Thursday, April 04, 2013

Catholic Schools Could Become Ivory Towers of the Elite - Like Magnet, or Lab Schools



And now, therefore, I say to you, refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this council or this work be of men, it will come to nought; 39But if it be of God, you cannot overthrow it, lest perhaps you be found even to fight against God. And they consented to him. Acts of the Apostles 5: 38-39


The longer I live the more I learn about how things should not be done.  At one time government was a help; now it is cross-dressing Spendaholic Nanny Uncle with truth issues. At one time Mainline Protestant Denominations were the home to Progressive Babbitry; now, they are segment of Bill Moyers-in-Drag on Sharia Law.

Catholic schools used be very economical, because Brothers, Priests and Nuns comprised a good percentage of the work-force; now, Catholic schools are either doomed to close, or be ivory bell-towers for elites.

It is the in-between  that tells the tales.  Government became a soup-kitchen, tent-city and Circus maximus from the late 1960's - 1990's.  Mainline Protestant Denominations squeezed out the bible-thumpers between Billy Graham and Rev. Barry Lynn while jumping ship from the tepidly pro-abortion Rockefeller GOP to the mad-dog infanticidal maniacs of the DNC.

Catholic schools are run and staffed by lay-persons with very few exceptions ever since Vatican II.

During the 1970's smart Catholic school leaders began to tap private foundations as sources of money that could help make up the gap between revenue and expense, due to declining vocations.  By the 1980's wormy creatures named Development Directors oozed from charity swamps - this slug is one.

 I first heard the term Director of Development in the mid 1980's and the school I worked for hired one.  He lasted about ten months, brought in no new revenue, but he had a stunning wardrobe and golfed like he jumped off the The Tour.

 He had come from the world of business, sales - radio sales to be exact.  He did not understand, or like high school kids very much as I recall, but he liked teachers even less. He drew a pretty handsome salary, but never wrote to Alumni, sent out grant proposals and seemed unable to adequately articulate the history, culture and mission of the school.

He was let go and went on to run a United Way Campaign in Central Illinois for three times what he made in a Catholic school.  This Fund-raising Professional was replaced by a sweet, funny and seventy year old Sister of the Congregation of Notre Dame.  Sr. Madeline Lamar, CND.  She went through the records of the schools and developed the first Alumni Directory, followed by a raffle-calendar, a Spring Event with Dinner and Auction, a wonderful Alumni News letter, and the first annual direct mail campaign.

Prior to that Sr. Lamar worked in the offices answering phones, taking attendance, teaching religion and making students feel good. That was where I learned fundraising.  Watching a sweet-natured little French woman 'Try" stuff.  When Sr. Lamar approached with a her eyes popped in excitement, you were in for some work, " Hey, Pat!  You're Irish . . .and you are so good with words . . .You know what would be fun?  Designing our Raffle Calendar and writing up an Irish Theme for it. . . .AND you get a band going!  Yeah, your Irish band from Chicago . . .and you and Kenny, Jack, Rick, and Joel could do a rock'n roll show for the kids and . . . ! "

Scads of fun.  Months of fun!  Who needs weekends sucking up Rhinelanders and tossing horseshoes?  She had me hooked through the gills and my big mouth!


School fundraising can be brutally disappointing, exhilarating, flattering, embarrassing, rewarding and confusing all on the same day. You can help raise more than million dollars to aid a budget of $ 1.2M and find that it is not enough.  That's the job. . .read the fine print.

Catholic schools and families who need Catholic schools need substantial support.  Public schools hijacked many of the larger private and corporate  foundations by dint of political favors and intimidations.   Catholic politicians have done more to help public education, than they have to help the schools that educated them.
In the 1990's, my neighbor and friend Paul Vallas was CEO of CPS.   Kidding on the square, I often refered to the big talented Greek as the Prince of Darkness - Paul took Peoples Gas, Quaker Oats, Polk Brothers and other charities out of the reach of Catholic, Dutch, Jewish and Lutheran schools and established a Chicago Public Education Reform Foundation headquartered in . . .Evanston.

Leo had big hearted and heroic Bob Foster's name as 501 (c) 3 cache, but Paul Vallas had the crabby little guy who tossed tantrums and people under the CTA wheels with the bat of an eye-brow. Any business in Chicago became enthralled to padding millions of more dollars on to the hundreds of millions of tax-dollars being incinerated hourly by Chicago Public Schools.

School Choice? Vouchers?  Nope! Choice boiled down to Charters (Catholic Schools without God) or CPS havens for teachers without skills, or Magnet Palaces for the skilled and enthusiastic teacher and children of privilege.  That's Reform, folks.

Catholic schools, elementary and secondary, shuttered with regularity under Joseph Cardinal Bernardin - Joseph the Closer and continued until Cardinal George stopped the bleeding and appointed Sister Mary Paul McCaughey. However, the damage had been done.  Elementary feeder schools that had at one time been the recruitment pools for Catholic high schools.  The closer a high school happened to be to the inner city ( read South and West sides) the tougher the draw for students. Not only the fact that black Catholic parishes had been closed, but also the African American middle class Diaspora to the 'Burbs. Black flight had replaced White flight.

On top of that, Chicago City Hall saw the potential for a real estate boom and quickly shut down Chicago Housing Authority and the Projects.   With no affordable housing available families with Section 8 vouchers   took residence in formerly Black middle class apartments and houses.  The crime that had once been isolated along the east side Dan Ryan between 54th Street and Archer Ave. was now knocking on the doors of Ernie Terrell in Roseland and retired physicians and CPD Commanders in Pill Hill.

Through all of this, the economy tanked and layoffs became the order of the day.

A few Catholic high schools closed or were converted to Charter schools and the once powerful support by private foundations began to dry up almost as fast as the tuition payments slowed down.

Foundations, with boards dominated by lawyers, businessmen and accountants, do not want to fund schools that are doomed to close. They want schools run like like businesses - cut here, profit there. At the same time,Catholic schools that put    $10,15, or 25 thousand a year from grants into the budget were now seeing letters that said, " While our decision to longer fund your school is final, we continue to honor and value the very good and important work you continue without our annual support." Concern over that state of schools that might be closed, leads bottom-line sensible boards to pull funding from schools that really need it.
Now, that is a paradox.

Some of these foundations decided money would be better spent funneled through a university "Mentoring Program for Inner City Students Attending Inner City High Schools."

Catholic schools that operate like businesses have no trouble maintaining vigorous business and private support.  Those schools tend to be schools with a very competitive enrollment and placement program, provide competitive teacher salaries, sport magnificent campus, library and athletic facilities and students willing to travel many miles to earn the cache of association with that school.  These schools can demand       $ 8,000, 9,000 and up 15,000 per year, as well as a fund-raising commitment based upon family income.

Now, more working class and middle class families are finding the pink slip in the pay envelope.  An accountant formerly making $ 85,000 in a smart-sized City, or County Department awakens in his heavily mortgaged and taxed Chicago bungalow and struggles the thought of selling his home and taking his two daughters out of Queen of Peace High School.  A highly skilled cement finisher is no longer in demand to fix sidewalks, stairs and porches must wonder if ' Tommy, Mary and Liam will be happy at Clissold CPS on Western Ave. after so many years at St. Cajetan?'

