Weather extremes; or Dog Days in Chi

Remember the polar vortex?

That period of a few days back in January when the shift in weather traits actually gave in Chicago a taste of what things normally are like around the Arctic Circle!

Rocco (left) and Carmelo back in the winter months. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

IT WAS COLD. Particularly that one day where I got an assignment that actually required me to go outside and walk around the neighborhood in search of some colorful tidbits for a newspaper story.

Which I managed to accomplish in record time. No point in getting frost-bite for the free-lance pay rate I take in these days.

I also remember having to take the dogs outside during those days so they could “do their business,” so to speak. They’re not paper-trained, so their reaction to bathroom-type functions is to want to go outside – no matter what the weather is like.

While Rocco and Carmelo usually manage to linger out in the back yard for a few minutes before doing their “duty,” on those days they managed to run outside, complete their business them come charging back to the house.

LITERALLY CLAWING AWAY at the back door in desperate need of somebody to let them inside. Because it’s cold out here!!!

Anyway, these are the memories popping into my head on Friday as we’re enduring a heat spell that some are saying will be record-setting for the Chicago area.

The National Weather Service issued warnings for northern Illinois and Indiana, along with southern Wisconsin, going from Friday at 10 a.m. and supposed to last until about 7 p.m. Saturday.

It’s going to be hot and humid and people were advised to stay indoors as much as possible during that time period.

Rocco prefers the snow from indoors

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, I took the doggies out for a walk Friday morning and they managed to complete their business. But the walk didn’t last that long – pretty soon the dogs were panting heavily as they were hot.

They couldn’t wait to get back inside, and it was a good move that I refilled their water dishes before the walk. For they immediately went for the water and began gulping it down once we got back to shelter.

Now there have been some reports these days reminiscing back into history and 1919, when the heat of that summer was considered a cause of boosting tensions that ultimately resulted in race riots that left many people dead.

Although I suspect many more people had 1995 come to their minds. Much more recent – although even that is a quarter-of-a-century in the past.

I WAS FORTUNATE enough to not actually be in Chicago that summer – I was living in Springfield, Ill., at the time, although I got to hear the horror stories from my mother and brother of just how ridiculously hot it became and the extremes they had to go through to remain cool.

I recall the reports ultimately said the intense heat was because of a shift that, for a couple of weeks, caused Chicago to become something along the lines of Saudi Arabia.

And while those who actually live in the desert perhaps are capable of coping with such conditions, we managed to get caught off-guard. Causing the hundreds of deaths from that summer due to intense heat.

Carmelo wanted the water!

All I know is that if this is what other parts of the world feel like, it makes me all the more thankful to be a Chicagoan. The rest of the world can keep their weather extremes.

BUT I MUST admit to being uncertain about which extreme is more uanbearable. Polar vortex or Arab desert?

All I know is that I take one look at Rocco and Carmelo in heavy pant and know they were about as miserable as they were back in January when they virtually froze their paws off.

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EXTRA: Would the baseball season be better off if it were over already?

As much as I’m a baseball fan who enjoys every detail of the game, a part of me wishes the regular season proper of 2016 were over and done with.

When his sandwich is the highlight of  '16

And not just because the Chicago White Sox will be very lucky if they can finish the season the end of September with a .500 winning percentage, or because I’m going to find it annoying to put up with another month of Chicago Cubs speculation about whether they can actually win something of significance this year.

THERE IS A part of me that wonders if Major League Baseball, with its 162-game season, three rounds of playoffs and a World Series that stands a chance of not declaring a champion until early November has just become way too long.

I wonder at times if perhaps the entity known as Minor League Baseball is on to something – what with the way that minor league seasons come to an end on Labor Day.

For fans of the minor league game, it’s all over. Yes, the various leagues do have their own playoffs to determine a league champion. But those rounds are usually played as quickly as possible, because major league teams would rather have any serious prospects called up to the big ball club – rather than trying to win a championship for a place like Peoria or South Bend, Ind.?

The fact is that major league teams this year have already played about 135 ball games through Sunday. If the American and National leagues were a bit more aggressive about their scheduling, they could easily have played some 140 games.

WHICH IS SUFFICIENT enough to achieve legitimate champions – Toronto, Cleveland and Texas in the American League, with Boston and Detroit getting the wild card slots.

