The Beatles in the early days. Photo courtesy Chicago Tribune.
Ask me what I think about the Beatles and I will give the standard answer of my generation. They are the greatest band that ever lived, they revolutionized music, they mean the world to me. OK boomer, now ask me which of their songs I would put on my all-time, continuos loop, soundtrack of my life music stream.
And that’s where the dilemma lies. From the harmonies of I Want to Hold Your Hand, through the opening chord of A Hard Days Night to the final yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah of The Long and Winding Road, I like a lot of Beatle songs, but I don’t love any of them. Sort of like my relationship to Superdawg french fries. I like them but I don’t love them.
It’s not the same with the other artists that are constantly playing on my radio in the lab or the Pandora station in my headphones at the fitness center. If I’ve got favorite bands, I’ve got favorite songs to go with them.
U2? The bang-bang-bang opening of the Joshua Tree album–Where the Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, and With or Without You introduced me to the band more than 30 years ago and have been my favorites ever since.
With Steely Dan, my favorite songs come from the end of their career, or at least the end of their career’s first chapter (I ignored the second chapter.) Aja, the title track of their 6th album, is sublimely mellow and mind-expanding and the same album’s Deacon Blue makes a wistful cry out to mid-life crises.
When Fleetwood Mac changed their personnel and music style in the mid-70’s they probably lost a few thousand fans but gained a few million more. It was that flip that led to Go Your Own Way, the best power-pop song of all time. And I love the more pensive Over My Head just as much. Easy to add to my jukebox of greats.
What Eagles songs are on that Love Those Songs jukebox? Give me the original Hotel California and then follow it up with the Hell Freezes Over version of…Hotel California. Sometimes you feel like acoustic, sometimes you don’t.
The longings of youth. Has anyone made them seem more desperate than Bruce Springsteen in Thunder Road or made them sound more fun than in the Boss’s Rosalita?
While Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is my top-ranked album, I prefer not to think about individual songs from it — everything blends so seamlessly together. On the other hand, Wish You Were Here, the title cut and final track from the Floyd’s 1975 album stands alone as the perfect paean to loss of love, loss of a bandmate, loss of sanity. And the guitar solos in Comfortably Numb make me feel…comfortable.
But back to the Beatles. I am ok with the silly love songs, I enjoy the goofiness of Yellow Submarine and Octopuses Garden, and I can play air guitar to The End. But where is the song I could listen to over and over and over again? Where is their Hotel California? If Rocky Racoon put a gun to my head and made me choose one song, today it would be While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Tomorrow it would probably be something else. Like but never love.
And that is my dilemma with the Beatles.
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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!
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – JUNE 12: Vladimir Tarasenko #91 of the St. Louis Blues hoists the cup after defeating the Boston Bruins 4-1 to win Game Seven of the 2019 NHL Stanley Cup Final at TD Garden on June 12, 2019 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
The Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues have a long storied rivalry. They are also both teams looking to do whatever means necessary to get better. The Blues won the Stanley Cup in 2019 so you know that they are a lot closer to getting back than the Blackhawks who aren’t very good at all anymore. However, there is some news coming from St. Louis that might interest some fans of both teams. The report out there is that Vladimir Tarasenko has requested a trade.
The Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues could make a trade if both sides were willing.
There are a lot of things that could cause Tarasenko to want out of St. Louis. He has had a lot of success there, including the Stanley Cup title in 2019. He also has 218 goals and 224 assists for 442 points in 531 games played. He has dealt with injuries over the last few seasons which has made people wonder what the future is going to bring for him. It is easy to forget that he was once a top-five goal scorer in the NHL.
BREAKING: Blues winger Vladimir Tarasenko requests a trade, per sources: Why he wants out, possible destinations and more https://t.co/OLnEuCtgsI#stlblues
Obviously, the Blackhawks are not a likely destination for Tarasenko for a few reasons. First, it is hard to see the Blues trading him to a division rival that has so much history with them. Second, it doesn’t seem like he is the best fit for the Hawks at this point either. However, it is always fun to speculate what a trade might look like. If it did happen, it might look something like this:
If you went to a lot of shows at defunct Bridgeport punk house Rancho Huevos, you likely caught the July 2019 debut performance of south-side underground supergroup Canal Irreal. The band, whose name means “unreal channel” in Spanish, features members of razacore outfit Sin Orden (who emerged in a second wave of local Latinx punk bands in the late 1990s), guitarist Scott Plant of oddball postpunk unit Droids Blood, and longtime DIY punk linchpin Martin Sorrondeguy, best known as the fearless front man of radical Spanish-language hardcore champions Los Crudos and queercore evangelists Limp Wrist.
Almost two years after their first show, Canal Irreal have dropped their self-titled debut through Beach Impediment Records from Richmond, Virginia. This sinewy sprint of an album plants its flag in the contested territory between grim, cold postpunk and white-hot hardcore fury. On “Glaze,” an austere bass line seems to summon icy guitars that act as foils to Sorrondeguy’s sawtooth screams; Canal Irreal can create tension that makes you want to jump out of your skin, so it’s a relief when when they crank up the chorus into a warm wall of sound. The quicksilver hardcore stomp of “Si Somos” and the brisk goth melody of “Knockdown” summon complex emotions with aggressive sounds, and make Canal Irreal ideal for repeat listening. v
A few days after the Fourth of July in 2018, Zay Manning was shot outside his neighborhood corner store in Bronzeville — the one he grew up going to for a bottle of lemonade and a bag of hot fries.