Catholic schools should be only for those who can afford nose-bleed tuitions.  Catholic schools were established for poor and working class families.  The Office of Catholic Schools and the heroic Big Shoulders Fund are working 24-7 to maintain this historical mission.

Leo High School is and has always been a working man's school.  With Tuition set at $ 7,500 for next year, we know that very few of families can meet that cost.  Likewise, Leo High School wants families to know that a Catholic education is available for young men.  President Dan McGrath invites families to qualify for the Leo Advantage.

We'll see, as Gamaliel told the lads of the Temple who wanted to close down the first Christians,  " if it be of God, you cannot overthrow it."







Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Will CPS Rahm Go All Edwin Starr? And How Far?


Come on, Feet! Start Movin'!    Uh huh huh huh huh , Uh huh huh huh huh huh yeah It's twenty five miles from home Girl, my feet are hurting mighty bad/Now I've been walking three day, 'n two lonely night/You know that I'm mighty mad

With Saturday as the deadline for parents of CPS children to be ignored on the upcoming school closings, some CPS parents want Mayor Rahm Emanuel to diminish some leather from the sole-bottoms of his Florsheims:


CITY HALL —  Parents and community activists have formally invited Mayor Rahm Emanuel to "walk the walk" when it comes to the controversial plans to shutter 54 public schools in Chicago.
And they say they literally mean "walk the walk."
Parents and members of organizations, including Blocks Together and the Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education, rallied on the fifth floor of City Hall, just outside Emanuel's office Tuesday morning to protest the proposed closures. 
The protesters invited Emanuel to join planned weekly walks from schools slated to close to the schools that would receive the displaced students.


 Ain't that something.  CPS and the educational geniuses they always tap with Progressive ideas on small schools* do studies aplenty but can not read gang graffitti, or bother to understand what constitutes a neighborhood demographic - it ain't all income disparities juxtaposed to more affluent communities.  It has to do with what three or four blocks are GD's, Stones, Vice Lords, Mikey Cobras, Four Corner Hustlers, or Latin Kings.


Fenger was 'smart sized' at this time. because Carver was turned into a military academy and kids that did not deire to, or could not possibly go all GI Joe were required to travel west from Altgeld Gardens/ Pullman to Roseland. Guess what? Different Stokes Hit Different Folks, or Peoples.

Fenger made national news when several lads went to the lumber. Even PBS saw the turn-around plan as the catalyst for violence:



An inner city kid can not walk Chicago streets - not because of Burge, or systemic racism, but because he, or she might cross a street that two days before had been the site of a murder.  If the kid is not known to be from those streets ('He stays with his uncle on Euclid') and happens to be walking to school, that child is a victim to be confronted, beaten, or murdered in response to the previous homicide.

School closings will happen.  It is planned and decided upon.

Parents should be worried about how their kids will get to school -damn worried.

Rahm and CPS and CTU have all the charts and figures and studies that ask if "students feel they are getting the Context of Support?"

If Rahm goes on a Mayoral perambulation, he should spund track the stroll -




The very simple to  solution to all of this nonsense - Send Your Kids To Catholic Schools!
*Chicago High School Redesign Initiative (CHSRI). In partnership with CPS, the effort was launched by the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and local funders. It began
in September 2001 with a $12 million grant from the
Gates Foundation, matched by $6 million from foundations in Chicago, and ultimately will develop andsupport approximately 25 new small high schools. . . .

Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Catholic Schools - It Ain't Just About the Bucks



Catholic schools operate on tuition ( which is brutal to budget and, in this economy, for families to meet) and on fund-raising.  The cost of educating a student in a Catholic high school runs in the pricey neighborhood of $15,000.  Most Catholic schools set tuition for families in the still burdensome area of $ 8,500.  Many schools will have a tuition exceeding $ 10,000 per year including books, fees and the bells and whistles like transportation.

Most people who send their children to Catholic schools are church going, religious Catholics, or church going, religious non-Catholics.  They are accustomed, or rather acculturated, to obligations of time, talent and treasure beyond the immediate necessities and desires of their family.  They give from the pew and write checks to charities and the schools their children attend over and above the required tuition payments.  Not only that they, as citizens of Chicago, Cook County and Illinois, pay the highest taxes in the United States in support of the sad and expensive public schools.

Many of these same tax-payers work for the very government agencies that vacuum their checking and savings accounts as well as provide a modest salary.  Many of these people are being down-sized.  I know of scores of Dads in my neighborhood who have been forced out of work in the last eight years and more who expect to be let-go in the next few months.  The other day, I spoke to one of my daughter's classmates at Mother McAuley, whose father is now entering his first year as an apprentice tradesman, after being a five-figure accountant for Cook County from the time he had gotten out of college twenty-five years ago. His bride works at Jewel on 103rd Street and has done so since he was 'smart-sized.'

His daughter will graduate in June and go on to college after being educated in Catholic grammar and high school.  They are blessed.

Other families with children still attending Catholic grade school are not so fortunate.  How will a family of modest income and monstrous taxes afford a Catholic education for its children?

We work on it.  This Sunday, the Catholic New World, reported on two initiatives that have been on-going these last three years. One is the strategic plan developed by the Cardinal, Sister Mary Paul McCaughey and the School Board and the other is the Big Shoulders Assistance Initiative. The Strategic Plan is a common sense setting of viability parameters and expectations for best practices.  The Big Shoulders Commitment is much sexier, because it answers the demands of the strategic plan -

The March 6 announcement was precipitated by donors calling and asking about the future of Catholic schools in the lower income communities that the Big Shoulders Fund serves.
“In contrast to what is happening to innercity Catholic schools nationally, enrollment has grown in our schools for three consecutive years through concerted efforts focused on marketing and need-based scholarships, while fundraising has increased each year,” the statement said. “This growth is evidence of increasing interest in the success of our schools and students.”
The Big Shoulders Fund currently provides $12 to $14 million in annual support for 93 inner-city Catholic schools educating nearly 24,000 children in Chicago. This support includes renewable and emergency scholarships coupled with strategic investments in marketing and development, in academic programs and resources and in enrichment programs for students. This year, Big Shoulders Fund will provide $6 million in scholarships to more than 5,000 children in preschool through 12th grade.
The amount of money Big Shoulders Fund provides for schools has grown to its current level from $5 million to $6 million a year only seven or eight years ago, Hale said. The new commitment relies on a continued increase in its fundraising capacity.
“We’re already out there raising the money,” he said.
The statement said the Big Shoulders Fund will invest directly in several schools to help them become more viable.

As I mentioned most Catholic schools are attended by the children of Catholics who have had a tradition of paying tuition.  Leo High School is not most Catholic schools.  Most of our students come from families who had opted for Chicago Public Schools to educate their boys in CPS elementary schools.  Our families found CPS to be most disappointing and the entrance scores of in-coming Leo students who attended CPS schools reflect that opinion.

Leo High School. like other Catholic schools in the African American neighborhoods of Chicago, is refered to as a "Pay School."  That is the CPS anti-marketing meme, I believe. e.g. - "If Raheem does not attend CVS, or South Shore, Mrs. Smith, you'd need to send him to a Pay School!"

Mrs. Smith is more than willing pay for a Catholic School.

