Earlier this year, the Chicago Bears moved up to select Oklahoma State offensive tackle Teven Jenkins in the second round of the 2021 NFL Draft.
Jenkins was widely known as a first-round talent, but slid to the second for some reason. At the time, he felt like a luxury pick for the Bears, even though they gave up a lot to get him.
Get ready for some true terror! The innovators of national haunted attractions, 13th Floor Entertainment Group, vill reanimate the historic old prison outside of Chicago this fiendish fall vith the debut of The Old Joliet Haunted Prison. Opening to the public on September 18th just in time for the 2021 Halloveen Season. This new ominous offering vill be Chicagoland’s first and only haunted house inside an actual abandoned prison. Team Gregula is hugely hex-cited for the opportunity to go visit and review this unique upcoming haunted attraction in Illinois!
Originally built as a vomen’s prison in 1896, The Old Joliet Haunted Prison is located in the annex building at 401 Woodruff Road in Joliet, Illinois. The famed, long-abandoned prison has been referenced in numerous television, film, literature and songs. The prison closed in 2002, but is purportedly haunted vith real spooky specters. This fang-tastic fall, the grounds and interior of the prison vill be transformed into a breathtaking haunted house.
To celebrate its opening, The Old Joliet Haunted Prison vill be giving avay five keys to the prison gates to allow a lifetime pass to the Haunted Prison. To enter, join the Haunted Prison fang-mily and sign up to receive access to $13.99 tickets HERE then follow the Haunted Prison on Instagram and tag a fiend on a giveavay post. The five vinners vill be announced on August 17, 2021. Ghoul luck!
Connect vith Count Gregula’s Crypt
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I told you about our anti-goose dog silhouette project. Most of you doubted it would work. People regaled me with their own experiences. “The phony dogs won’t keep away the real geese,” our readers honked.
But guess what. It has been two weeks now. And our driveway is poop-free (most of the time.) There have been two exceptions, but those have been on days that I didn’t have a chance to relocate the silhouettes. (The instructions state to move them daily.)
As long as I follow the rules, the geese do seem intimidated by the black cut-outs as they rotate in the wind around their wooden stakes. The foul fowl will still approach our driveway but not venture onto it for the purpose of leaving a deposit.
As a secondary benefit, the geese seem to be spending less time in the subdivision. They are making less of a racket and not snarling as much traffic. The feathered freaks haven’t evacuated the area entirely–two phony dogs aren’t enough to clear a couple of hundred acres. But the Homeowners Association may consider adding a few more of the silent sentinels around the neighborhood next year and turn our little corner of Riverwoods into a goose-free zone.
Follow-up #2: The Lettuce Entertain You Dining Points. Our hosts on the evening in question read the original blog. They graciously suggested I contact LEYE and claim the points for my own Frequent Diner account. I did, and I have received a tidy number of credits. Thanks, Cara and Ken, the next time we dine out it’s on us!
Follow-up #3: The producers of Jeopardy! have made their selection. It takes two–Mike Richards and Mayim Bialik–to replace the late Alex Trebek. As for me, I am still waiting for my phone call for a tryout. I guess I will need to create my own game show in my quest to be a TV quizmaster. Does anyone have any suggestions?
And on a closing personal note, congratulations to our daughter and son-in-law Laury and Alex on the birth of their beautiful baby daughter. This is grandchild #4 for Barb and me and we are thrilled. Being Nana and Baba is such a wonderful part of our identity.
To all our readers, be kind, get vaccinated, stay well. Talk to you next time.
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Hi! I am Les, a practicing pathologist living in the North Suburbs and commuting every day to the Western ones. I have lived my entire life in the Chicago area, and have a pretty good feel for the place, its attractions, culture, restaurants and teams. My wife and I are empty-nesters with two adult children and a grandchild. We recently decided to downsize, but just a bit! I will be telling the story of the construction of our new home, but also writing about whatever gets me going on a particular day. Be sure to check out the “About” page to learn more about where we plan to go with this blog!
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Those Darn Geese are Leaving and Other Good News!on August 12, 2021 at 12:35 pm Read More »
NUEVO QUEJA, Guatemala — The day before Victor Cal left for the United States, he went from relative to relative, collecting money for food during the journey north.
His mother was disconsolate.
“I begged him not to go, that we could live here,” she says. “But the decision had already been made.”
Cal hitched a ride to a place miles away to find electricity so he could charge his phone “to receive calls so the coyote can tell me where and when we will finally meet.”
The makeshift town where he lived offers only hunger and death. To Cal, 26, the United States seemed the only way out.
American authorities have stopped more than 150,000 Guatemalans at the border this year, four times the number in 2020.
