Meteorological summer begins on June 1, and the calendar is just past the first week of June. The heat and humidity feel like July.
In the old Celtic calendar, which was based on solstices and equinoxes, summer season begins on May 1 –about halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. August 1, halfway between the summer solstice and the fall equinox, marks the beginning of fall and harvest season.
Summer solstice marks the midpoint of summer. Yes, these are the longest days, the lightest days, now.
It feels like midsummer, and a calendar already marked with baseball games, concerts, farmers’ markets, movies, museums, hotels, tours, beaches. Chicago is re-opening for the summer. June 11 is re-opening day!
There are still COVID precautions and protocols, but the vaccines are making a difference. There is a cautious optimism. A different summer this year.
I am originally a country girl from downstate Illinois. I was a Chicago girl in Rogers Park by the Lake. Now I live in Oak Park, by the Blue Line and the Congress Expressway. I write about the weather and other things.
I hope you enjoy and join in these observations. Welcome to Chicago Weather Watch!
Going the extra mile is no longer extra; it should be the standard. If you want to go higher in anything, you should also want to do more than what is expected or required. Normalize what others view as beyond and you’ll go further. You’ll also get to the prize if you keep going. So many people won’t get it because they don’t want to go that extra mile. They stop at good enough where there is rarely any reward or gain. Be curious and go see what extra has to offer.
Dozens of family members and supporters of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams gather for a vigil outside the girl’s grandmother’s West Side home, Wednesday evening, April 21, 2021. Jaslyn was fatally shot Sunday, April 18, while in line at a McDonald’s drive-thru with her father, who suffered one gunshot wound to the back and survived. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
Children deserve better. Telling them to stay away from their parks and friends is not an answer. It is a sickening admission of defeat.
Our children are being murdered. Gunned down in the streets. Shot in the parks. Murdered sitting on the porches of their homes.
They go to bed listening to the sounds of gunshots outside their windows and awake to a living nightmare where monsters stalk the streets looking for children to kill.
This is not a horror movie. It is everyday life.
A teenager is shot by assassins while walking her dogs.
A 7-year-old is riddled by bullets fired by two gunmen as she sits in a car at a McDonald’s drive-thru.
A baby is shot in the head while traveling in a car on Lake Shore Drive.
Each time the politicians say this must end. The church leaders urge their communities to rally around the families. Flower memorials are built, and tears are shed.
And then some other child is murdered. Shot dead.
Children are told to remain in their homes. The streets are not safe. But a bullet can come through a window at any time and kill a youngster in her home who has done nothing wrong. It happens.
Such atrocities used to be unacceptable. If a child was killed our entire society would come together, not only to denounce the murderer, but to find him and send him to prison.
Even criminals realized that shooting a child, by accident or as a threat, would cause everyone to turn on them, including their fellow gang members.
Not anymore. Now children are murdered every day. There is often no remorse expressed by the gunmen. Our moral compass has been crushed. Violence is an accepted part of daily life, along with the tears shed for the dearly departed.
Those tears have become a fast-evaporating form of moisture in the world.
It is impossible for people to live this way without something changing within them. It is impossible for children to grow up like this without being damaged forever by the bloodshed.
We can blame narcotics. We can blame the gangs. We can blame the police, schools, parents and the government. And always we blame the guns.
We have done this repeatedly. It doesn’t stop children from dying violent deaths in their own neighborhoods.
What good are politicians, we might ask, if they can’t assure the safety of children in the streets, in the parks, in their own homes?
What do all the words of outrage really mean if children can’t enjoy a summer without gunshots ringing in their ears? The temperature is rising. We should expect more dead bodies. This is what people say.
This must come to an end now, along with all the excuses. There must be a commitment to protecting the lives of every child and punishing those who would take their lives. There must be a willingness to stop making excuses for the evil that roams the streets.
We must finally recognize the nightmare is of our own creation.
Children deserve better. We can all agree. Telling them to stay away from their parks and their gatherings with friends is not an answer. It is a sickening admission of defeat.
