary.

YET WHEN, BY pure chance, he had his blood pressure taken at a clinic on Monday (he was hoping to get some sort of medication for a sty that had developed on his eyelid), it registered way up around 240-something.

That’s hypertensive crisis territory. That’s where someone calls the ambulance and insists you go to the Emergency Room because they’re afraid you can’t drive yourself to the hospital.

He wound up spending a day in intensive care, and has since been put in a regular hospital room where he spends his days watching trashy television programs and reading the newspapers to keep up on happenings of the world.

While also complaining about how out-of-his-skull bored he has become, yet can’t go anywhere.

NOW DON’T GET the impression that I’m comparing my brother’s situation to that of Lisa Radogno. She died suddenly, while it seems my brother’s potential for a life-threatening situation was caught right at the exact moment before it became a stroke or a heart attack or something that could have caused me a lot more grief.

In fact, when I happened to be visiting him at the hospital on Thursday, I was present when a nurse took his blood pressure yet again, and it came out at a level that almost constitutes normal and healthy by American Heart Association standards.

 

Not ready to lose my brother yet

I’m fortunate. I’m likely getting my brother back – and suspect I have to be on call Friday to pick him up from the hospital when he’s finally discharged.

But if I think about it too closely, it becomes a near-miss. My brother isn’t ready to depart this realm of existence at age 44. Actually, I don’t think anybody is.

THEN AGAIN, LIFE isn’t fair. I know people I went to high school with who died at ages 19 and 22 – the former when his car was struck by a drunken driver and he went flying through the windshield because of the impact, and the latter because police said he was impaired while driving from having smoked too much marijuana.

It makes me think how they had too much still to do in life, just as my brother is in need of many more years of life to ensure he accomplishes all he wants to do.

Just as we’re going to wonder how much more Lisa Radogno would have accomplished with the extra 40 to 50 years that statistics indicate she might have had a chance to experience.

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Hang around Chicago long enough, and even the outlandish becomes common

It’s not every day that a man who is both the namesake grandson and nephew of Chicago mayors enters a “guilty” plea to a criminal charge related to the death of another human being.

KOSCHMAN: Will his memory now rest?

Yet there was something about the plea entered in a Rolling Meadows-based courtroom by R.J. Vanecko that seemed so similar to a criminal case from a quarter-century ago. It makes me wonder how long until we again get a connected defendant who catches a break when forced to face the criminal justice system.

FOR THE RECORD, Richard Joseph Vanecko (whose mother was a daughter of Richard J. Daley and an older sister to Richard M.) entered the guilty plea – rather than go to trial in a case that could have began later this month.

He got a 60-day jail sentence, along with some additional time wearing an ankle bracelet meant to confine him to his home. He’ll also get a 30-month probation period.

Let’s be honest. If his name weren’t tied into the Daley family tree, he wouldn’t have gotten off so easily. Because there is a man who has been dead for a decade,

I’m sure some will argue that true injustice would have been if his case wasn’t resurrected. Cook County prosecutors originally didn’t want to touch the incident when it actually occurred.

IT TOOK THE attention-drawing efforts of the Chicago Sun-Times, along with a special prosecutor and a judge called in from suburban McHenry County, to get to the point we’re at right now.

All of this reminds me of a criminal case I covered back when I was a “City News Kid” reporter-type some 25 years ago.

VANECKO: Paying debt to society?

It was a case involving two early-20s-type men who had been drinking heavily in a Clearing neighborhood (near Midway Airport) tavern. They got hostile, and one man beat the other to death with a baseball bat when he thought the other was reaching for a pistol of some sort.

Actually, the man was reaching for a tire iron, so perhaps he had the same intention of administering a beating with a deadly weapon.

WHICH IS WHY that man ultimately got a two-month sentence in the Cook County Jail. In fact, what I remember from the case is that after they took into account the amount of “time served” right after his bond hearing but before he could come up with the money to be released from jail, the actual amount of time he still had to serve was all of two weeks before he could start getting on with the rest of his life. While the victim remains dead some 25 years later!

DALEY: What would namesake think?

Oh, the other thing about this case was that the defendant was the son of a Chicago police Violent Crimes detective based at 51^st Street and Wentworth Avenue.

A cop’s kid managed to do something stupid that caused the death of someone else. That’s not to the same degree of public attention as Richard J. Vanecko got. But it is still enough to gain attention, which is why I covered that particular story back in the days when I covered the Criminal Courts building on a regular basis.

I also recall the judge from that particular case. Thomas Maloney, who later was charged, and convicted, of allegations that he took bribes to fix the results of murder cases.