Many were like Victor Cal, famished and impoverished. An indigenous Mayan who speaks Pocomchi, he didn’t find work in Guatemala City after serving in the army. When the pandemic hit, he joined thousands fleeing to their agricultural hometowns in the mountains.
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He thought at least he’d have food by staying on his father’s land in Queja, with coffee, cardamon, corn and beans.
Then came Hurricane Eta’s rains that brought down a mountain and destroyed everything — house, land, town. He and his parents were left destitute, relying on relief from international organizations in a shabby settlement people dubbed Nuevo Queja.
Now, hours away from leaving it behind, he packed what fit in his yellow backpack: a shirt, a sweater, jeans and extra shoes. He’d lost pretty much everything else when a landslide buried his house.
It had been raining for 25 days. The people of Queja had been cooped up for 10 days, roads cut off by flooding.
Without electricity, phones were dead. The rain the previous 24 hours was five times the average monthly amount, but no one told the villagers that or that they were at risk and should leave.
At lunchtime Nov. 5, the first trees fell. The hillside began to melt.
“Those of us who had time to flee could only carry our children on our backs” says 28-year-old Esma Cal — many in Queja share the last name Cal, though it isn’t always clear how they might be related.
Within seconds, 58 people disappeared. Most of their bodies will never be recovered. Forty homes were buried under tons of mud. Dozens more were left inaccessible.
Crossing torrents of water on ropes, survivors walked to the nearest town, where people shared their remaining food and put them up in schools and at the market. When helicopters finally arrived, “Some of us had been without food for almost two days,” Esma Cal says.
Queja was founded 100 years ago, says Erwin Cal, 39, when families got access to a coffee plantation.
“My grandfather was a slave,” he says. “They had to harvest without pay before they were allowed to build their shacks and use some plots of land for their own fields.”
There were corn and beans to eat, then coffee and cardamom for market.
In time, they made enough to buy the land.
In the 1980s, some joined the Guatemalan army. At the turn of the century, with violence plaguing the country, they hired on as private guards and, with some money now, shacks turned into cement houses with tiles, big windows, refrigerators.
“I had a laptop, a sound system and cable TV,” Erwin Cal says, all now gone.
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By January, Esma Cal, Erwin Cal, their childhood friend Gregorio Ti and others organized a development council. By February, they’d founded a temporary settlement near their buried homes, though it had just one-third the amunt of agricultural land.
Thus was born Nuevo Queja. This would be home, for the moment anyway, to about 1,000 survivors.
“We know how to work,” says Ti, 36, who lost his pregnant wife, their 2- and 6-year-old sons and his mother in the mudslide.
His surviving daughters, 11 and 14, cling to him.
All day, everyone cuts and transports wood and clears land with machetes.
The shacks are zinc sheets donated by a priest and wooden planks from pine trees villagers cut down. Rain pours in through the roofs.
Esma Cal’s 37-year-old uncle German Cal — who returned to Queja after 20 years in Guatemala City to breed chickens, only to lose everything — is trying to bring electricity to Nuevo Queja.
But Guatemala’s government has declared the new settlement uninhabitable. Therefore, since Nuevo Queja doesn’t exist, at least not officially, it isn’t eligible for the electric poles it needs or road repairs or an improved water supply.
The townspeople have gotten help from non-governmental organizations, One provided wheelbarrows, picks and shovels and brought psychologists to play with the kids, reminding them how to clean their teeth. Another visited to ensure donations of water and sanitation kits were used correctly.
UNICEF donated a new school. But it has been closed for five months because no one could find the key to get inside. UNICEF had given it to a teacher who resigned and left with it.
So school was held in a shack next door. But it leaks. So the floor is often flooded and muddy. The furniture rots.
The school serves 250 children. Of 12 teachers from before the storms, just four remain. And their materials are in Spanish, but the students speak only Pomachi, a teacher says.
“None of them will go to high school,” the teacher says. “School failure is total.”
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At least once a month, nurse Cesar Chiquin, 39, visits Nuevo Queja. Mothers bring their children.
“Malnutrition has doubled,” Chiquin says. “One in three are stunted. Virtually all are at risk.”
The people of Nuevo Queja can’t raise the food they need. Having lost last year’s crops to the hurricanes, “We arrived in Nuevo Queja too late for planting properly,” Esma Cal says.
They have a third of the land they had before the storms. And rains washed away the topsoil.
“We harvested two times a year,” Esma Cal says. “Now, we have only one, much smaller harvest.”
The local council figures the villagers need 75 acres more. But they have no money.
The government has a land trust. Some day, it could provide the land they need — but it could be elsewhere, in another region. Since most of the villagers don’t speak Spanish, only their indigenous language, a move would obliterate their culture.