This is a war, and our children are its victims. This is a life and death struggle and we have failed to put up much of a fight. We cannot claim to be living in a civilized country when young people have lost their right to grow into adulthood.
Our children are being murdered. They go to sleep each night listening to the sound of gunshots outside their windows. They awake each morning to the realization that monsters are stalking their streets.
It is time the adults stepped up and said, “No more.” We are here to protect you and will do whatever it takes to make the world safe. Hell, to make your street safe.
About Face Theatre takes the mystery out of training next-generation LGBTQ+ artists—while putting it into a streaming production.
Read from the scroll of off-Loop theaters making headlines and winning acclaim 25 years ago, and you’ll find precious few that remain today. About Face sits in the pantheon of exceptions; the one-in-countless companies that have both the business acumen and artistic passion to sustain their idealism and their theater over the long, long haul. …Read More
The Chicago Justice Project released a 20-year study portraying the committee as anemic over the last 20 years in hopes of pressuring the committee to approve four stalled police accountability ordinances.
The Chicago Justice Project on Tuesday turned up the heat on the City Council to approve four stalled police accountability ordinances by portraying its Committee on Public Safety as anemic over the last 20 years.
Between 2000 and 2020, the Police Committee-turned-Committee on Public Safety held 186 meetings and considered 489 agenda items, according to a Justice Project review. Of the agenda items considered, 80% were unrelated to police oversight. Only 15% had anything to do with the Chicago Police Department, the study showed.
Less than 5% of committee action related to the alphabet soup of police accountability agencies: CPD’s now-defunct Office of Professional Standards, the Independent Police Review Authority and its replacement, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
Instead of flexing its legislative muscle to rein in CPD and strengthen police accountability, the committee has spent much of its time donating used police and fire equipment and “rubber-stamping” mayoral appointees, the study showed.
Tracy Siska, executive director of the Justice Project, said the 20-year record is a clarion call for aldermen to “do their jobs.”
“We have experienced misconduct and abuse for decades in Chicago with no end. The Laquan McDonald murder didn’t happen in 1980. It happened in 2014. Anthony Alvarez just happened. There’s a long line of misconduct and abuse for a hundred years that the City Council has turned their back on and shirked their responsibility for,” Siska said.
“Don’t ask the Police Department to make changes. Demand them. They’re the legislators. They set the rules. It’s time to start doing it … and restrain policing for things they don’t want to happen.”
Siska is specifically demanding approval of four stalled ordinances:
• A plan for civilian police oversight endorsed by the Council’s Black, Hispanic and Progressive caucuses. It would ask Chicago voters in the 2022 primary to approve a binding referendum empowering an 11-member civilian police oversight commission to hire and fire the police superintendent, negotiate police contracts and set CPD’s budget. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has introduced her own plan that retains those powers for the mayor.
• Creating a “robust” database of misconduct complaints filed against Chicago Police officers, not the limited database dating no further back than 2000, as Lightfoot has offered.
• A “Police Settlement Transparency Accountability” ordinance giving aldermen the facts before they’re asking to sign off on settlements tied to allegations of police misconduct and mandate that the Committee on Public Safety meet monthly to consider those settlements and twice a year to focus on police accountability.
The Anjanette Young ordinance “limiting how and when they can do no-knock or knock-warrants and who they can point guns at” is a perfect place to start, Siska said.
“No one is advocating that the City Council tell them how many police to have assigned to what districts. … This is saying the citizens of Chicago and their representatives want policing to be restrained in this way,” he said.
Public Safety Committee Chairman Chris Taliaferro (29th), a former CPD officer, bristled at the suggestion he presides over a do-nothing committee.
“We are not an oversight body. We’re a legislative body. Yes, we create ordinances that affect our police department and fire department. But we should not be looked at as one of oversight. Rather, one of legislation,” the chairman said.
“I don’t think you should ever cave in to any type of political pressure to get something done. When you get something done, it should be thought out, negotiated and then passed. For their assessment to be ‘you rush ordinances and you rush legislation to vote,’ I think, is a poor assessment by them.”