He was 19 and loved helping his younger brother produce music — picking out beats, tweaking the sound one bar at a time.
The one bullet that hit him nearly killed him.
During his hospital stay, police officers and doctors told him about the Illinois’ Crime Victim Compensation Program, which uses state and federal dollars to reimburse victims of violent crime and their families for injury-related expenses. Manning applied, hoping to recoup some of the costs of his medical bills and replace clothing destroyed and bloodied in the shooting. But he found the program difficult and confusing as he also was navigating back-to-back hospital visits.
“It was a lot of documentation I didn’t really understand,” Manning says. “I got discouraged.”
More than a year after submitting his claim, Manning faces a similar situation as most of the program’s applicants.
He hasn’t gotten a single penny of compensation.
The nearly 50-year-old government program that’s supposed to help ease the blow of being a crime victim largely isn’t doing that, an investigation by The Trace has found.
Few people apply to the program. Even fewer end up getting financial relief. Those who do face long waits.
Using records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, The Trace analyzed nearly 15,000 claims processed by the state’s victim’s compensation program between 2015 and 2020. Fewer than four in 10 applicants got any reimbursement.
And that’s out of those who even applied. Many people aren’t even aware the program exists, The Trace found.
In Chicago, just one application was filed for every 50 violent crimes during the period reviewed.
The majority of claims were denied or categorized as “award no pay” — a designation that means someone is eligible to get the money but, in most cases, that an analyst hasn’t been able to verify all of the necessary details of the application.
To examine how the program is working, The Trace interviewed nearly 50 survivors, family members, researchers, advocates and government officials and found that the problems stem in large measure from three factors:
The strict eligibility criteria.
Burdensome application requirements.
And not nearly enough outreach from government agencies.
The program has a small staff, and advocates and researchers worry that the application process can re-traumatize victims by making them prove that they have suffered.
John Maki of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, “If the best thing we have is crime victim compensation, then we don’t have very much.”Kevin Tanaka / Sun-Times file
Beyond that, it can take years for the state to decide whether to pay a claim, which in some cases leaves crime victims in debt for things such as medical care for their injuries.
Victims’ needs spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, as violence in Illinois and across the country soared to historic levels alongside a rise in unemployment and housing insecurity.
“If the best thing we have is crime victim compensation, then we don’t have very much,” says John Maki, a director with the Alliance for Safety and Justice who’s a longtime advocate of reforming the reimbursement program. “It’s a service with a lot of potential, but the potential is far, far, from realized.”
Lakeidra Chavis reports for The Trace, a nonprofit news organization covering gun violence in America.This story is being published in partnership with the Sun-Times, Block Club Chicago and La Raza.
Earlier this year, the Illinois Legislature passed a bill that ultimately will make more people eligible for compensation and also raise the cap for reimbursement.
Advocates say the changes can’t come soon enough but still could leave big gaps in the people the program reaches.
Sharrise Kimbro, a division chief for Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s — whose office runs the program with the Illinois Court of Claims — said the agency can’t answer for problems with victim’s compensation before Raoul took office in 2019 and points to changes that the office has instituted that might not be reflected yet in the data on the program’s success.
Flawed from the start
Every state has a program to compensate crime victims, and each operates differently. Under the federal Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA, Congress disperses millions each year to help fund such efforts.
A decades-old federal report on victim services shows the philosophy that influenced this approach, saying: “The innocent victims of crime have been overlooked, their pleas for justice have gone unheeded, and their wounds — personal, emotional, and financial — have gone unattended.”
When Illinois lawmakers passed the Crime Victim Compensation Act with bipartisan support in 1973, they made the state among the first to do so.
A few years later, a report in the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal blasted the “inadequate draftsmanship” of the law, noting that few claims had been filed in the program’s first two years.
A 2019 report by 11 advocacy and anti-violence groups echoed this and pointed out that Illinois had one of the lowest application rates in the country.
Illinois’ victim compensation program has a roughly $6 million yearly budget, funded mostly by the state. To receive compensation from the state program, people have to be a victim of a crime that happened in Illinois and must apply within two years of the incident. They also must have reported the crime to police and cooperated with law enforcement and the victim compensation program.
Family members, including spouses and children, can apply to cover related expenses they covered as well.
People have to spend their own money before seeking reimbursement. And the program won’t reimburse what insurance covered.
Applicants can be found ineligible if the program’s staff determines they were hurt or killed while committing a crime or otherwise contributed in any way to their becoming a crime victim. And those who are on probation or in prison can’t be compensated until they’re released.
As of late June, the attorney general’s office — which vets the claims — had just over a dozen analysts who focus on processing the thousands of claims filed each year. They interview the victims, confirm expenses related to the injury and gather reports from law enforcement to determine whether they qualify.
Once the analyst makes a recommendation, the application is sent to the Illinois Court of Claims, which rules on monetary claims against the state. If the application is approved, the state comptroller’s office issues a payment — usually by check.
There are multiple points at which applicants might be asked to provide more documentation. The analysts usually send these requests by mail, and applicants have 30 days to respond.
For survivors of violent crimes like Manning, waiting for the analysts to make a decision can feel like peering into a black hole.They can’t go online to look up where their claim stands, as is done in Indiana and Tennessee. The process is largely done through the mail, unlike in some states that communicate with applicants by phone and email.
Though the attorney general’s office is the key agency, four state agencies are involved in the application process in Illinois, rather than one as in other states.