“This place is not fit to live in,” Esma Cal says. “And, for the moment, we have no way out.”
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There seem to be only two ways out of Nuevo Queja. One is death. The other is emigrating to the United States. Most people in the village say the only thing keeping them from emigrating is that they can’t afford it.
But Victor Cal, calculating that, by staying, a person might make just $4 for a full day’s work, found a way. He contacted a distant cousin, who’s been in Miami for years, who agreed to advance the $13,000 to buy a coyote package — a deal that offers him two tries to successfully enter the United States, coming in via the Arizona desert.
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Cal has a plan in mind once he succeeds.
“My objective is to be able to send money so my parents have a real house again and some land,” he says. “If I had a choice, I wouldn’t go. I will be back as soon as possible.”
He says goodbye.
And he leaves without looking back at Nuevo Queja.
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A 16-year-old boy was killed and another wounded when someone fired into a home Wednesday afternoon in Englewood on the South Side.
The shots were fired from a car that pulled up to the home in the 6000 block of South Carpenter Street about 4 p.m., Chicago police said.
Cordell Bass was struck in the chest and brought to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said.
The other teen was struck in the right leg and taken to the hospital, where he was stabilized, police said.
No one was in custody.
The Chicago White Sox is the best men’s pro sports team that plays in the city of Chicago. Everyone else, for the first time in a long time, is looking up at them. They have a very nice lead in the American League Central Division after cruising through their schedule up to this point. Now, they will play the New York Yankees in the Field of Dreams game. This is a really big stage for a young team like them.
They can handle it. They are young but there are a lot of valuable veterans on the team like Lance Lynn, Dallas Keuchel, Liam Hendriks, and Craig Kimbrel. All of those guys have made deep runs in the playoffs and can teach these kids a thing or two. The talent is there to get the job done. They just need to go out there and do it.
Tonight the Chicago White Sox will play a baseball game against the New York Yankees. There’s nothing unusual about that. The teams have been competing against each other for more than a century. What’s unusual is the location of the game.
The teams will be playing in Dyersville, Iowa. That’s where you’ll find the field that was featured in the baseball film “Field of Dreams.” You remember the movie, don’t you? Shoeless Joe, ghosts walking in and out of a cornfield, Burt Lancaster saving a young child, and Kevin Costner having a catch with his dead father. Good stuff!
A replica of the field was built near the original site. The two teams will play there in the game that was scheduled for last season but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tickets for the game are at a premium. The field seats only 8,000 fans. The demand for tickets far exceeded what was available.
It was decided that residents of Iowa would have the first opportunity to purchase tickets. They held a lottery and if your name was chosen, you would get the chance to buy tickets at face value. The price, including fees, is around $400. That’s right…FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS!!
Pretty pricey for a regular-season game, even at a special location. However, that’s nothing compared to the resale market. If you check Stubhub, you’ll find seats starting at $880 and going as high as $13,000. That’s right….THIRTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!!!
Those numbers price out most people. It made me think back to a couple of other sporting events that I wanted to attend but the costs made it almost impossible.
In 2018, I went to the Rose Bowl game, in Pasadena, California. Oklahoma was playing Georgia with the winner advancing to the college football championship game, in Atlanta. When Oklahoma had a two-touchdown lead at halftime, we started seriously thinking about going to Atlanta for the title game. When we found out game tickets were going for $2,000, it gave me second thoughts. Actually, there were third, fourth and fifth thoughts, too. Good thing the Sooners blew that fourteen-point lead and lost in overtime….at least a good thing for my pocketbook.
Two years earlier, the Chicago Cubs were playing the Cleveland Indians in the World Series. Before game five of the series, I decided to go over to Wrigley Field to take in the atmosphere. I brought $500 with me in case there was a chance to get a game ticket. None of the fans had any extras for sale, so I decided to check with a broker. When he told me his seats cost $2,000, I told him I would be watching on tv, even if it meant putting up with Joe Buck. Actually, I was relieved. I really didn’t want to spend the five hundred bucks.
I understand that like everything else these days going to games is going to cost major dollars. I realize it’s no longer the 1960s when you could get a seat in the bleachers at Wrigley Field for $1. That’s right….ONE DOLLAR!! But, everyone has that line where the price makes it no longer feasible to attend a game, no matter how much you want to see it live. I’m not sure where that line is, but it’s definitely there.
So, if you want to attend tonight’s Field of Dreams game, you still have time to get to Iowa. Just get out your credit card and head to the Stubhub site. Is $13K too much for you?
Related Post: Thanks Rizz….see ya on the other side
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My so called friends think it’s time to edit this section. After four years, they may be right, but don’t tell them that. I’ll deny it until they die!