Read the articles on the two initiative by committed people and the means by which families trying to keep their noses above the mortgages, taxes, repairs, expenses and tuitions can get a Catholic education.

I will be telling you how Leo High School is going to offer a very sexy opportunity for a Leo Catholic Education over next couple of weeks.  We are going to show a bit more ankle than our pals Jim O'Connor, Tommy Zbierski and Josh Hale of the Big Shoulders.  As Leo President Dan McGrath says, "This is how we roll!"

Catholic schools keep God in play.  Catholic schools teach core values of family and citizenship without blush.  Catholic schools teach the consequences and rewards of behavior.    Our students behave in a manner that reflects credit on their families, their race and their religion -Catholic, Evangelical, Muslim, or Jewish.  

Catholic schools are not only about the costs, they are about the values.

Monday, April 01, 2013

April Fools: Rahm's Mag Mile and Forrest Claypool's CTA: Nobody to Help Stop Well-Accessoried Teens



"There was nobody to help. There was no time, really. We were surrounded it happened in one stop, and then they got off the next stop, at Lake,'' she said. 27 year old woman victimized on Forrest Claypool's CTA

Was it a 'melee' as the Sun Times reports?  An altercation over smoker's rights?  A 'wilding'? 'Flash Mob?  

No, this was behavior rooted in the sad, secular, systemic mess we call public education.  This was not a storming of the Bastille, or Bolivarista Peoples Revolution that is so much a part of 'elementary education expert' Bill Ayer's doctrine.

The kids were well-clothed, nutritionally robust, energetic, focused and more than moderately accoutered with the latest Apple or Microsoft entertainment and communication applications and devices that would make Jobs and Gates glow with appreciation.  Both techno Edisons are icons of public education.

More so, from most accounts, these kids who look like the cast of a Disney series availed themselves of public transportation - the CTA.

The Sun Times feature leads off with the word melee, an innocuous sounding term for 'beating the supreme shit' out of another human being for no earthly good reason.

At least the Chicago Tribune account presented the facts of the attack as provided by the victim.

Now, a melee is a combat between two willing opponents - it is a term that arose from Middle Ages when knights and other men-at-arms squared off according to the rules of combat - most Catholic school kids know that.

The attack of a woman on the west side L smacks not of a melee -


A 27-year-old woman said she was returning home with her mother Saturday night on the Red Line after a dim sum dinner when a group of girls got on the train at the Monroe station and appeared to want to pick a fight.
"This girl started blowing smoke in my face, and she flicked her cigarette ashes at me,'' said the woman, who asked not to be identified. "I said: 'You need to put that out,' and the next thing I know there's all these girls that jumped on top of us.''
They began punching her face and then went for her hair. She believes their attackers had knives or box cutters and padlocks possibly placed inside socks."I put my head down between my legs so they would stop beating me in the face, but they were trying to pull my face up and hit me more,'' she said. "They ripped out chunks of my hair, and I've got a black eye and bruises on my face, and all over my back and shoulder.''
The 11 teenagers arrested in that incident at the CTA's State/Lake station in the Loop about 6:35 p.m. were among a total of 28 people arrested downtown Saturday night for disturbances that ranged from bumping into passers-by on sidewalks to the attack on the CTA train, authorities said.
The attackers were teenage girls, who have been taught under an educational rubric of entitlement.  I believe that these confused kids act out because they believe that they are entitled act out - after all they were encouraged to cheer on Occupy  idiots, NATO bomb-makers and their teachers who abandoned them last summer.  These kids have been taught, not the etymology and application of a word like melee, that personal empowerment is entitlement - what are they supposed to do?

What are you supposed to do?  Move.  Move out of Chicago.  It is all about real estate, Neighbors.  Real estate to be developed for green spaces, cultural entertainment and dining venues, fitness centers, and certainly no homes, apartments, or dwellings beyond the planned Urban Center Chicago  Urban Center Chicago is not for Stash, Wanda, Tony, Maria, Nacho, Teresa, Paddy, Nora, Clifton and Carmesha and their damn kids. It is for Aprile, Dak, E. Morton and Misty Salt, Spencer and Seth.

When public safety has lost all meaning; when basic city services are denied, or diminished by executive fiat, when schools become training grounds for thugs, it might be time to move.

That is why public safety has been purchased at the hands of the G. Flint Taylors, Jon Loevys, Locke Bowmans and the GDS, Vice Lords, Four Corner Hustlers, Mikey Cobras, and Latin Kings, as well as a grant or two for Ceasefire, while any and all public confidence in Chicago Police has been eroded.

That is why more people are alright with Privatizing Sanitation with the Garbage Grid. Seth and Spencer want those over-paid snoring louts fired. Seth and Spencer would be perfectly happy if the Fire Department were hired out and those tubby Mc911 heroes would leave for Romeoville.

That is why an otherwise unemployable good like Forrest Claypool keeps popping up and handed the wheel and throttle of public transportation - he is about Bombardier purchases, Red Line contracts and Ventra Cards and not the safety of a young lady and her mother who foolishly believe that riding the L should be violence free.

Don't think for minute that Forrest Claypool* gives a fat rat's ass about CTA riders, otherwise the CTA would  have addressed thuggery on public transportation long ago. Smart guy like Forrest could do just about anything to reform anything, if he really wanted to; at least that is what the news media always says.

That is why Mayor Rahm Emanuel can sleep nights after putting the bite on President Obama for a loan of $100 million buckeens to gussy up the Riverwalk, rather than hire more cops, improve their working conditions and really do something about melees by the kids.

He might even really try to improve public schools by demanding Vouchers.

Nope.  It is easier to wait for the frustrated, the frightened and the families to move the hell away, while his cheerleaders in the media wring-hands.


*



Sunday, March 31, 2013

Happy Easter, Christ Has Risen! Now, Let's Roll Back the Big Stone Keeping Schools in a Cave

A Chicago police officer takes several protesters into custody on Wednesday, during an act of civil disobedience during a march and demonstration of opponents to a plan to close 54 Chicago Public Schools.


Kids believe only what is taught to them.  Last night 28 kids, most under the age of 18, were arrested on Chicago's Mag Mile for intimidating people and another bunch were arrested following an assault on a woman who asked that the kids put out their cigarettes. I do not believe that the youngsters were engaged in civil disobedience demanding that CPS keep failing schools open, nor were they concerned with the plight of LGBTQ citizens.

From this same edition of the paper, the Opinion section of the Chicago Tribune was thick with opinions on both issues as being fundamental to life on our planet.  The school closings?  I see them them as part of the overall Rahm Plan to shrink the City of Chicago ( services) down to an Urban Center.  Likewise, the abhorrent incivility tolerated on Chicago Transportation systems by the Mayor and CTA Boss Forrest Claypool is a component in this plan.  Why else would a Mayor not do his utmost to light a fire under his appointee to interdict such behavior and provide the necessary police officers at his disposal to correct the situation?  Answer.  It is not part of the Plan.

The Plan includes a $ 100 million dollar loan to gussy up the River Walk, but not seek a loan to hire more cops.

Back to the schools. The closed schools, the largest school closing in American history, are  real estate.

