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Honoree Bob Dylan appears onstage at the 25th anniversary MusiCares 2015 Person Of The Year Gala at the Los Angeles Convention Center on February 6, 2015. | Getty Images

Irascible at any age, Dylan said precious little during his Wednesday night concert in Chicago. He simply walked onstage and began playing songs, introducing new ones and subverting his classics.

Bob Dylan’s October 2019 concert at Credit Union 1 Arena was a peak experience for Chicago-based fans, hailed as the then-septuagenarian’s best showing here in a decade. Dylan had shed torch songs and Sinatra homages featured at recent Ravinia Festival dates, delivering sturdy originals from 2012’s “Tempest” and more.

Once off the road, Dylan took his band swiftly to the studio and fashioned his best-received album since 1997’s “Time Out of Mind. “Rough and Rowdy Ways” was a musical highlight during 2020, promising good things to come.

But momentum stalled for The Bard during the fallow year as it did for everyone else.

This week, Dylan resumed road life with a retooled lineup after his longest break since 1984, arriving in Chicago for a concert Wednesday night at the Auditorium Theatre. It had been a lengthy absence for many attendees, too. The Romanesque surroundings and even-tempered acoustics of the Auditorium Theatre provided an inviting setting for people returning to their first communal music experience since the initial COVID-19 lockdown, gathered to hear an artist frequently feted as an American musical treasure.

The show celebrated songs old and new — but mostly new. Dylan made a case for continued relevance by featuring eight of 10 songs from “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” and by drawing more than half of the evening’s songs from the last decade. That meant casual fans didn’t hear classic rock staples such as “Like a Rolling Stone,” or even the frequently performed “Tangled Up in Blue.” Dylan’s devoted, however, enjoyed hearing what makes the 1960s icon tick in the 21st century.

The show began as Dylan’s black-suited band played a rollicking version of 1971’s “Watching the River Flow.” Dylan himself appeared in a matching suit with white jacket, commanding the song with strong voice. After singing a verse at center stage, he moved to a console piano to spar with guitarists Bob Britt and Doug Lancio for the song’s remainder. Wherever he sang, Dylan was in shadow. The musicians were moodily illuminated by lights beneath the floor.

The first rowdy cheer was sparked by a new song, with Dylan making a resonant and gravel-voiced proclamation of the title to “I Contain Multitudes.” The song’s braggadocio was paradoxically presented in the set’s most pastoral arrangement. During one inviting passage led by Donnie Herron’s lilting pedal steel guitar, Dylan rebuked an antagonist. “You greedy old wolf, I’ll show you my heart,” he sang with menace. “But not all of it, only the hateful part.” “Key West,” by comparison, was amiable and wistful.

Bathed in dim red light, the cinematic lyric to “My Own Version of You” cast Dylan as Doctor Frankenstein while the band spun an eerie soundtrack; Dylan and Locio traded lines between piano and guitar. The understated but potent “Black Rider” was similarly haunted with an arid twang, underscored by longtime sideman Tony Garnier’s bowed double bass.

Dylan twisted familiar songs into fascinating new shapes. “When I Paint My Masterpiece” evolved from Gospel roots into a jaunty arrangement featuring Charley Drayton’s brushed snare drum. “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was a country two-step on “John Wesley Harding,” but on Wednesday it became a soul rave-up styled after Roy Head and the Traits’ “Treat Her Right” spiked by Dylan’s howling harmonica. The moody Christian anthem “Gotta Serve Somebody” was adrenalized as Britt and Lancio faced off for hot licks. Garnier gave gut-bass thump to “Nashville Skyline’s” “To Be Alone With You.”

Rust was only evident during an encore of the dramatic “Love Sick,” which faltered as if the band was still dialing in the arrangement. The seasoned players recovered rapidly, finishing strong with a slow blues interpretation of “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.”

After concluding the main set with the loping roadhouse blues “Goodbye Jimmy Reed,” Dylan made his lone address to the audience. “We’re happy to play here,” he said. “We love Chicago, just like you do.”

Irascible at any age, Dylan at 80 didn’t treat the evening in stately surroundings like a museum exhibit. He said precious little. He simply walked onstage and began playing songs, introducing new ones and subverting his classics. That still-invigorated approach drew his most ardent fans back to a crowded concert hall. That act and those songs spoke volumes.

Set List:

1. “Watching the River Flow”

2. “Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine”

3. “I Contain Multitudes”

4. “False Prophet”

5. “When I Paint My Masterpiece”

6. “My Own Version of You”

7. “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”

8. “Black Rider”

9. “To Be Alone With You”

10. “Mother of Muses”

11. “Gotta Serve Somebody”

12. “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)”

13. “Early Roman Kings”

14. “Melancholy Mood” (Frank Sinatra cover)

15. “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You”

16. “Goodbye Jimmy Reed”

Encore:

17. “Love Sick”

18. “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”

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The scene of the police shooting early Thursday near Orchard Drive and Rhode Island Avenue in Hammond, Indiana. | Indiana State Police

The shooting happened early Thursday near Orchard Drive and Rhode Island Avenue, police said.