A lag in payments
Reports to the federal government show that, of Illinois applications for compensation that included information on the victim’s race, half were Black, and a smaller percentage were white or Latinx.
Raoul has said he first noticed problems with the victim compensation program about a decade ago, when he was a state senator.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul.AP file
“There was an inability to answer the question of, to what extent, were resources going to the most victimized communities,” Raoul said earlier this year. “There was a sense that there was a small likelihood that someone who was a Black or Brown male would qualify for resources. There were rules — written and unwritten — with regards to what would disqualify you from compensation.”
According to his office, the agency under Raoul has relaxed some of the state’s strict rules for who qualifies. He also has required analysts to undergo trauma-informed training and hosted listening sessions on where to make improvements.
The changes his office touts are reflected in a sweeping criminal justice reform law passed earlier this year. The reforms broaden the rules on who can apply for victim compensation, increase the total possible reimbursement per person to $45,000 and extend the application deadline to five years after the date of the crime. The reforms also shift more responsibilities to the attorney general’s office.
But expanding the cap doesn’t necessarily mean survivors will get more money. The average reimbursement under the program has been about $4,400 — far below the current financial cap of $27,000.
FEW RECEIVE THE MAX
The average reimbursement from 2015 to 2020 has been about $4,400. Just 2% got the maximum possible $27,000. Daniel Nass / The Trace
And it has taken increasingly longer for the state analysts to begin reviewing claims, even as the number of applications has fallen. Since 2015, the wait time has grown from a few days, on average, to nearly 50 during the pandemic, as the analysts worked from home. It’s then taken eight months longer, on average, to decide whether to approve any reimbursement.
“I’ve rarely seen a case that gets their funding in three to six months,” says Edwin Martinez, a mental health coordinator on the city’s Southwest Side.
Martinez likens the process to having to argue a case in court.
“You have to explain how this injury affected you,” he says. “You have to submit supporting documentation. That really depends on the stability [of an applicant’s living situation] and how informed that client is. Do you have your police report? Do you have your incident report?”
A lack of public awareness
In North Lawndale this summer, an elderly man, shot in 1981, spoke about how the bullet that hit him four decades ago remains lodged in his spine. He estimated his medical bills have come to about $80,000. He didn’t know that he might have been eligible to get reimbursement from the state to help cover that.
Down the street from him, another man, who’d been shot about a decade ago, also was surprised to learn the state might have helped pay the resulting bills.
For each, the deadline to apply for victim compensation has long passed.
Hospitals and police are required to inform victims about the possible compensation. But The Trace surveyed victim advocates and sampled people living on the South Side and the West Side and found few know the program exists.
Only about 3,300 people apply each year. The largest numbers of applications had come from Chicago neighborhoods that experience the most violence — majority-Black and Latinx communities including North Lawndale, Little Village, Austin, West Lawn, Roseland and Chatham.
But the percentage of crime victims seeking compensation is low. Since 2015, about one application has been filed for every 50 violent crimes in the city.
Beyond awareness, applying can be difficult.
Teyonna Lofton is still trying to grasp the process. She started looking into how to apply soon after she was shot last year, just days before her high school graduation, as the city erupted in riots after George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer.
“I don’t understand how the application works,” Lofton says. “I don’t know if I submitted it or not.”
She says she recently called the attorney general’s office’s helpline to confirm whether her application was submitted but was told the information wasn’t available due to a ransomware attack that affected the agency.
Once someone does apply, the likelihood of being approved depends heavily on the type of crime. Reimbursements related to sexual offenses are the least likely to be approved compared to battery and murders, The Trace found.
AWARDS BY TYPE OF CRIME 2015-2020
The Illinois attorney general’s office “awards” nearly two of three crime victim compensation claims in murder cases. For victims of sex offenses, it’s fewer than one in five. “Award-no pay” means a claim was deemed eligible for compensation but, in most cases, that an analyst hasn’t been able to verify all of the necessary details of the application. Daniel Nass / The Trace
The low rate of approvals isn’t surprising for Maria Balata, a director with Resilience, a support organization for sexual assault survivors. Balata says her team tries to set realistic expectations with survivors about the program’s limitations.
“It’s just become such a convoluted system for us to navigate with victims,” she says. “Typically, it’s the bureaucracy of it that makes it feel like it’s inaccessible.”
The reason people end up not getting any compensation often is because an analyst couldn’t “substantiate” a crime victim’s claim.
Susan Catania, who was one of the sponsors of the crime victim compensation law: “I am really appalled that not enough people know about it and use it. Plowing through the bureaucracy has to be excruciating.”Sun-Times file
Claims are more likely to end up being designated “award no pay” than being denied outright. This means that thousands of applicants are still eligible to receive financial support — but might not realize that.
Susan Catania is one of the last living sponsors of Illinois’ law. Today, nearly 50 years later, the former Republican state representative from Chicago says, “I am really appalled that not enough people know about it and use it. Plowing through the bureaucracy has to be excruciating. A victim of any crime does not need that added as a burden — especially if ultimately they’re going to be told there’s some bureaucratic reason they’re not going to get any money.”
Covering funeral payments
On a recent morning in Austin, Nhemya Ward sat in a conference room at the Johnson Funeral Home as she went through a copy of the crime victim compensation application — a five-page document that has more than 100 information fields. The attorney general’s office made the application available online last year, but Ward uses the paper version.