Take a look at who is protesting the school closings ( CTU's Karen Lewis & Jesse Sharkey)  - they worked with Mayor Emanuel to engineer the closings.  Their Red-shirted Dragon Dance through the Loop last week provided Bill Ayers and opportunity to be described as an "elementary school expert' in the Chicago media, as well as swell venue for SEIU to play civil disobedience for cameras without the possibility of arrest.  Tickets were issued.

For the last thirty years Bill Ayers* and the well-camouflaged Mike Klonsky have trained a generation of radicals who now control Chicago Teachers Union through CORE.  Chicago Public Schools have nose-dived deeper into the tax-dollars from the moment the Annenberg Challenge was boarded and looted by Bolsheviks and took command of the Education Department at University of Illinois at Chicago.  Here's a challenge.  How many UICC disciples of Billy Ayers are CPS teachers?

The idea of schools has been entombed in a cave behind the boulder rolled by Ayers and Klonsky.

Schools should reflect the neighborhoods they serve.  Catholic schools most certainly do just that and graduates of Catholic schools, black, brown and white manage to avoid massive arrests on Mag Mile and intimidate passengers on the CTA.

Ayers and Klonsky made small schools (cadres) wholesome to lazy and not very bright editorial boards and columnists.   Schools fail, because they are supposed to do just that.

Chicago is a Catholic city.  No matter how much Eric Zorn, Mary Schmich, Neil Steinberg, Carol Marin, Clarence Page, Dawn Turner Trice, or WTTW try to obscure that fact, Catholics rub up against Baptists, Unitarians, AME, Lutheran, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, Dutch Reformed and atheist neighbors.  Schools should reflect that fact, but they are not allowed to do that.

Christ died on Friday, busted Hell's prisoners out on Saturday, and triumphed over death today, when he rolled back the big rock.

The big rock blocking real schools and the idea of a school is still wedged in pretty deep.   Kids are taught what to fear and given no means to conquer fear.  Behavior reflects what people are all about.


*"Elementary education expert and professor Bill Ayers — who has sparked controversy on the national political scene with his ties to President Obama — was in the crowd in support of teachers.
" 'The assault on public education and abandonment of these communities has to be resisted,' Ayers said." Chicago Sun Times

Saturday, March 30, 2013

The Bravest Easter Bunny Ever!


On Nov 16th 2012 our lives were completely changed forever, our 4 yr old daughter AVA was diagnosed with stage 3 neuroblastoma high risk, this is our journey with her... Ava's Family on Facebook
This Holy Saturday, the day when Christ Harrowed Hell, this old sob-sister was treated to a heroic little girl. Ava!

Ava was the inspiration of us south siders who attended the recent St. Baldrick's Fight for the Cure at Bourbon Street on Saturday, March 9th.

Ava had another surgery after the Fight Night and took her first step on the road back with the help of her Dad and Mom.Photo: Mommy and Ava walking :) <3

Tell me marriage does not matter.

Christ Jesus, Victor! This makes me happy!

Friday, March 29, 2013

Rahm's Garbage Grid, Layoffs and Meeting Tuition Payments for Catholic Schools


 
The Beverly Review recently reported on a meeting of residents of the 19th Ward and Alderman Matt O'Shea. 
"The program concluded with a discussion on the city’s move to a grid garbage collection system that will be implemented in the 19th Ward in 2013. The program, O’Shea said, will save the city between $15 and $17 million in 2013 and $20 million in 2014 by essentially doing the same amount of work with fewer crews.
Currently, O’Shea said, there are 11 Streets and Sanitation crews that work five days a week to collect garbage in the 19th Ward. Under a grid system, all 48 of the city’s Streets and Sanitation crews will “saturate” an area of the city at once, thereby eliminating the work of seven crews per week (55 minus 48).
The 19th Ward’s garbage collection day under the grid system will most likely be Monday, O’Shea said, and recycling pick-up will continue every other week. Local residents, he said, will receive written notification before the new system is implemented." (emphases my own)

This gives me pause.  Great pause.  The same amount of work will be performed by fewer crews, who now work five days per week, but they will be part of a 48 crew city-wide.  Seven crews will be eliminated.

Is that seven(7) crews Tops?  Citywide?  Which Ward's crews will get the chop?  Back in 2008 when the well-coiffed Inspector General Dave Hoffman was all the rage, a typical garbage collection crew consisted of  three persons.( an MTD, the driver, and two Laborers) who work 8 1/2 hour days 30 minutes of paid lunch.

Even the well-coiffed IG Dave Hoffman had to admit that Bureau of Sanitation (BOS) workers had a "dirty and smelly job."  Gee, You Think, Dave?   Dave wrote a hair-raisingly hysterical Jeremiad against these 'dirty and smelly' crews in 2008 and bean-counted his assessment that most crews ( Dave counted *only 10 Wards out of the 50 btw) to the conclusion that these 'dirty and smelly' workers loafed an average of TWO HOURS A DAY!!!!!!!!

Systemic Loafing, People!!!!! Quod Erat Demonstrandum!!!!  We need the Garbage Grid Pronto!

Hey, thanks for playing your part there Dave!  How are things working out for you in the post-political life?

Well, the Grid is coming.  More crews will be laid-off, smart-sized, re-configured, no longer compensated, bereft of salary.  Thank God, for the great souled reformers! Why even this morning the Sun Times caught some poor slob napping on the job!

You see that is how Progressives roll.  Find some clouted mope who games the system, tag his behavior as SYSTEMIC, and fire hundreds of solid people standing in the way of some Red Light Camera, $100 M. Riverwalks**, CPS - Our Lady of Perpetual Helplessness, Garbage Grid, Claypool's Pee-breaks, Ventra Card, or Bombardier CTA Car boondoggle, which are the necessary components to Chicago -Urban Center.

What will happen to the families of Sanitation Crew member laid off in sacrifice to Progressive Mammon?

Well, they won't be making obscene lower middle class salaries; that's for sure.  Some MTD Streets and San Driver with three kids in Catholic Schools had better re-evaluate his life choices!  Some Laborers will need to pull Marsha from Queen of Peace High School and send her Madam Curie.

The City workers that I know are breeders who send their kids to Catholic elementary and secondary schools.  Like their neighbors who happen to be electricians, carpenters, cement finishers and sprinkler fitters, the Hope & Change Economy, that is GW Bush's fault 100%,  they can only hope that something will change.  Well, there is Marriage Equality, after all, but that won't pay the $10 K tuition for a Catholic high school education.

The Progressive gets a win-win out of this.  With Garbage Grid and other up-coming City of Chicago employment downturns ( privatized police and fire n'cest pas?), fewer families can afford to send their kids to Catholic schools and fewer kids will learn Catholic teaching and fewer voices will oppose SYSTEMIC CHANGES UNIVERSAL!

Huzzah!  It's an Andy Shaw Rodeo, folks!

Nope, Rahm's Garbage Grid and Obama's Economy are here to stay.  Catholic Schools like Leo High School are working hard to help our middle and lower middle class neighbors meet the opportunity to get a Catholic Education.  It is a systemic thing with Catholics.

Over the next few weeks, I explain exactly how Chicago families can budget against Rahm's Garbage Grid and the Obama Economy.