A Hammond police officer shot a man who got out of a crashed SUV holding a gun early Thursday, authorities said.

A 911 caller had reported the crash and possible car fire around 3:30 a.m. at Orchard Drive and Rhode Island Avenue, Indiana State Police said in a statement.

Responding officers told the man to exit several times but he refused, state police said. He was the only person inside the SUV.

The man eventually got out, but he was holding a handgun and a Hammond police officer shot him, state police said.

The man, 28, was taken by ambulance to a Chicago-area hospital, where his condition was stabilized, state police said.

Officers found a drum magazine in the driver’s area of the SUV, according to the state police.

The officer who fired the shots was placed on paid administrative leave, per department policy, police said.

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A woman carries a basket of coal scavenged from a mine near Dhanbad, an eastern Indian city in Jharkhand state. Even as the world tries to move away from coal to fight climate change, many in Dhanbad depend on it for their lives. | Altaf Qadri / AP

Consider India’s Jharkhand state — among the poorest in that nation and the one with the largest coal reserves. It’s also the most vulnerable Indian state to climate change.

DHANBAD, India — Every day, Raju gets on his bicycle and unwillingly pedals the world a tiny bit closer to climate catastrophe.

Every day, he straps half a dozen sacks of coal pilfered from mines — as much as 440 pounds — to the reinforced metal frame of his bike. Driving mostly at night to avoid the police and the heat, he transports the coal 10 miles to traders who pay him $2.

Thousands of others do the same.

This has been Raju’s life since he arrived in Dhanbad, an eastern Indian city in Jharkhand state in 2016. Floods in his home region have decimated traditional farm jobs. Coal is all he has.

Earth desperately needs people to stop burning coal, the biggest single source of greenhouse gases, to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change — including the intense flooding that’s cost agricultural jobs in India.

But people rely on coal. It’s the world’s biggest source of fuel for electric power. And so many, desperate like Raju, depend on it for their lives.

“The poor have nothing but sorrow … but so many people, they’ve been saved by coal,” Raju says.

The United Nations has pushed for what the United Kingdom’s Alok Sharma has described as the moment whne coal is left “in the past where it belongs.”

That might be possible for some developed nations. But it isn’t that simple for developing countries, which say they should be allowed the “carbon space” to grow as developed nations have: by burning cheap fuels like coal, which is used in industrial processes such as steelmaking as well as electric power generation.

On average, the typical American uses 12 times more electricity than the typical Indian. There are more than 27 million people in India who don’t have electricity at all.

Power demand in India is expected to grow faster than anywhere in the world over the next two decades as its economy grows and ever more extreme heat increases demand for air conditioning that much of the rest of the world takes for granted.

Meeting that demand won’t fall to people like Raju but to Coal India, already the world’s largest miner, which aims to increase production to over one billion tons a year by 2024.

“Coal has continued for 100 years,” says D.D. Ramanandan, secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions in Ranchi. “Workers believe it will continue to do so.”

Unless the world drastically cuts greenhouse gas emissions, the planet will suffer even more extreme heat waves, erratic rainfall and destructive storms, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

An Indian government study this year found that Jharkhand state — among the poorest in India and the one with the nation’s largest coal reserves — is also the most vulnerable Indian state to climate change.

But there are roughly 300,000 people working directly with government-owned coal mines, getting fixed salaries and benefits. And there are nearly four million people in India whose livelihoods are directly or indirectly linked to coal, according to Sandeep Pai, who studies energy security and climate change at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

India’s coal belt is dotted by industries like steel and brick-making that need the fuel. Railways, the country’s largest employers, get half their revenue by transporting coal, subsidizing passenger travel.

“Coal is an ecosystem,” Pai says.

For Naresh Chauhan, 50, and his wife Rina Devi, 45, the economic slowdown in India that’s resulted from the coronavirus pandemic has only intensified their dependence on coal. They’ve lived in a village at the edge of the Jharia coalfield in Dhanbad all their lives. Accidental fires, some blazing for decades, have charred the ground and left it spongey. Smoke hisses from cracks in the surface near their hut. Deadly sinkholes are common.

They make $3 a day selling four baskets of scavenged coal to traders.

Families who’ve lived amid coal mines for generations rarely own any land they can farm and have nowhere else to go. Chauhan hopes his son will learn to drive so that he, at least, can get away.

With the pandemic leaving less work for the city’s taxi drivers and fewer travelers coming to the city, he says, “There is just coal, stone and fire. Nothing else here.”

That could mean even harder times for the people in Dhanbad as the world eventually turns away from coal. Pai says this already is happening as renewable energy gets cheaper, and coal becomes less profitable.