Part of her job is helping the funeral home’s clients fill out the forms. She says most of them can’t afford the unexpected costs of burials resulting from violent crimes.
Since 2015, about a quarter of all claims to the state program have been to cover funeral costs. The state’s long lags in processing applications makes Ward’s job harder.
Nhemya Ward is a funeral director at Johnson Funeral Home, 5838 W. Division St. She helps clients with the paperwork for claims to the cime victim compensation fund. But her funeral home has had to start capping the number of clients it will take who rely on the state program to help cover funeral costs.Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times
She says her funeral home requires families to pay upfront for half of funeral and burial expenses. The funeral home defers the rest of the bill in hopes the family’s reimbursement request is approved.
If it isn’t, the survivors must find another way to come up with the money.
“The reason why we do the 50/50 split is because crime victim compensation does not pay for up to two years,” Ward says. “Right now, our 2018 crime victims files are just being reviewed.”
To combat the uncertainty, Johnson and other funeral homes vet potential applications customers might file.
“I had one family who wanted to apply,” Ward says. “I asked them the details of what happened.”
A mother told Ward her son “went to defend [a relative], and, in the midst of that, he was shot and killed. That unfortunately is a risky case to take because he went to the person’s house.”
Austin funeral director Nhemya Ward holds a paper copy of the Crime Victims Compensation Application. It’s five pages long, with more than 100 information fieldsAshlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times
Ward says that, based on her experience, the attorney general’s office probably would view the man’s actions as “contributory misconduct” — meaning his own actions played a role in his death. Since 2015, more than 600 claims have been denied for this reason.
Ward’s funeral home began capping the number of clients this year that it will take who rely on crime victim compensation.
“It’s just not financially sound,” she says.
‘Blessing in disguise’
Zay Manning, now 23, got a lot further than most applicants — though, until recently, he wasn’t aware of just how far.
Last year, weeks before the pandemic hit, he got a letter from the attorney general’s office asking for more information about his medical bills.
“They wanted everything, like literally everything,” he says. “I’m going in and out of hospitals as I’m still healing, taking out staples and stitches. They wanted me to keep the paperwork from the time I was having surgery and basically my whole situation up until when they released me.”
Manning was juggling dozens of hospital visits and learning how to walk again after his injuries and says he struggled to reach people to get the information he needed.
“I didn’t get back to [the attorney general’s office] in enough time,” he says.
The process left him frustrated and disillusioned.
“It’s basically a hit or miss,” he says.
As a result, for nearly half a year, Manning and his mother Natalie believed his application had been denied. It wasn’t until a reporter searched for his claim and found that the attorney general’s office had marked his case as an “award no pay” that they realized his application still has a chance. He just needs to turn in more paperwork.
“It’s just confusing,” Natalie Manning says. “They need to have better communication.”
Isaiah “Zay” Manning and executive director Debra Gitter during a Zoom meeting at Contetos, the nonprofit she runs, where he works, Contextos. | Brian Rich / Sun-TimesBrian Rich / Sun-Times
Much of Zay Manning’s life since the shooting has focused on moving beyond the trauma. He still lives in Bronzeville, where he grew up. As part of his recovery, he started working for ConTextos, a nonprofit organization that helps young people in Chicago process trauma through storytelling.
Now the father of an almost 1-year old baby with chubby cheeks and enough hair for bantu knots, the opportunity to finally receive reimbursement offers a sliver of hope.
“I’m kind of shocked,” he says. “I was just looking past it and to forget. The fact that I might be able to obtain it — I feel like that’s a blessing in disguise.”
This story was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2020 Data Fellowship.
APPLYING FOR VICTIM COMPENSATION
The Illinois Crime Victim Compensation Program reimburses victims of violent crimes for injury-related expenses. How it works:
WHO CAN APPLY: Victims of a violent crime in Illinois or their family members. You have two years from the date of the crime to file a claim, must have reported the crime to police within 72 hours — one week in the case of a sex crime — and must cooperate with the police and with analysts from the program. You’ll need records to verify expenses not covered by insurance.
WHAT’S COVERED: Expenses including funeral costs, relocation, mental health counseling and income loss. This is a reimbursement program that can cover costs you already have paid for.
HOW MUCH CAN YOU GET: Up to $27,000, though there are caps on certain types of services. Funeral cost reimbursements, for example, are limited to $7,500.
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE: The process can take several months. If approved, the reimbursement will go to you or directly to a funeral home or other vendor you owe money to.
MORE INFORMATION: Call the state’s toll-free Crime Victims Assistance Line at (800) 228-3368. A text talk line is available at (877) 398-1130.
Two people were killed and 11 others were wounded in shootings in Chicago Thursday.
One of the fatal shootings occurred in Austin on the West Side. Miles A. Thompson, 18, from Northbrook, was found with a gunshot wound to the chest about 7:10 a.m. in the first block of North Mayfield Avenue, Chicago police said.
Thompson was pronounced dead on the scene. Police said it was not clear when the shooting occurred.
Two men were shot, one fatally, in Wentworth Gardens on the South Side. They were in front of a home in the 3900 block of South Princeton Avenue when a car pulled up and someone inside fired about 2:15 p.m., police said.
Deandre Abrams, 26, was struck in the face and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said. The other man, 35, was shot in the leg and taken to the hospital in good condition, police said.
Other shootings:
A 40-year-old man was shot during an attempted robbery in East Chatham. About 1:40 a.m., he was walking in the 7900 block of South Ingleside Avenue when someone walked up and demanded the man’s bag, police said. The 40-year-old refused and was shot in the leg, police said. The robber took the bag before fleeing. The man was taken to Jackson Park Hospital and stabilized.