*"Between May and September, IG investigators spied on 77 garbage truck drivers and 145 laborers in 10 wards. They reported what they called "systemic, pervasive" waste and fraud".Tribune

** Please diagram the following sentence - "The truth is, we're now at a juncture in the history of the city of reintroducing the city to the river and the river to the city," Emanuel said. Chicago Tribune


Thursday, March 28, 2013

Where is CTU Mastermind Jesse Sharkey in Chicago Media Coverage of CTU Outrage? The Reds are Denouncing Jesse and Karen Lewis



"Let's not pretend that when you close schools on the South and West sides, the children affected aren't black," Lewis said. "Let's not pretend that's not racist." Chicago Tribune

Amid growing opposition to planned school closures and consolidations in Chicago, Illinois, a March 4 Socialistworker.org article entitled “Rahm's scorched-earth assault on our schools” crudely attempts to re-write the history of events surrounding the assault on public education in the city.Socialist Worker, the publication of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), seeks to whitewash the role of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), in which it has a leadership position. ISO member Jesse Sharkey is the current vice president of the CTU. Far from opposing the closure of schools, the CTU and the ISO have collaborated in implementing the Obama administration's school “reforms” with Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel. WSWS

Wow, hard to get happy after that one, Jesse. Who's the racists?  You? Karen? Rahm? Arne "Demosthenes" Duncan? President Obama? Whom to believe?

Here is the Chicago Media coverage of yesterdays Occupy the Loop with Karen & Jesse & CTU & SEIU lalapalooza singing like Joan Baez with VISA commercial contract and then there is the World Socialist Web Site going all Stalin on ISO member and CTU VP Jesse Sharkey the Karl Rove of the XXX Red Shirts.

The difference is that Jesse Sharkey is invisible in the Chicago Media coverage, while Jesse Sharley is universally denounced as a running dog counter-revolutionary Obama/Rahm stooge in the authenticist Lefty organs.

Denunciation is as Lefty as a Saul Alinsky Hoe-Down on WTTW, or a Studs Terkel Fashion Retrospective.
The Chicago news organs dedicated to whomever they take their daily meme rations has some old-timey Public Radio-worthy copy - let's begin with this pearl from the Medill sausage -

Among those who were sitting on LaSalle Street in front of City Hall hoping to be arrested in an act of civil disobedience was Tom Balanoff, president of the Service Employees International Union Local 1. He said he was demonstrating to show that massive school closings are "not the right direction. This is not the way to really solve the problem in education."
Balanoff said he had been arrested in acts of civil disobedience "many times over the years."
"It's as American as apple pie," he said.
Sing me some Joe Hill, there Union Maid!

Then we have the Sun Times which not only trotted out compelling "it's about the children" laments from real folks, but also this bit of nonsense news -

Elementary education expert and professor Bill Ayers — whose ties to President Obama sparked controversy because of Ayers 1960s radicalism — was in the crowd in support of teachers and kids like his granddaughters who attend CPS schools.
“The assault on public education and abandonment of these communities has to be resisted,” Ayers said. “How can we abandon public education at this point in history and move away from the one thing that’s going to give people hope for the future, and that is a solid powerful education.”

Makes you want to bomb something, don't it?

There is the obligatory accounts of Chicago's Ed.- Zeppelin CTU President Karen Lewis tossing race-cards at Rahm like so many Frisbees and third person narratives about Dr. Bennet-Byrd and Mayor Rahm and the mention of Aldermen who really, really, really care - Ricardo Munoz, Bob Fiorreti and. of course America's favorite family guy Rev. Jesse Jackson -unquoted.

No Jesse Sharkey*?

Salon, a clearing house for smug Progressive shouting, quotes Jesse Sharkey ISO/CTU with this fiery hammer and sickle that somehow went unmentioned in Chicago's reportage:

“The only thing that’s like it( Rahm's Murder of Schools) is Hurricane Katrina,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey of the potential devastation, “except this is being done on purpose.” ( parenthetical my own)


The WSWS goes on to really give Karen and Jesse a comeuppance -


The ISO closes its article with the claim, “As the CTU rightly argues, we should oppose all school closings and stand up against Rahm's scorched-earth war on public education...”
This too is a lie. Lewis made it clear on the second day of the strike that CTU accepted the mayor’s plan to shut down schools. The main concern of the CTU leadership was to ensure that school shutdowns be carried out with the collaboration of the union and not unilaterally by CPS.
Lewis told the Chicago Tribune September 12, “We understand the whole movement of closing schools and doing it aggressively... we either do this together in some reasonable way or we will always be fighting, and I think the key is that the people that are making these decisions want to make them unilaterally.”
In the aftermath of the strike, during a November episode of Chicago Tonight, CTU Vice President Sharkey said nothing to oppose what he termed the “unpopular policy” of school shutdowns, and instead advised that it need be carried out in an orderly fashion. “There’s no point in closing schools until there is a plan in place.”
Speaking at a union organized rally earlier that month, Sharkey said, “What the school board should do is take a year off. Have a moratorium on school closings and have a real process where there is a study of plans and the people who are part of the coalition here, the parents, the community and the teachers of Chicago have real input into what happens to our schools.”
This “real input” has been a series of sham hearings on the school closures and consolidations, where thousands of parents, teachers and students have voiced their opposition to the closures.
On February 11, CTU president Karen Lewis released a video announcing CTU would be sending organizers to assist those displaced by school closures. She admonished teachers—many who will be losing their jobs, and many more whose teaching conditions will become much more difficult after the closures—to support the CTU's efforts to do so.

Which side are you on, Bill Ayers, you elementary education plutocrat?

Why is Chicago's media taking the side of capitalists?

HOW much longer will Americans be satisfied with the endless Progressive Banquet of Bullshit?




                    Here's a good start - send you kids to a Catholic School.


* 24 hour Jesse Sharkey News:


  

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Climbing Chicago - My Spring Break Ascent of the Dan Ryan Woods Hill.

Easy ascent in the Winter of 1965 - me and guys from 75th & Wood.

For the most part . . .except when Maury Lanigan decided to kamikaze guys and then rub their mugs in snow and threaten further outrages of a much more sinister nature were one to rat him out.
I am a man who enjoys a challenge and the testing of my male mettle with a vigorous assault on the senses and the spirit. I watched the entire Cheyenne Marathon presented on Encore Western channel only this Christmas break without taking meals and answering the call of nature with an Olympic dash and powerful discharge of uric fluids that fair shot me airborne during the Cheyenne Bodie Theme Song.



Yes, sir!

Yesterday Leo President Dan McGrath and I travelled to Kankakee to inspect vehicles that may be become part of the Leo Motor Pool.  Midwest Transit Equipment is largest purveyor of buses, shuttle wagons, casino caravans and vans for sale and lease to schools and charities. This vast surplus sales venue just north of the Kankakee County Fairgrounds reminded Dan of the Navy's Mothball Fleet which he passed daily as sports editor of San Francisco Chronicle

We had a productive visit followed by a meal of man-sized proportions at the legendary Longbranch in L'Erable, Il.

During the meal, we discussed our shared duties and obligations to Leo HS over the spring break.  Dan would man the ramparts development and organizational on Spy Wednesday and I would post myself visible in the hallowed halls on Holy Thursday.  We would both steward the school on Good Friday.

"What will you do with a day off, Pat?" asked my superior and friend.  I gave the issue of time-off some thought.  " I believe I will attempt a morning ascent of the hills of Dan Ryan Woods," I answered with my temperamentally uncharacteristic challenge to physical exertions.