India and other countries with coal-dependent regions need to diversify their economies and retrain workers, he says — to protect workers’ livelihoods and to help speed the transition from coal by offering new opportunities.

Otherwise, more will end up like Murti Devi, 32,a single mother of four. She lost the job she had all her life when the mine she worked for closed four years ago. Nothing came of the resettlement plans promised by the coal company, so she, like many others, turned to scavenging coal. On good days, she says, she makes a dollar. Other days, she relies on neighbors for help.

“If there is coal, then we live,” Devi says. “If there isn’t any coal, then we don’t live.”

Contributing: Shonal Ganguly, Altaf Qadri

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“He’s going to camp determined to make it as a starter,” White Sox manager Tony La Russa said of pitcher Michael Kopech. | Ed Zurga/Getty Images

Kopech posted a 3.50 ERA in 44 relief appearances in 2021.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — When Tony La Russa managed him with the Cardinals, future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols would say every spring that he had to make the team. It was a given that he would, of course, but La Russa didn’t mind that mindset.

The White Sox have designs on making right-hander Michael Kopech part of their starting rotation in 2022, but Kopech, a starter throughout his amateur and minor league career, won’t be handed a rotation spot before going to spring training in February.

“He’s going to camp determined to make it as a starter,” La Russa told the Sun-Times. “When the young prospect comes in and they say he’s our second baseman or our center fielder, he’s a starting pitcher … what you tell him is you really believe in him and he has a chance. If somebody says, ‘Kopech, you’re in the rotation,’ it’s not really good for him. He is talented, he could handle it but it’s better that you go out and fight for your job and earn it. You get the respect from your teammates. Like Albert, every year he said he had to make the team.”

The Sox rotation of Lance Lynn, Lucas Giolito, Dylan Cease, Carlos Rodon and Dallas Keuchel was the backbone of a team that won 93 games and the AL Central Division, the team’s first title since 2008. Keuchel, a former Cy Young winner who has one year left on a contract that pays him $18 million next season, struggled with a 5.28 ERA and was left off the postseason roster. Rodon will be a free agent so his future with the team that drafted him is uncertain.

So there seems to be room for Kopech in the rotation, even if the Sox add a starter in the offseason. The Sox had five days after the conclusion of World Series to extend qualifying offers to free agents Rodon, Ryan Tepera, Leury Garcia and Billy Hamilton, and the players have 10 days to accept or reject.

Left-hander Garrett Crochet (2.82 ERA), the 2021 first-round pick who like Kopech wants to start but is cutting his major league teeth in the bullpen, will pitch out of the pen again in 2022. While Kopech made four starts and built up some length with more multiple-inning relief appearances, Crochet — who appeared in 10 more games (54) than Kopech — averaged four outs per appearance over the last three months of the season.

Stretching out Crochet, who came to the majors in 2021 without any minor league experience, to be a starter in spring training “is too much to ask,” La Russa said.

Kopech has 84 minor league starts over five seasons under his belt. After opting out of the 60-game 2020 season cut short because of the coronavirus, Kopech appeared in 44 games for the Sox in 2021, 40 as a reliever. In 69 1/3 innings, he posted a 3.50 ERA, striking out 103 and walking 24.

In his four starts covering 14 innings, Kopech struck out 23, walked four and posted a 1.93 ERA.

In the second half, Kopech pitched to a 5.56 ERA while maintaining the same strikeout and walk numbers as his first half. He recorded 51 strikeouts, 12 walks in 35 1/3 innings in the first half compared to 52 strikeouts and 12 walks in 34 innings in the second half. The difference was 33 hits, six home runs allowed in the second half after allowing 21 hits, three homers in the first half. Kopech pitched in relief in Games 3 and 4 of the ALDS, allowing six earned runs on seven hits over three innings.

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The scene of the police shooting early Thursday near Orchard Drive and Rhode Island Avenue in Hammond, Indiana. | Indiana State Police

The shooting happened early Thursday near Orchard Drive and Rhode Island Avenue, police said.

A person was shot by a Hammond police officer early Thursday in northwest Indiana.

The shooting happened around 3:30 a.m. near Orchard Drive and Rhode Island Avenue, according to Hammond police Lt. Steven Kellogg.

The officer was not injured and the wounded person’s condition was stabilized, he said.

Indiana State Police are investigating the shooting and were expected to release more information later Thursday.

The officer who fired shots was placed on paid administrative leave per department policy, Kellogg said.

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Stirred cocktails and a stellar ham sandwich are the menu highlights during the nightcap service.Read More

The Chicago Blackhawks finally earned their first victory of the season this week. All the win did was give a little potpourri spray to mask this season’s foul stench. It took ten games and the calendar changing to November for the Hawks to get their first two points. The victory means the Hawks avoided being the last […] Chicago Blackhawks: It is time to make some major changes – Da Windy City – Da Windy City – A Chicago Sports Site – Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, Fighting Illini & MoreRead More

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