And in the National League, we’d have Washington, Los Angeles and the Cubs, along with St. Louis and New York. Let’s be honest – those teams are likely going to be the ones come early October that will wind up qualifying for the playoffs.

How many people really want to see another month of games being played just for the purpose of allowing the other 20 ball clubs to have a chance to sell some more hot dogs and beer (and at the soon-to-be Guaranteed Rate Field a Cuban sandwich named for the late pelotero Minnie Miñoso) and perhaps another souvenir cap?

Only wishful thinking. Or will Cubs soon get cap w/ Series logo?

The baseball fan in me would just as soon see the playoffs begin in coming days. I suspect many other fans feel the same way.

CONSIDERING THAT THE playoffs for baseball have evolved into a play-in round involving second place teams, then two more rounds before a league champion is declared, that could easily take up the bulk of the remainder of the month of September.

Which would put the World Series – that historic championship between the two league champions – on the calendar some time around the first week to 10 days of October.

Which back in the old days when there were only eight teams in each league and only the top two teams played beyond the regular season’s end, was when the World Series historically was played.

Reaching a champion some time around October 5 rather than November 2 or 3 makes a lot more sense.

I REALLY SUSPECT that serious baseball fans would accept such a change, particularly if it meant we could be watching games of significance – rather than watching the New York Yankees or some other team go through the motions of pretending they’re still in contention for a playoff spot.

Because if they really were in the running, they’d be better than a fourth place team now. And as for the fourth-place White Sox, the hard-core of fandom is ready to move on to 2017.

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Does this weekend -- filled w/ events that have seen better days -- matter?

Perhaps it’s all too appropriate that the Taste of Chicago and the Crosstown Classic (the silly pseudo-title given to the times of year when the Chicago White Sox take on the Chicago Cubs) are both taking place this weekend.

Will this be accurate again soon?

I didn’t feel the need to make it out to either event in person because they both seem like they have experienced better days. Even though they would have been distractions from the political nonsense that has taken up too much of our attention in recent weeks.

AS FOR THE Taste of Chicago, the event was interesting enough that I had a cousin who felt compelled to go; in large part because it was a chance to see and hear Erykah Badu perform live.

Then again, she is from San Antonio, Texas, and was in town for the week as a tourist. Which means she was probably in similar company.

The Taste of Chicago just doesn’t seem the same as its glory days of the 1980s into the early 1990s when major restaurants all used their political clout to be included and it was a part of the way Chicago celebrated Independence Day.

Now, it’s just a shell – only five days, and scaled back to the point where I suspect there are suburban festivals that come across as more interesting. Maybe even the Air Show in Gary, Ind., that may wind up costing the city government more money than it brings in?

THEN, THERE’S THE head-to-head competition between Chicago’s two major league ball clubs – the mediocre Cubs vs. the grossly underachieving White Sox.

Not exactly the matchup that’s going to inspire anyone to care – except for the fact that it provokes the standard South Side vs. North Side rivalry that exists in just about every aspect of Chicago’s nature.

Now I don’t know if I agree with one-time Chicago Tribune sports columnist Bernie Lincicome, who wrote a commentary for Friday implying that the match-up is lame and never mattered worth squat. Even though I’ll agree that interleague play feels like a distraction from the regular season games that matter!

BADU: The weekend's highlight?

I’d agree to the degree that being able to say you’ve beaten up on the Cubs isn’t any great achievement – every other ball club does the exact same thing. Why should this series be any different?

BUT THE FACT that neither of these teams is in any serious contention makes the matchup seem all the more cheap. It would be sad if the White Sox wind up saying that their Friday 1-0 victory was the season’s highlight. (A hit batsman, a stolen base, a sacrifice bunt and a sacrifice fly provided the lone run – Wee Willie Keeler would have been proud).

I didn’t even feel compelled to watch much of Friday’s White Sox victory on television. I actually caught a portion of a rerun where Buffy beat up on some ridiculous demon once again, before changing the channel to WGN where I caught the end of the White Sox’ broadcast.

The Cubs’ broadcast, by comparison, was relegated to Comcast Sports Network. Now I realize times have changed and the W-G-N call letters are no longer synonymous with baby blue baseball, but it still feels like a flawed juxtaposition.

I may not catch any of the other games. I have family obligations (my other relatives beckon on Saturday) that may keep me away from a television.