Minutes later, a 30-year-old man was shot in Little Village on the Southwest Side. About 1:55 a.m., he was outside in the 3100 block of West 26th Street when someone in a passing red car fired at him, police said. He was struck in the abdomen and the left side, and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition.
Two people were shot, one critically, near Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen about an hour before students were released for the day Thursday afternoon. A 16-year-old boy and a 34-year-old woman were in the 2100 block of South Ashland Avenue when someone approached and opened fire about 12:10 p.m, Chicago police said. The woman was hit in the neck and taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition. The teen was shot in the leg and was in good condition at the hospital.
At least six others were wounded in citywide gunviolence.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – DECEMBER 13: Houston Texans running back Buddy Howell #38 is gang tackled by the Chicago Bears defense during the second half at Soldier Field on December 13, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)
Most of the excitement surrounding the Chicago Bears this offseason has centered around the offense and first-round pick Justin Fields — and rightfully so. It has been a long time since there has been this level of optimism around the Bears’ quarterback situation, so you can’t blame fans for focusing their attention on that side of the ball.
However, if the Bears stick to their expressed intentions to start Andy Dalton (which could certainly change in training camp) they will once again be leaning heavily on their defense to carry them into the playoffs.
You can argue whether Dalton is an upgrade over Nick Foles or Mitch Trubisky, but even if he is, the improvement is nominal. Dalton is not the type of quarterback who is going to carry a team on his shoulders.
At this point, the best the Bears can hope for is that Dalton plays like the ultimate “game manager” and the defense can play at a high enough level to keep them in the playoff hunt. So what can we expect out of the defensive unit for the 2021 season?
What are the expectations for the Chicago Bears defense in 2021?
For this exercise we are going to break down all three levels of the defense, starting with the defensive line.
Right off the bat, we have to address the elephant in the room, which is Eddie Goldman. After opting out of last season due to COVID-19 concerns, there is a sense of worry that Goldman may choose to retire. If that were to happen, it would leave a massive hole in the defensive front — particularly in the run game. The team will turn to Bilal Nichols and recently signed Mike Pennel to fill that monstrous void. While neither is Goldman, the pair should be able to fill in admirably if he chooses to retire.
The rest of the line, to include the team’s edge rushers, should look the same from the 2020 season, at least in terms of composition. However, the Bears will absolutely need more production out of Robert Quinn if the defense is going to be a top five unit. While Khalil Mack may have been graded as the top edge rusher according to Pro Football Focus, his amount of impact plays were down, largely because underperformance on the rest of the line allowed defenses to key on Mack. If Quinn can take some of that focus off of Mack, he will feast in 2021.
Next, we move to the inside linebackers where we expect Roquan Smith’s ascension to continue. Smith has steadily improved every season and is close to the most dependable player on the defense. You can pencil him in for 120+ tackles and exceptional coverage of the field. Opposite Smith will be Danny Trevathan who will need to continue to be a complementary piece to Smith. Add in the addition of Cristian Jones for some nice depth, and the inside linebacker corps probably has the least number of question marks on the defense.
Finally, we take a look at the defensive backfield, where we have arguably the most question marks. With the departure of Kyle Fuller, the team will lean heavily on second-year player Jaylon Johnson (who appears up to the task) and either Kindle Vildor or Desmond Trufant opposite Johnson. Trufant has been a very solid corner throughout his career, but is past his prime, and Vildor, who has played well in limited time, has not been asked to be “the guy.” So both come with some question marks. This will be the most intriguing camp battle to watch in my opinion.
Looking at the nickel cornerback position, the Bears have another hole to fill with the aperture of Buster Skrine. They have some intriguing options here including the extremely versatile Marqui Christian who will hit camp incredibly hungry and eager to show how he can contrite to this unit. Other options include Artie Burns, who missed last season due to injury, Duke Shelley, who is still looking to make a name for himself, and rookie Thomas Graham, Jr.
Next, we move to the safety positions, where Eddie Jackson will be patrolling the field as the team’s unquestionable free safety. While Tashaun Gipson may seem to have the inside track to start as the strong safety, he will face stiff competition from the likes of the aforementioned Marqui Christian, and long-time Bear Deon Bush. In fact, the strong safety position could be another sneaky good camp battle to watch with Christian being one to keep your eye on.
While the unit may have some question marks, to include new defensive coordinator Sean Desai, they are still good enough to be a top-five unit, especially if they get back to their more aggressive ways when they were led by Vic Fangio. And if they want to be a playoff team with a Dalton-led offense, they are going to need to be just that.
Richard S. Levy, who grew up to become one of the nation’s foremost experts on the history of antisemitism, first experienced it as a young boy.
He was about 5 when a nun at the Catholic school he was attending shushed noisy students with a comment that prompted his parents to pull him out of the school the next day.
“One of the nuns said, ‘I want you to be quiet. The last one talking is a Jew,’ ” his brother David Levy said.
Mr. Levy, a history professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who taught for nearly half a century on the Holocaust, antisemitism and German history, died of prostate cancer June 23 at his Lake View home. He was 81.
At 11, “One of the kids in class was having a birthday,” said his wife Linnea. “The mother talked to her son about inviting all the kids who were standing around playing baseball. But Richard heard her whisper to her son, ‘Not the Jew.’ He told me about that story and how it hurt.”