Taliaferro said he has scheduled a June 18 meeting to allow aldermen to choose between Lightfoot’s watered-down version of civilian police oversight and a stronger version endorsed by the Council’s three most powerful caucuses.
He wouldn’t guess which way that vote would go.
Asked why he has yet to schedule the hearing he promised on the Anjanette Young ordinance, Taliaferro argued the legislation championed by African-American women in the Council goes too far.
“It’s asking to do something we have not done in the past. That is, codify police procedures. We’ve never done that. There are no police procedures that are a part of our city ordinances,” he said.
“The correct process to do that is … through changing police policies and procedures in their general orders.”
Former U.S. national team coach Jill Ellis will serve as president of a National Women’s Soccer League expansion team in San Diego. | Seth Wenig/AP
The addition of San Diego will bring the league to 12 teams. Angel City in Los Angeles is also set to start play in 2022.
Former U.S. national team coach Jill Ellis will serve as president of a National Women’s Soccer League expansion team in San Diego.
The new team, owned by investor Ron Burkle, will be launched next season.
“We aim to become a significant team globally, led by influential women, with the ability to attract the best talent throughout the world,” Ellis said in a statement Tuesday. “I am eager to begin this project and look forward to leading this club as we build towards the future.”
Ellis quit as coach of the national team in 2019 after the United States won its second straight World Cup. She was hired as coach in 2014 and led it the U.S. to eight tournament titles. Over the course of her tenure, the United States lost just seven matches.
Burkle is a co-owner of the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins. In February, he backed out of plans for a Major League Soccer expansion team in Sacramento, California, that was scheduled to start play in 2023.
Burkle’s business associate Matt Alvarez will lead the NWSL team. Alvarez had been announced as part of the withdrawn Sacramento MLS ownership group.
“We believe in Jill and will provide the necessary investment to build a club that all of San Diego will be proud to support,” Burkle said in a statement. “Jill’s expertise and history within the sport is unrivalled and we are incredibly excited to continue to work with Commissioner (Lisa) Baird to bring a world-class team to San Diego as we continue to grow the sport and women’s soccer.”
Baird announced earlier this year that the NWSL was adding a Sacramento team, but when the MLS expansion fell through, its future was uncertain until Tuesday’s announcement.
The addition of San Diego will bring the league to 12 teams. Angel City in Los Angeles is also set to start play in 2022.
Khloe Kardashian (from left), Kylie Jenner, Kris Jenner, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian and Kendall Jenner arrive at the Kardashian Kollection launch party in Los Angeles in 2017. Their 20-season hit TV series “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” is coming to an end. | AP
Here’s a journey back through the tears, tantrums and togetherness that propelled the “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” clan to superstardom.
NEW YORK — It’s almost time for all those famous Kardashians to shuffle off to Hulu and new projects as their 20-season reality TV mainstay comes to an end. The series finale airs Thursday night on E!
But before they do, here’s a journey back through the tears, tantrums and togetherness that propelled the “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” clan to superstardom:
THE MEN & THE MARRIAGES
With five sisters and a brother, along with the Kris and Caitlyn drama, the years have taken us through many a man, a woman or two, and a myriad of love tangles. And the action started at the get-go. The very first episode references the sex tape with Brandy brother Ray J that launched the show and their mega-careers.
Before that, there was Kim’s first husband, music producer Damon Thomas, followed by a 72-day marriage to second husband, basketball player Kris Humphries, and a third trip to the altar with Kanye West. All three unions ended in divorce.
Charles Sykes/Invision/APCorey Gamble (from left), Kris Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott attend The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala in New York on May 6, 2019.
Kim’s divorce from Humphries dragged on far longer than the marriage, threatening to keep her legally tethered to Humphries at the birth of her first child, with West. That didn’t happen. North West was born two months after mom’s second divorce was finalized in 2013.
And that’s just one sister!