BESIDES, WHAT COULD have been the key baseball story of the series won’t happen. White Sox pitcher Jeff Samardzija last pitched on Thursday against the Toronto Blue Jays (winning 2-0). The former Chicago Cub from Valparaiso, Ind., won’t go against his former ball club.

That would have been interesting, because I wonder if the Cubs who fantasize that they still have a shot at a playoff spot this season ought to try to acquire Samardzija from the White Sox, who may wind up unloading ballplayers in hopes of saving money and picking up potential prospects for the future.
 

Will Chris Sale be the star of Tuesday's game?

It would be hilarious if Samardzija (who was supposed to bolster White Sox pitching for their ’15 pennant chances) wound up accomplishing the same thing for the Cubs instead.

Besides, the real meaning of this series is that we’re at the unofficial mid-point of the baseball season – the All Star Game will be played Tuesday in Cincinnati. Maybe the second half won’t be quite as depressing.

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No weather-related complaints here!

I don't want to hear any complaints from people concerning the weather.


I'm talking about the fact that it is expected to be hot Tuesday. Temperatures in the 90s, with other factors in play that make it feel more like 100 degrees.


BOY, THAT'S HOT!!!!


But I can't help but find it refreshing. Because I still recall Jan. 6 and those other days early in 2014 when we got hit with Arctic-like temperatures. That was cold. And messy with the frozen snowfall.


Besides, this is summertime in Chicago. It's supposed to get hot this time of year.


Not that I objected to the cool breezes of recent days. They were relaxing. But Tuesday's heat blast across the Midwestern U.S. seems more like a jolt of reality.


THAT, AND THE fact that Chicago has two ball clubs with losing records, with a mediocre football team scheduled to begin training camp next week, means that all is right with the world in the Second City.


Which means instead of whining about the weather, we ought to focus our attention on learning to pronounce "Bourbonnais." Lest we want to sound buffoonish in our upcoming rants about the Bears.


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“Hot, Hot, Hot” has nothing these days to do with Buster Poindexter

I missed the intense heat wave of 1995. That period of scorching summer when the city was so unprepared that the death toll shot up faster than the thermometer occurred back during the time I lived in Springfield, Ill.

Chicago's theme music these days?



But I read the reports and heard the stories from my brother and mother, who were here back then.

SO I CAN appreciate the fact that while these past few days have been immensely uncomfortable, we should be thankful that we don’t have an absurd death toll mounting higher and higher.

That comes even though we may set an all-time record, as forecasts on Friday were saying that Saturday’s official temperature for Chicago would exceed 100 degrees. That would be a fourth straight day of temperatures in the century mark.

And it has been a miserable string of days.

It has been a time period in which I am thankful to be a freelance writer who works from home. It reduces the amount of time I have to spend in the outdoors.

ALTHOUGH I DID have to venture outside at one point Thursday night to cover a news event for a suburban newspaper I do some work for. It was early evening, and I still wound up with notes soaking wet from my sweat. When I finally got back home, the steering wheel of my car was dripping from my perspiration.

And I couldn’t help but notice when I checked the weather forecast Friday morning, I learned that it already was 91 degrees – and allegedly felt more like 104 degrees, on a day when the temperature was forecast to reach 101 (and in reality reached 103 degrees at O'Hare International Airport by mid-day).

It has been a miserable few days. And the thought that keeps going through my mind these days is to wonder how people survived prior to the invention of air conditioning.

Even if this is a record-high and not the norm (1911 and 1947 are the only other years that Chicago had three straight days of 100-degree temperatures) for a Chicago summer, we still experience heat each and every year.

BUT IT SEEMS that no matter how much we feel miserable, we should be a little bit thankful.

Because like I have already stated, we don’t have much of a body count running yet  -- six deaths overall as of Friday night, which is barely more than the five shooting deaths that occurred Wednesday on Independence Day from hot-headed people who shouldn't be allowed near firearms, regardless of what the NRA thinks the Second Amendment means.

There have been people who have died during the past few days, but it does not appear that we have any deaths that were brought on solely by the heat.

Maybe it means we learned the lessons of ’95. At the very least, everybody seems to be aware of the concept of a “cooling center” – that special place where people can go if either they don’t have air conditioning, or it isn’t quite working properly in their homes.