After graduating from Morton High School in Cicero, he got his bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and a master’s and doctorate at Yale University, then taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
His dissertation became the ground-breaking 1975 book “The Downfall of the Anti-Semitic Political Parties in Imperial Germany.”
“There was a tendency to say antisemitism was in the air of this country,” said Peter Hayes, a retired Northwestern University history professor. “Richard said ‘No, it’s more complicated.’ He makes the argument that there were more effective structures to fight antisemitism before 1918” in Germany.
In addition to many articles, translations and contributions to books, Mr. Levy edited the two-volume 2005 book “Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution.”
“It was a huge international undertaking, where he got a large number of very important professors and scholars to contribute,” said Kevin M. Schultz, who chairs UIC history department. and said the encyclopedia “has sort of become the first stop for anyone wanting to study the history of antisemitism.”
Richard S. Levy, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor, was an authority on the history of antisemitism.Provided
Mr. Levy’s 1996 book “A Lie and a Libel: The History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion” explored the persistent and widely circulated conspiracy theory that proclaimed Jewish people were preparing for world domination.
Though he spent part of his childhood in Cicero, his parents Roy and Helen were heartsick when violence was directed at Harvey E. Clark when the Black CTA driver and World War II veteran tried to move his family to the west suburb in 1951. Thousands rioted, and the Levys decided to move to Berwyn, his brother said.
Mr. Levy’s father liked discussing history at the dinner table and took his sons on a trip retracing the path of the Union Army, stopping at battle sites including Gettysburg and Antietam, said David Levy, a retired history professor at the University of Oklahoma.
Their father had applied for a job with the Chicago Daily News on Feb. 14, 1929 — the day of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. The paper had a scoop on the gangland bloodshed that turned a Clark Street garage into an abbatoir and, to prevent a leak, “They locked the doors of the Daily News,” David Levy said, keeping everyone inside until the paper hit the street. “My father reported saying to himself, ‘This is a very exciting place to work.’ ”
The father was hired as an ad salesman. His specialty was movie ads.
“That’s part of the reason Richard developed such a love of movies,” his brother-in-law Jon Randolph said.
Mr. Levy’s UIC office was decorated with a German poster of the Charlie Chaplin film “Modern Times.” If a student professed interest in movies, he’d give them his list of Hollywood classics, which always included the Marx Brothers.
Every semester for about two decades, he advised more than 100 history majors and another 50 or so students with minors in history.
As a result, Schultz said, “Every day, there was a line of students waiting outside for him, and they would go over their schedules and make sure they were doing everything they needed to graduate.”
His class on the history of the Holocaust was always the first to fill up at registration time, Schultz said.
“He was a mentor,” said Linnea Levy, who was married to him nearly 54 years. “He had the gift of being kind without being condescending.”
At home, Mr. Levy made delicious baguettes and pizzas. He and his wife “cooked for each other every night,” Randolph said.
His family said he was a cutthroat Scrabble competitor and a skilled pool player who played at Chris’s Billiards on Milwaukee Avenue, where scenes were filmed for the 1986 Martin Scorsese film “The Color of Money.”
The Chicago Public Schools system has fired a company that had been granted the right to use school lots during Cubs games and other events this spring for paid parking.
Premium 1 Parking Inc. was behind and not paying CPS what it promised.
CPS terminated contracts that allowed Premium 1 to park cars at 10 schools.
It acted after being asked why it was doing business with a company that’s had licensing problems and was behind in paying City Hall.
Premium 1’s owner also had fallen months behind on paying CPS to use the school lots, for which the company would charge people going to Cubs games and other events to park. It was supposed to pay the school system about $13,000 a month.
As of June 7, the company settled bills dating as far back as October but still owed at least $23,000 for June’s license and outstanding late fees. It paid $13,125 June 8, but that wasn’t enough to catch up.
“The district has terminated, effective June 17, the parking agreement with Premium 1 Parking Inc. due to incomplete payment,” CPS spokesman James Gherardi said. “The termination is final.”
He said the owner “had a full 33 days after the district issued a demand letter to pay his arrears, late fees and provide an accounting, and he did not.”
Premium 1’s $11,617 payment for “license/late fees” landed in CPS’ account on June 18 — the day after officials canceled its contracts.
Gherardi said CPS will seek new bids from parking companies to lease the school lots “to ensure schools have the highest possible potential revenue streams.”
Asked about his debts, Premium 1’s president Dylan Cirkic at first said he didn’t owe CPS any money.
“I paid the full balance,” Cirkic said. “And when I paid it up, I got terminated.”
Cirkic said he had receipts and documents to prove he was current with his payments but never produced those records and later said he does still owe some money.
“The only thing I owe them is revenue-sharing for the four schools around Wrigley,” he said. “Otherwise, everything else is paid up to date.”
To settle years of unpaid taxes and fines, City Hall negotiated a payment plan with Cirkic’s company last December for $45,602. After Cirkic made a $20,000 payment, the city law department said he had failed to make any others, but it turned out he was sending them to the wrong department. He is current on his payments and owes the city $19,202.
CPS has sued Blk & Wht and Weiss, a son-in-law of Joseph Berrios, the former Cook County assessor who also headed the Cook County Democratic Party, trying to get at least some of the $366,607 — plus interest — Blk & Wht promised to pay for using school property for paid parking during non-school hours.
For more than a decade, some Chicago schools have been leasing out lots for parking. Whatever money a school gets from parking leases can be used as needed at that school.