" Well, good luck to you."

Luck indeed.  Generations of Leo High School footballers and very few of Little Flower gridiron Argives ran the slopes of those challenging hills in full pads and helmets under the Spartan eyes of coaches Arneberg, Hanlon Foster, Lord and Houlihan.

The Dan Ryan Woods boasts the highest land elevation above the city of Chicago and at one time was the greatest toboggan slide in the world.

Below is an aerial view of the Woods within the City. Remember top is North and bottom south:



At 87th noted by the pine tree is the highest point above Chicago.

I tasked a Sherpa - retired Chicago Parks Supervisor and physical fitness director Marlin "Bud" Speed.  Bud Speed managed the field houses at O'Halleran Park at 1800 West 83rd Street, coached CPD Bee-Wee Football and ' ran the order' for the Leo Lights and Heavies between 1965-1975.


Bud knows these hills. Bud gave hundreds of Chicago lads lessons in the life vigorous.

I asked Bud Speed, " How should I best prepare for this ascent?"

"When's the last time you climbed?"

" 1966, or there about . . .No!  I just remembered I had to climb the hills at the Leo Freshman game with Gordon Tech this fall . . "

" I really don't give a shit.  What are you climbing the hills for anyway, old age made you soft in the head as  every where else?"

You any of you noticed that mobidly obese behemoths not only gulp gallons of Diet Pepsi, but also tend to commentary of every other person on the planet but elepant on the rascal?

Nevertheless, I had interrupted Bud's viewing of the latest edition of Jugs and Ammo in order to prep for the climb.  Ignoring the commentary on my sagging excess epidermal manifestations, I continued, " Should I carbo-breakfast or wait until completing my descent?"

" Eat first, Dipshit, that way you won't die hungry."

This AM, after taking my daughter Clare and two of her buddies for day Two of their Red Cross Safety Certification Classes at the Chicago AG School, I followed the master's instructions to letter with a Chicago Style Hot Dog ( 1 only & certainly no fries) and amended the dietary regimen by firing up a Marlboro Red.

I faced the summit and pressed headlong up the 40 Degrees incline. I thought of my friends and acquaintances who had endured this crucible during the dog-days of August Triple Sessions and laughed my ass off.  Thank God, I did not go to Leo.  I would have probably just faked an injury or submitted to the branding of "Pussied Out!"  Hurtful remarks make not a heart attack.

From the tree-walled summit I took in the majestic panorama of my native south side.  This is a happy place to have been raised.

While bending into my climb, my neighbor and Leo football veteran Mike Regan '70 cell phoned a number of retirees and Catholic League long-teeth.  Upon my descent, I was greeted with applause and well-done.  Mike had been exercising his dog, when he spied my exertions.

" What are you soft making that climb?  I still have Hanlon and Tony Kelly nightmares.  All that glue you used to sniff must have finally taken hold."

Not all.  I like a challenge.



Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Every Gay Man and Woman Had a Mom and a Dad - Is That Bad?


“It’s become a joke that [marriage] is so sacred,” - Gay Activist from Uptown -Chicago Sun Time

I'd like to be a great and handsomely over-paid professional athlete, but God didn't make me that way.  I run slower than a Rolex watch bought from the trunk of a car in a vacant lot on Racine..  I can barely navigate the living room without doing serious damage to the china cabinet, taking a patch of flesh off my shins from contact with the coffee table and eventually launching myself out on the front lawn via the picture window.Was this due to Nature or Nurture?

I have no childhood malady, nor have I been subjected to any physical trauma despite my being a major league klutz.  Nevertheless, life has allowed me the honor and privilege of working with many gifted athletes as a teacher and coach.  My Hoop Dreams are for the Leo Lions once again.  We had a brutal basketball season.

My Mom was faster than me. She could beat me in dead sprint, until I turned thirteen.  My Dad and I played catch; he took my fastballs in the mitt and I caught his with my face.  Football was an ideal sport for the criminally slow and took my place on the line. " Hickey, just take up some real estate - get in the way."  That, I can do coach! Basketball?  As if!   I tried out with guys and Coach Spatz bellowed in his Jim Backus voice - "JeeeeZus Christ Almighty and the Forty Thieves!!!!!!!????  Kid, did you have Polio?"

My parents and coaches and pals encouraged me with good natured patience, not unlike Coach Spatz's stunned commentary on the most obvious of facts.  My Self esteem suffered not.  In fact, it directed my energies and aspirations.  Honed my work ethic and balmed my lightly bruised ego.

The extended family and the traditional family of one Mom and one Dad served me and most people I know very well - gay and straight.  Like Chief Justice Roberts, I have gay cousins and a gay aunt. Who doesn't?

I love them and respect them, even though I know that they will never birth.   They love me, even though I never was or will be a very good athlete. Did I grow up into a frustrated jock, an athletic wannabe?  Oh, Hell No!  Were I a better (even modest athlete) jock-strap I might have become one and ignored the alternative lifestyle I love - I read books.  I am more about Thackeray, than Dwayne Wade.

In the media's breathless hysteria to bull through Gay Marriage, I found this sad comment from a Gay Marriage activist in today's Sun Times.-
As rainbow flags fluttered above several hundred supporters at Federal Plaza, 230 S. Dearborn, D.J. Reed, 30, contrasted the importance of marriage to the gay community with its trivial portrayal in pop culture.
“It’s become a joke that [marriage] is so sacred,” said Reed, of Uptown.
“So many straight people everywhere love watching ‘The Bachelor’ and any other stupid fake wedding TV reality show, and people who truly love each other aren’t allowed to,” said Reed, a salesman at Nordstrom. “I just think they should open their eyes to what’s really going on.”
I beg to differ.  I was married.  When my wife died, I laughed not.   I had three young children about to be raised by Homer Simpson and that is no laughing matter.   All three grew up knowing how much I loved their mother and they had witnessed our very tactile affection for one another prior to and after her long illness; not to mention my absolutely pole-axed spirit and subsequent dissolute gambling.

We live with what God gives us and what we do about it: I have stumpy legs - my inclinations, however, are my own.

Marriage between a man and woman is a sacred union and not a Civil Right.




Sunday, March 24, 2013

Palm Sunday - How Are Things Going for You , So Far, This Week?




Palm Sunday is the celebration of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem at Passover.  On that Sunday, Jesus entered the God's City, occupied by the Romans and run by the out-sourced security of Herod Antipas, to roads paved with palms and folks shouting Hosannas like Cubs fans in April.

Things were looking good.  Monday and Tuesday were filled with miracles, parables and foiling traps set by the Pharisees (Democrats of the day) and the Temple gang, the Sadducees ( GOP CPAC grandees).

Wednesday, one of the disciples decided to get on 'the right side of history' and went to the Temple gang who were pretty thick with Herod, Junior to negotiate a compelling narrative.

Thursday, Jesus broke bread with the lads and Judas left early to pick up his fee.   Peter, the business agent for Galilee Fisherman's Local VII, was informed that he'd get thin, once things got thick, and tried to wave off the prediction from Jesus.  Later, that night, while Jesus torments in the Garden, and pretty sound post Passover meal loosening of the eatin' pants and forty-winks with his equally callow fellows, Peter got up in the grill of one of the Temple Boys and lopped off the guy's ear, which Jesus put right with a touch of his hand, but decided to allow Jesus to take the pinch.