I can’t believe I’ve been writing this blog for four years.
It started as a health/wellness thing and over the years has morphed to include so many things that I don’t know how to describe it anymore.
I really thought this was going to be the final year of the blog but then Donald Trump came along. It looks like we’re good for four more years..God help us all!
Oh yeah…the biographical stuff. I’m not 60 anymore. The rest you can read about in the blog.
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How much would you pay to go to the Field of Dreams game?on August 12, 2021 at 11:00 am Read More »
Two men and a 15-year-old girl were shot late Wednesday in Chicago Lawn on the South Side.
They were standing on the front porch of a home about 10:55 p.m. in the 6900 block of South Campbell Avenue when a male suspect approached them and fired shots, Chicago police said.
A teen girl, 15, was shot in the arm and was taken to Comers Children’s hospital in fair condition, police said.
A 35-year-old man was struck in the torso and was taken in serious condition to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, police said. Another man, 39, was shot in the leg and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in fair condition.
No one was in custody as Area One detectives investigate.
I got ’em, thousands of others got ’em – the Cubbie blues. Ever since the biggest three stars were unceremoniously and shockingly traded from the Cubs, I’ve felt this sadness and anger towards ownership and management. My first thought was, “how could they do this?” – and then I immediately went into anger mode feeling that the ownership was throwing in the towel on the 2021 season awful early by trading Bryant, Rizzo and Baez a few weeks ago. Hanging it up, maybe next year, no hope for 2021 so might as well trade our top attractions – shake things up and see where things fall.
Well I can tell you where they fall on me – I haven’t watched a Cubs game since the trades. After all, if ownership and management didn’t care about the fans, then I no longer care about the Cubs. And I”m not alone in this thinking and feeling of betrayal – a friend of my sister took down all her Cubs memorabilia around the house – saying she just didn’t care about the team anymore after this debacle.
Yes I know as a member of the sports media I am supposed to be more neutral on our sports teams but heck, I’ve been a life-long Cubs fan since way before I became a member of the media and I’ve spent too many years caring about my team to just let this one slide. It hurts, it hurts bad – Bryant, Rizzo and Baez made this team worth watching and were a major reason many fans watched the games on TV and in person. I haven’t been privy to how this has affected viewership on Marquee Sports Network or in ticket sales but I have to feel this has had some major impact because it sure has had a major impact on me.
It was bad enough we have had to endure the horrors of a pandemic that just won’t quit – now we have to endure a team (owners and managers that is) that did quit. They quit thinking about the fans, they quit caring about this season and they quit on three of the most popular and talented players on their own team.
Back in the 1920’s singer Ethel Waters sang a haunting ballad called “Am I Blue” – and I’d like to have all of the Cubs fans out there who feel like I do sing along with me to the following lyrics from that song (adapted to suit this nightmare)…
It was a morning, long before dawn
Without a warning I found they was gone
How could they do it
Why should they do it
They never done it before
Am I blue
Am I blue
Ain’t these tears, in these eyes telling you
How can you ask me “am I blue”
Why, wouldn’t you be too
If each plan
With your Cubs
Done fell through.
There was a time
When we all felt like one
But now we’re
The sad and lonely ones.
Repeat chorus – Am I Blue Am I Blue ain’t these tears in my eyes telling you got the Cubbie Blues.
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Born in San Diego – raised in Chicago’s northern burbs. Lifelong Cubs, Bears & Bulls fan – Chicago Sky fan. Member professional golf media since 1996; golf professional; freelance photojournalist. School – UW Madison; former Marketing Director-booking agent for pro athletes for speeches, appearances and promotional work; I love sports of all kinds and work with several groups that provide sporting opportunities for Chicago’s inner city and under-served kids. Played tennis in high school and college – switched to golf for fun and then as a profession. Have been published in many national and regional sports publications – both words and photos. I believe in the power of sports to transform one’s life both personally and professionally.
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Cubbie Blueson August 12, 2021 at 4:53 am Read More »
Two people were shot by police Wednesday morning after a vehicle slammed into a police car during a traffic stop in East Chicago, Indiana.
About 8:50 a.m., officers attempted to make a traffic stop near Indianapolis Boulevard and Chicago Avenue, East Chicago police said. The driver refused to stop and struck a squad car that was attempting to assist with the stop.
Once the driver of the vehicle struck the squad car, he continued to accelerate, trapping one of the officers inside the vehicle and pinning his leg near the door panel, police said.
An officer who was inside the squad car got out of the car and fired shots, striking the driver and a passenger, police said. They were taken to the hospital in Chicago for treatment.
The officer was taken to St. Catherine Hospital for treatment, police said.
lesraff
January 17, 2020 at 12:00 am