ALTHOUGH IN MY case, I must confess to having adequate air conditioning AND a portable fan (which was a birthday gift from my mother just a couple of months before she died) blowing air directly on me while I work.

Which is about the only thing that has made these past few days bearable (and probably the only reason I haven’t shorted out my laptop computer with excess sweat while I write copy).

That, and one other fact. I keep seeing those long-term weather forecasts that tell me the temperatures will take a (relatively) dramatic plunge in the next few days.

Temperatures in the 80s is still summertime warm. I won’t be basking in the outdoors and shivering from the breezes.

BUT IT WILL be a notable drop – one that won’t feel quite so stuffy as though I’m being asked to inhale cotton when I breathe.

How good does this look right about now?

And when we get back to a time when we have sunny skies AND cool breezes, I think I will appreciate it all the more.

I know the weather has become extreme when I’m looking forward to the day when I can wear my leather jacket without having people around me look at me like I’m insane.

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You’re being watched!

Buckingham Fountain, from the days when its physical condition was less delicate than it was this week when three women went for a wade, only to get arrested. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

 Perhaps that is something we must all keep in mind with all the security cameras that police have erected around Chicago. You never know just when you’re being observed by the police.

That eerie feeling is the one I got from learning that three women got themselves arrested earlier this week for climbing into Buckingham Fountain, wading in the cold water, then climbing onto the fountain proper.

I’M NOT ABOUT to defend (or attack) these women, who appear to have got caught up in the spirit of summer’s end. They were at the fountain, got the urge to do something silly and fun, and now face a misdemeanor charge each of reckless conduct.

How did police catch them?

It seems that the security cameras erected around the city also are set on Buckingham Fountain – one of our city’s landmarks. Which means that an officer at the Police Department  headquarters at 35^th Street and Michigan Avenue (about 3.5 miles away) saw the women get into the water.

That officer was then able to alert police officers in the downtown area to get over to the fountain and “deal” with this problem.

WHICH IS WHY when the women were ready to get out of the fountain on their own, they found two police officers on hand – with 10 more cops quickly following them up.

Regardless of what one thinks of how stupid it was to go wading in Buckingham Fountain, there is something about the image of a dozen police officers converging on three women – one of whom is still a teenager – that is a combination of comical and oppressive.

It sounds like a Saturday Night Live sketch about bumbling bureaucratic “boys in blue.”

Whereas the image of an officer at police headquarters being able to watch so many parts of the city nowhere near himself comes off as downright oppressive. It’s eerie that we literally have no clue when we are being watched, or which of our petty actions may catch someone’s suspicion.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, the Chicago Tribune reports that the women don’t seem too apologetic for their stunt, which Chicago Park District officials say should be illegal because Buckingham Fountain is 83 years old and could easily have been damaged by their behavior.

One of the women literally talked about “youth” and how free spirits lead to “a transformation of a society and an individual for the best.”

Which strikes me as a lot of empty-headed hooey. When combined with the fact that I’d question how clean the Buckingham Fountain water is and whether I would want to wade around it it, I can’t help but think she may be a goof, but the police reaction still strikes me as a bit much.

But this is the trend in our city. Too many people seem willing to accept these cameras.

WHICH REALLY ARE all over the place in certain parts of the city.

The other day, I had a reason to drive through the South Side – specifically along 79^th Street from the Dan Ryan Expressway west until I got to Damen Avenue. I lost track of how many times I looked up at a lamp-post and saw one of those boxes with the Chicago Police Department logo and the flashing blue lights replicating a squad car Mars bar – letting people who live in those neighborhoods know what the women at Buckingham Fountain apparently did not.

You’re being watched.

Seriously, I think it was six such cameras erected in that 20-block stretch of Street, although I may have missed some. I feel like my drive along 79^th Street has been preserved for posterity – should the police suddenly feel the whim to look at it.

IT MAKES ME wonder just how many people the Chicago Police Department employs to sit in front of video screens and watch the content being produced by all those security cameras. It must be a virtual army of officers.

Either that, or more likely there is a good chance that much of what is being filmed never gets seen.

Which means that these three women who will have to go to court in coming weeks to learn just what the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office intends to do with them likely just had the dumb luck of having a police officer catch a glimpse of their particular camera at the exact moment they decided to take their dip.

A moment sooner (or perhaps later), and their wading in the murky water in the fountain would have gone unnoticed.

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