Peter was asked three times if he knew the guy in custody.  Three times Peter said, " Oh, Hell no!"

Jesus' few hours were occupied with several tune-ups from the Temple Cops, appearances before Caiaphas - the Temple AG - a trip to the Prefect Pontius Pilate the Homeland Security Chief for some genuine torture at the hands of some pros, witnessing Pilate's hand-bath, another tune-up from the Guests of the Nation including a scourging and crowning with thorns, losing a vote to Barabbas.  Ecce Homo, Folks!  a walking tour of Jerusalem while carry some very heavy timbers, getting nailed to the timbers and eventually taking a Roman pila in the ribs.

We feel pretty good on Sundays, but must remember that there is going to be a really rotten hump day, a very confusing Thursday and mortally horrible Friday waiting us all.

The good news; things get better.


Thursday, March 21, 2013

Though The Hipster-Cool Cities Plan Has Failed Everywhere Else, Chicago Continues Its Drive to the Hoop - You Know, South, West and North of the Loop


Hipster's Dream City!
Burning money trying to become “cooler” ends up looking something like the metropolitan equivalent to a midlife crisis. Joel Kotkin

We had a Leo Alumni meeting at Father Perez Knights of Columbus Council 1444 in Mount Greenwood here on the south side last night.  It was great.  Irish kids from the Classes of 1943, '44 and &  and Black Kids from the 70's, 80's and 90's.  There were about sixty kids all told -For Light-hearted Boys Make the Best of Old Man, as the Irish song goes.



The Alumni Banquet is upon us and the class captains reported on tables purchased followed by President Dan McGrath's report on the school.  Leo High School was represented by Dan, Mike Holmes '76, Coach Noah Cannon '91 and yours truly.  Prior to the start of the meeting Mike and Noah spoke of the march of folly by CPS in the closing of neighborhood schools. "Where are the kids from Alonzo Stagg Elementary supposed to go?"  Aldermen who support Mayor Rahm in all things are now faced by their constituents and the race card is tossed freely, as in all things necessry to the subject.


(Alderman Carrie) Austin said she had not been told which schools in her far South Side ward are in line to be shut down. But most of the schools targeted by the district are in predominantly black neighborhoods on the South and West sides
"I don't think anything is a done deal in this city. I'm not going to let them do this to us, not again," she said. "Every time the whites get to screaming and hollering, they back off and steamroll over black and brown folks. Not this time."

This time and everytime, Carrie; make book on it.  It is not a white and black issue.  It is the PLAN.  The PLAN is to eliminate neighborhoods by shooing the helots (white,black,brown,and pale) the Hell out of Chicago's City Limits by whatever means necesary ( Ventra Cards, crumby to closed schools, thug comfort zones, idiotic ordinances and the attached fees, property tax increases and garbage grid boondoggles).

The PLAN has a goal of -CHICAGO Urban Center City.  This has been brewing from the time that Richie Daley took to hanging around University of Chicago dudes and turned his back on Bridgeport friends.  Daley took Frank Krusie -the CTA genius, Forrest Claypool -the job hopper and CTA genius, the Hyde Park Mafia ( John Rogers, Valerie Jarrett, Judson Miner, Allison Davis, Bill Ayers and Arne Duncan) and told the bad boys of the Hamburg Club to stay off his porch.


  • Bike Lanes -Good!
  • Red Line Safe & On Time -Bad
  • Red Light Cameras -Good
  • Cops and Firefighters -Bad
  • City Services - Bad
  • Open Green Spaces -Good
  • Churches and the People Who Go to Them-Very Bad
  • Hooka Centers -Very, Very Good
  • Schools -Who Cares ! We Have Degrees from Columbia! Make Chicago Your Classroom!
  • Neighborhoods - Unevolved: Too many Breeders and their damn kids with their Parades; we need Green Spaces and Bike Lanes


See? Progressive, going back to the 1970's.

The idea of the PLAN is that by creating a Creative/Intellectual Demographic as the urban core population, all the other pains-in-the ass folks black, white, brown, or pale could get the Hell out and visit Urban Center Chicago on holidays, the weekends, and when paying traffic, parking and City Ordinance fees.

Urban Centers, a comfort-zone for affluent childless couples, single secular degree'd, Progressive, fitness conscious, trendy urban pioneers, has been the template for city government too lazy, corrupt, or Progressive to make thoughtful investments in time, treasure and talent to provide adequate services to the tax-payers who dwell in neighborhoods.

This template cracked under the weight of its own folly, the Geography of hipness:

Geography of Hip Coolness

Perhaps the best that can be said about the creative-class idea is that it follows a real, if overhyped, phenomenon: the movement of young, largely single, childless and sometimes gay people into urban neighborhoods. This Soho-ization—the transformation of older, often industrial urban areas into hip enclaves—is evident in scores of cities. It can legitimately can be credited for boosting real estate values from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Wicker Park in Chicago and Belltown in Seattle to Portland’s Pearl District as well as much of San Francisco.
Yet this footprint of such “cool” districts that appeal to largely childless, young urbanistas in the core is far smaller in most cities than commonly reported. Between 2000 and 2010, notes demographer Wendell Cox, the urban core areas of the 51 largest metropolitan areas—within two miles of the city’s center—added a total of 206,000 residents. But the surrounding rings, between two and five miles from the core, actually lost 272,000. In contrast to those small gains and losses, the suburban areas—between 10 and 20 miles from the center —experienced a growth of roughly 15 million people.
The smallness of the potentially “hip” core is particularly pronounced in Rust Belt cities such as Cleveland and St. Louis, where these core districts are rarely home to more than 1 or 2 percent of the city’s shrinking population. Yet the subsidy money for developers is often justified in the name of “reviving” the entire city, most of which has continued to deteriorate.

The Politics of Hipness -

Investments in “cool” districts may well appeal to some young professionals, particularly before they get married and have children. But overall, as Florida himself now admits, it has done little overall for the urban middle class, much less the working class or the poor.
Indeed in many ways the Floridian focus on industries like entertainment, software, and social media creates a distorted set of economic priorities. The creatives, after all, generally don’t work in factories or warehouses. So why assist these industries? Instead the trend is to declare good-paying blue collar professions a product of the past. If you can’t find work in deindustrialized Michigan, suggests Salon’s Ray Fismanone can collect “ more than a few crumbs” by joining the service class and serving food, cutting hair or grass in creative capitals like San Francisco or Austin.
These limitations of the “hip cool” strategy to drive broad-based economic growth have been evident for years. Conservative critics, such as the Manhattan Institute’sSteve Malanga have pointed out that many creative-class havens often underperform economically compared to their less hip counterparts. More liberalacademic analysts have denounced the idea as “ exacerbating inequality and exclusion.” One particularly sharp critic, the University of British Columbia’s Jamie Peck see it as little more than a neo-liberal recipe of “biscotti and circuses.”
Urban thinker Aaron Renn puts it in political terms: “the creative class doesn’t have much in the way of coattails.”