I DON’T HAVE any evidence that the cop kid’s case was in any way fixed. Although I still remember the day the kid was sentenced as being the closest I ever came to being found in contempt of court by a judge. He threatened me with arrest because he didn't like my whispering to a reporter-type who was sitting next to me.

I’m sure that Maloney was aware of every single reporter-type person who was in the courtroom, and was looking for even the slightest excuse he could think of in order to have us removed.

Because our accounts of the verdict and sentence could stir up public resentment (I still recall the mother of the victim complaining that her son couldn’t get true justice). Unless the judge were to impose a harsh sentence.

In which case, he’d make enemies within the Police Department.

BUT BACK TO Vanecko, who is now in the early days of serving his sentence – which, to my sensibilities, is the quirky part of this whole case.

Because the special judge was brought in from McHenry County, Judge Maureen McIntyre sentenced him to serve the time in her county’s jail.

Vanecko will be up in northwest suburban Woodstock for a couple of months. While that’s not a jail facility anyone chooses to go to, it is less onerous than the Cook County Jail complex.

And definitely a lot easier to cope with than one of the facilities in the Illinois Department of Corrections system – which are so crowded they’re probably grateful not to have to deal with Vanecko.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I also was amused to see just how quickly former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s illness and hospitalization this week was in no way a reaction to learning that his nephew now has a criminal record.

When it comes to this week’s heavy rains, let’s keep a sense of perspective

Learning that Gov. Pat Quinn was traveling across the Chicago area on Thursday to survey flood damage, and also held meetings in Springfield with high-ranking officials before declaring a “state of emergency” for all of Illinois, you’d think we suffered something of historic proportions.

Gov. Pat Quinn and Illinois Emergency Management Agency Director Jonathan Monken discussing Thursday's weather predicament makes things seem more ominous than they really are for most people. Photograph provided by State of Illinois

 

But let’s be honest. I really suspect that the bulk of us had our days tampered with much less than those individuals of West, Texas – the rural town near Waco where some fertilizer ignited and exploded.

THE END RESULT killed or maimed a significant portion of that town of some 2,400 people.

Most of us just had our lives inconvenienced by the rain – although I couldn’t help but notice that The Weather Channel Thursday morning gave equal play to both the Texas explosion AND heavy rains hitting DuPage County.

Some of us may have got stuck on the interstate for a couple of hours – turning their typical half-hour commute into an ordeal.

Others may have had their basements soaked. Although for many, that happens whenever there is a heavy rainfall. It’s not the end of the world as we know it!

IN MY CASE, I have a stinky bathroom. Or perhaps I should say, a stinkier-than-usual bathroom.

For it seems that the creek that runs right by my residence did rise to higher-than-usual levels due to the steady rainfall that began Wednesday afternoon and was still ongoing as I write this commentary on Thursday. Weather forecasts are predicting that Mother Nature’s waterworks will come to an end early Friday.

Whenever that creek level gets high, it interferes with the sewage lines in my neighborhood. In my case, the other end of the block gets hit with flooding.

My place usually sees the toilet bowl water levels fluctuate.

IN THIS CASE, I woke up to the feel of cold toilet water all over the bathroom floor. It seems the bowl overflowed sometime during the overnight hours.

My day started out with me having to mop up the bathroom floor. A couple of other times, I had to re-mop as more water came.

Yet we’re not talking about large amounts of water. It does not seem to be spreading to any other part of my humble abode. I have a smelly bathroom that I’m probably going to have to get down on my hands and knees and scrub clean before I’ll feel truly comfortable using again.

But that is do-able. It is not tragedy.

SOMEHOW, I SUSPECT my story is closer to the real-life impact – a minor inconvenience – of Thursday’s “state of emergency” than any images people would create in their minds.

Now if, by chance, someone out there reading this is suffering a major calamity, I feel for you. But it would be wrong to think that everybody is in that situation. Which is what I remember from the date Sept. 11, 2001 – which for many of us was merely a date on which we had to go home early from work when city officials evacuated the Loop – “just in case” something was plotted for Chicago too.

It wasn’t!

PERRY: Oh, be quiet!!!

The true disaster is that aforementioned incident in West, where as I write this some three people are dead and about 170 suffered some form of injuries. And about 50 homes were destroyed by the explosion – which some have said had the physical impact of the kind of bomb the military might drop on an enemy in wartime!

WHICH OUGHT TO be the focus of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s attention these days – helping those people in their time of need.

Instead of trying to defend those tacky radio ads his state is spending precious tax dollars to make ludicrous claims that the Lone Star State is a preferable place to the Land of Lincoln in any aspect!

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