The most lucrative lots have been near sports venues: Wrigley Field, United Center and for a time, Sox park.
Other schools in congested North Side neighborhoods also have benefited, as people in those neighborhoods sometimes have leased parking from them.
A few schools in other neighborhoods also have made money, though generally to a lesser degree, by renting to nearby churches and restaurants.
Overall, though, the schools that have gotten the most extra cash to do with as they like disproportionately serve white students in wealthier neighborhoods.
Before the pandemic, one school — Inter-American Magnet Elementary, which is just blocks from the Cubs’ ballpark — was getting as much as $381,000 a year for the use of its parking lot and parking garage.
Premium 1 Parking attendants flag drivers during a Cubs home game to park for $40 in a garage at 808 W. Addison St. that InterAmerican Elementary Magnet School shares and that it leased to the company.Tyler LaRiviere / Sun-Times
For most of the past decade, the school parking lease business in Chicago was dominated by Blk & Wht.
To replace it and the revenue it brought some schools, CPS asked companies to make formal bids for the leases. That was just before COVID-19 surfaced in Illinois, shutting down the economy and forcing the school system to cancel that competitive bidding process.
Premium 1 was given contracts anyway for 10 school lots. But the company didn’t disclose it had been put on a payment plan at City Hall to repay about $45,000 it owed.
Among its citations, Premium 1 had been cited for “operating without the required public garage license” in March at 10 schools.
When AFSCME official Randy Hellman was hospitalized in February with COVID-19 — the diagnosis coming just two weeks before his scheduled vaccine appointment — he had a premonition it wasn’t going to end well.
Talking on the phone from his hospital bed, Hellmann told his longtime best friend and “union comrade” Pat Rensing this:
“I need a promise from you, Pat. I want to be used as the poster child for the vaccination. I don’t want anyone to go through what I’m going through.”
Rensing tried to be encouraging, as anyone might. She told Hellman he could lead the campaign himself once he recovered.
But Hellman was insistent.
“No,” he told her. “I need this promise.”
She promised.
That would turn out to be a heavy responsibility for Rensing after Hellmann died from the virus on March 13. He was 58.
For 30 years, Hellmann and Rensing had advanced together through the union ranks in the Illinois Department of Corrections, first as activists and local union leaders at state prisons in Centralia and Pinckneyville, later as statewide union leaders and finally as employees of the union itself.
Hellmann was the charismatic one, a “natural born leader,” as Rensing put it.
“He knew how to talk to folks,” she said. “He knew how to message.”
Rensing was his trusted sidekick, the detail person in their partnership.
“He taught me so much. I was more in the grunt work,” said Rensing, who came through the clerical side of the Department of Corrections.
Hellmann was a large man who went to work as a prison guard after attending Southern Illinois University Edwardsville on a baseball scholarship.
Randy Hellmann in his Illinois Department of Corrections uniformProvided
An avid sportsman with a home on a quarry lake near far downstate Carlyle, Hellmann tried to fish every day, and he did his own taxidermy. The inside of his house looked like a Bass Pro Shop with all of his trophies on the walls, Rensing said. He took particular pride in an eight-pound bass that he’d caught and mounted.
“Randy, he was bigger than life,” said Lisa Hellmann, his widow.
Months later, she still finds his death difficult to talk about. Her husband had no prior health problems before contracting COVID, she said.
Of his union work, Lisa Hellman said, “He tried to help people in any way, shape or form to get what they deserved.”
In short, Hellmann was a perfect candidate in many respects to be exactly what he proposed to be on his death bed: the focus of a campaign to vaccinate his fellow union members. He fit the profile of many of the people who have resisted the vaccine.
But when he died, Rensing didn’t know where to start.
So she asked Roberta Lynch for help. Lynch, AFSCME Council 31’s executive director, assigned Anders Lindall, the union’s public affairs director, to the task. With Rensing’s assistance, Lindall put together a short video that has been widely shared on social media. It uses Hellmann’s story to make the case for vaccination as strongly Hellmann could have hoped.
Not long afterward, Rensing was meeting with union members at Menard Correctional Center when she was approached by a young man who told her he didn’t know Hellmann but that, after watching the video, went to his local public health office and got vaccinated.
“It was touching,” Rensing said.
I’d like to tell you that was just the start of an outpouring of union members and state corrections employees getting the vaccine after hearing Hellmann’s story. But Rensing said she hasn’t heard from anyone else.
That doesn’t mean there weren’t others. But, as in so many aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are people who can be persuaded and those who can’t.
“I think [the Hellmann video] has played a part and made a positive difference,” Lindall said, noting that the union also has taken other steps to encourage its members to get the shots.
Lisa Hellmann is frustrated by those who won’t get vaccinated.
“I have no idea why people don’t. It truly befuddles me,” she said. “I try to tell people: Please get vaccinated. I try to tell them it’s not going to go away until everybody gets vaccinated.”
It’s a shame Randy Hellmann can’t tell them himself.
The AFSCME Council 31 union is urging its members to get vaccinated against the coronavirus — Randy Hellman’s dying wish.
The Oscars were historic, shocking and a little bit schlocky, the Golden Globes spun into even more controversy and criticism before being given a timeout, theaters are no longer Quiet Places, the “other” music festival from 1969 was finally given its due, Jean Smart and Kate Winslet turned in career near-best performances in two wonderful new TV series, and in “F9,” for the first time in movie history, a Pontiac Fiero was launched into space. Thanks for keeping things interesting, 2021!