And as today's Tribune CPS feature displays - RACE - The very people


On paper, the “creative class” theory worships at the altar of diversity. “The great thing about cities,” Florida told NPR last year, “is they're diverse. There's diverse people in them.” Yet even leaving aside their lack of economic diversity, the exemplars of “hip cool” world, notes urban analyst Renn, tend to be vanilla cities with relatively small minority populations. San FranciscoPortland and Seattle are becoming whiter and less ethnically diverse as the rest of the country, andparticularly the suburbs, rapidly diversify.
Creatives may espouse politically correct views, but the effect of Florida’s policy approach, notes Tulane sociologist Richard Campanella, often undermine ethnic communities. As they enter the city, creatives push up rents, displacing local stores and residents. In his own neighborhood of Bywater, in New Orleans, the black population declined by 64 percent between 2000 and 2010, while the white population increased by 22 percent.
In the process, Campanella notes, much of what made the neighborhood unique has been lost as the creatives replace the local culture with the increasingly predictable, and portable, “hip cool” trendy restaurants, offering beet-filled ravioli instead of fried okra, and organic markets. The “unique” amenities you find now, even in New Orleans, he reports, are much what you’d expect in any other hipster paradise, be it Portland, Seattle, Burlington, Vermont or Williamsburg.
The very people whom Urban Creative Hipster Centers must please simply can not do without the very people they so detest - the middle class breeders of all races.  The Creative and Hip cannot fix a sink, a time for an appointment, much less a government official.  The helots who go to the precinct captain in order to tidy up a playground are scorned by the Creative Secular Urban Dweller as thoroughly unevolved.  That is why a hard-hitting newspaper series on corruption tracks the misadventures of some poor slob who takes the odd nap on his shovel and ignores the Global Inbred Corruption of a CTA President who could not tell you how MPG a bus gets, let alone start one who manages to finesse editorial boards into ignore the roots of Bombardier/Ventra scams.

The PLAN is working to make Chicago an Urban Center, but Urban Centers don't work.

"Where are the kids from Amos Alonzo Stagg Elementary supposed to go to school?"  Not in the PLAN that is for sure.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Check, Please! New Hosts -Same Menu. How 'Bout This?






CHICAGO — After wading through hundreds of video submissions, producers for “Check, Please!” are now 17 steps closer to finding their new host.On Wednesday, the popular WTTW-Ch. 11 show posted on its website "The Round of 17" — bios, photos and videos for 17 hopefuls vying to replace longtime host Alpana Singh.
The finalists include Rochelle Trotter, wife of famed chef Charlie Trotter, and Ina Pinkney of Ina's Kitchen.

Singh announced in January she's leaving the show to focus on her River North restaurant, the Boarding House. DNAChicago 
That's nice and soooooooo WTTW.  The Concept of young, successful, urbane urbanites and their posse dining at trendy restaurants and giving a review to the clinking of wine glasses on Public Television is just so. . .  shall I say  . . . Sriracha . Check, Please! is a hit.  I believe that I can go one better.

Get four city dwelling Chicagoans, who actually grew up here from neighborhoods like Back of the Yards, Albany, Edison, Armour and Garfield Parks and Ridge, Mount Greenwood, Englewood, Clearing, Chicago Lawn, Canaryville, Edgewater and over by Midway, to go to very well-established eating joints with The Eatin' Pants On; Gulp and Carbo up and finally Bolt on the Bill!

These will needs be young adults who grew up ditching the dweebs, lame-ohs, snitches, dipwads and crybabies, by hopping fences, tossing garbage cans, climbing trees, gutters and fire-escapes. They will be adepts in cutting the urban trail: skeeching from fenders of passing cars in snowy weather, hopping freight cars, sauntering past Paddy Wagons with a wave to the cops in cab as one directs its door panel searchlights in pursuit of  ' four losers who bolted from Chris, Jim and Gust's Salonika Salon ( " Μπορείτε γαμημένο ιρλανδική κατάπιναν του πέους σας έρχονται πίσω εδώ μαλάκας και να πληρώνουν το λογαριασμό σας!) on Wentworth.'

Now the moral and ethical nature of my show ( Perhaps a casting title Dian and Dash?)- it is against the law to steal, but more so it is wrong.  Have I dined an dashed?  You bet.  Am I proud of doing so?  . . .No, but . . .it was funny as Hell. Does this mean that I am a far less than earnest person?  God I hope so! Earnest people sneer at the thought of dining and dashing, but are perfectly swell with Forrest Claypool's Ventra Pass

Forrest Claypool is very earnest.

 The Check Please panelists were and are always earnest, smug and nerdy lispers with a thick sense of self-importance and . . .just a refreshing hint of mint. .  Generally speaking, their presence at a table for a night of dining out would put me off my feed. Check it out, White Liberal!@

Now, this goof is not Hasidim, he is a JO, but very earnest and knows wine.  Take that #$%^ing hat off at the table!  Sorry,

Hey, don't get me wrong; they are probably all fabulous people with great social sense and thoroughgoing earnestness.  I hate earnestness.  Anybody else?

The Earnest will tell you what they think of you and your clothes, haircut, aftershave, political party, religion, diet, credit card, or automobile and when you find yourself either justifying, defending, or explaining yourself, the earnest person will smile knowingly,lovingly, sadly and dismissively offer a conclusive, "That is just so sad on so many levels. You are putting on weight - you'd want someone to tell you that -Don't You Think?"  You see only earnest people manage to reach adulthood without ever having had to to face the consequences of their words and deeds - they were nurtured and schooled by equally earnest, but wildly litigious parents.

Where neighborhood folks grew up and learned to settle differences between their contemporaries knowing that bandages and iodine were available to make things better, civil litigation never happened.  Earnest people avoided abrasions and slights by dint of premptivly announcing legal action.

More unwholesome however is this all too empirical fact:  Earnest people will always allow you to pick up the check and the tip, following their long descantings on the disappointing  wine,  spices, presentations and the atmosphere.  I always part from earnest people with a strong desire to kick them squarely in the nuts, or the similar apparti - gender specific.

But enough about me. . .earnest people are just tops!  Don't you think?

Anyway, how's about a show, not unlike Check Please.

Get four regular Janes and Джонs, ( John is from Ukrainian Village) and their pals to visit Miller's Pub on Wabash, Les Nomades on Ontario, Ken's on South Western and Kalbi on west Lawrence Ave.

1. Panelists and friends must eat like they have been endowed by their Creator with two A$$holes
2. Panelists and friends must not pay the tab, but, they must leave an obscene tip for the wait staff,and
    manage to get away without paying, or being fatally wounded in the process.
3.The host must be an accomplished regular guy/gal and have never hosted anything on Public Television or  
    Radio - even better must be willing to take a swing at Richard Roeper, Billy Dec, or refuse any
    opportunity to shine in their celebrated light.

Only after requesting payment from the show's producer will all costs to the visited establishments; if threatened by lawyers.  We will ask for proof positive that such folks ever visited the restaurant, chop-house, ham'negger, bistro, luncheonette, posada, roach coach, hash-house, grill, Grille, cafe, charcuterie, or brasserie and them prove it.  Nah, we'll pay up.  The owners will be paid and gladly.



The Concept: Dine and Dash -The action to go in a restaurant,sit at a table, order whatever you want, eat and then leave quick without payin.