And we’re just at 50% capacity, meaning it’s time for my annual Halftime Report Card spotlighting the notorious and the noteworthy in the words of theatrical films (they’re a thing again!) as well as streaming, premium cable and broadcast TV.
In the immortal words of Dom Toretto in the ludicrous but wildly successful “F9”: “No matter how fast you are, no one outruns their past. And mine just caught up to me.”
How Dom’s buddies keep a straight face when he’s dispensing his fortune-cookie wisdom is beyond me, but in any case, off we go.
How can we miss you if you won’t stay away?
After the Los Angeles Times published exposes about the lack of a single Black member in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and some ongoing ethically dicey practices, while Tom Cruise returned his three Globes and Scarlett Johansson announced she would no longer participate in HFPA press conferences after facing “sexist questions and remarks … that bordered on sexual harassment,” NBC announced it would not broadcast the ceremony in 2022.
Ever since their inception, the Golden Globes have been something of a joke, but Hollywood played along, and we all enjoyed those booze-soaked, loosey-goosey telecasts.
But hey: You can still throw an awards party and get a champagne sponsor without calling it the Golden Globes.
Weird ceremony, historic results
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” hair designers Mia Neal (left) and Jamika Wilson (right) join presenter Don Cheadle after winning Oscars.ABC
The 2021 Oscars took place at Union Station in Los Angeles, and it was a weird affair, with presenters giving rambling speeches directly to the befuddled nominees. It was, however, an historic night, as Chloe Zhao (“Nomadland”) became the second woman ever and the first woman of color to win best director, Youn Yuh-jung became the first ever Korean acting winner and the “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” hair team was the first Black-led group to win. In one of the biggest upsets in recent Academy Awards history, Anthony Hopkins won best actor for “The Father” over the late Chadwick Boseman from “Ma Rainey.” A grateful and gracious Hopkins delivered his acceptance speech from his homeland of Wales the next day, via Instagram — a scenario the great Sir Anthony couldn’t have envisioned when he won for “The Silence of the Lambs” back in 1992.
Kate and Jean, the smartest
Jean Smart (left) in “Hacks” and Kate Winslet in “The Mare of Easttown.”HBO
Two of our finest actresses were given plum roles in two very different series — and it’s no surprise they both knocked it out of the park. Kate Winslet was brilliant as a small-town detective with a soap-opera personal life in “Mare of Easttown,” while her “Mare” co-star Jean Smart also killed as a Joan Rivers-esque, Vegas-based comic legend in “Hacks.”
Wanna take you higher, higher!
A 1969 performance by Sly Stone and his bandmates highlights “Summer of Soul.”Searchlight Pictures
Arguably the most thrilling scene in any movie this year is when Sly & the Family Stone command the stage in “Summer of Soul,” an exhilarating look back at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.
Vibrating seats, ear-splitting sound and popcorn, oh my!
On Tuesday, March 16, I saw a screening of a film in a theater for the first time in nearly a year. That movie was the big, dumb, fantastically over-the-top “Godzilla vs. Kong,” the first of a steady stream (or should we not say streaming?) films I’ve seen in theaters, including such spring/summertime treats as “Cruella,” “A Quiet Place, Part II” and “In the Heights,” all of which played beautifully on the big screen.
As for “Godzilla vs. Kong,” when people ask me what it’s about, I can only say, “It’s mostly about Godzilla and, um, Kong. They might fight but I don’t want to give anything away.”
Original films and series, kind of
Just a partial list of the sequels, prequels, spinoffs, origins stories and reboots to come our way in the first half of 2021:
“A Quiet Place Part II”
“F9”
“Godzilla v. Kong”
“Cruella”
“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It”
“Mortal Kombat”
“Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway”
“The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard”
“Tom and Jerry”
“The Boss Baby: Family Business”
“Spiral: From the Book of Saw”
“Wandavision”
“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”
“Loki”
“Monsters at Work”
“The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers”
“Blindspotting”
Better Call … Bob?
The seemingly mild-mannered Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk, right) confronts a thug (Alain Moussi) on the bus in “Nobody.”Universal Pictures
If you thought Chris Pratt and John Krasinski made surprising (and spectacularly successful) transitions from playing ordinary guys on TV to action heroes, they’ve got nothing on Bob Odenkirk, who kills as a seemingly average husband and father who has a very particular set of skills and puts them to great use in “Nobody.”
Stephen Dorff vs. Hollywood
Actor Stephen Dorff came down hard on his Hollywood colleagues.Amy Sussman/Getty Images
In an interview with the Independent, the actor Stephen Dorff, a gifted artist who never reached his James Dean potential, said “Black Widow” looked “like garbage to me. It looks like a bad video game.. … I’m embarrassed for Scarlett!” and added, “My business is becoming a big game show. You have actors [and filmmakers] that don’t have a clue what they’re doing.”
Echoes of the mid-1990s, when Dorff was proclaiming he was the best of the new breed of actors that included Christian Slater, Mark Wahlberg, Matthew McConaughey, Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Smith.
FWIW, Dorff’s career-best performance was in Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” (2010), as a famous actor who’s a bit of an a——–.
The best films of 2021 so far
Anthony Ramos stars in “In the Heights.”Warner Bros.
In alphabetical order:
The best series and documentaries of the year to date
Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany play married superheroes on “Wandavision.”Disney+
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lesraff
January 17, 2020 at 12:00 am