There’s Kourtney’s on-again, off-again relationship and three kids with Scott Disick, who makes his first appearance in Kardashian TV land on Episode One. The two never married amid his alcohol and drug abuse scandals, but they co-parent and he’s a die-hard on the series. Disick has become a fan favorite to some as the K family has embraced him as one of their own.
Sister Khloe married basketballer Lamar Odom in 2009 and filed for divorce in 2013, but she withdrew the papers after Odom suffered a drug overdose and went into a coma for several days. He was found slumped on the floor of a Nevada brothel. The divorce was finalized in late 2016.
APKhloe Kardashian and Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Lamar Odom pose together at the premiere of the film “Whiteout” in Los Angeles in 2009.
Khloe never married the father of her child — another basketball player, Tristan Thompson. He cheated on her while she was pregnant — and again with her younger half-sister Kylie Jenner’s best friend, Jordyn Woods. But Khloe and Tristan are now more than a little friendly and co-parenting 3-year-old True, even quarantining together during the pandemic.
Are you keeping up?
Let’s not forget Kylie’s relationship with rapper Travis Scott. They never married but also have a child together. And there was Kylie’s romance with Tyga, who just happens to have a child with Blac Chyna, who just happens to have a child with Kardashian bro Rob.
Does your head hurt yet?
Chyna and Rob had a tailspin of their own, leading him to post revenge porn on Instagram that got him banned from the platform.
Kardashian stepparent Caitlyn Jenner is OG “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and continued to appear after her divorce from Kris. She’s the parent with Kris of Kylie and Kendall. Kris filed for divorce before Caitlyn became Caitlyn.
Caitlyn publicly came out as transgender in a Diane Sawyer interview in April 2015.
NAME THOSE CHILDREN
The Kardashian-Jenner clan has oh so many kids, and they’re creative name-pickers.
Caitlyn has six children with three successive wives, including Kylie and Kendall with Kris. Kris had four children with her first husband, the late O.J. Simpson attorney Robert Kardashian before she divorced him, too: Kourtney, Kim, Khloe and Rob.
Kim had three kids following North: Saint, Chicago and Psalm. Oldest sister Kourtney has her three with Scott: Mason, Penelope and Reign. There’s also Khloe’s True, Kylie’s Stormi and Rob’s Dream.
GettyKim Kardashian West carries her daughter North West as they exit a car upon their arrival at the Armenian St. James Cathedral in Jerusalem’s Old City in 2015.
Some of the Kardashians brought viewers along while giving birth, and we’ve been treated over the years to home movies showing Kris bringing children into the world. A 12-year-old Kendall watched herself being born. Recently, during the final season, 11-year-old Mason watched his mom pull him into the world herself.
SPIN-OFFS OF SPIN-OFFS
They’re in LA. They’re in Miami. They’re in New York. No, wait, the Hamptons.
Part of keeping up has been chasing all the spin-offs. Is there a record number? It depends on how spin-off, franchise and canon are defined.
But it certainly is a lot in the reality TV genre, and several had various sisters “taking” various cities. In all, there were 11 spin-offs on TV — many short-lived. Like the show, they were driven by Ryan Seacrest Productions and the E! network.
The first was “Kourtney & Khloe Take Miami” in 2009. It morphed into “Kourtney & Kim Take Miami” after Khloe spun herself back into real life to do other work. There was a plethora of bikinis and big boats as the ladies sought to broaden the reach of their boutique Dash with new locations.
GettyKourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick attend the launch of AG Adriano Goldschmied’s “backstAGe presents:” initiative at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas in 2011.
True fans, especially Scott watchers, will remember the 2013 web series “Lord Disick: Lifestyles of a Lord” that was shown weekly in the third season of all that Miami taking. Scott bought himself the royal title in 2012 while on a trip to London and showed off his high-life trappings like fleets of fancy cars while offering tips on how we, too, can live like lords.
In 2011, “Khloe & Lamar” began as the two tried to figure out married life. And there were three seasons of the fitness fest “Revenge Body with Khloe Kardashian” after the marriage didn’t work out. Khloe also had a short-lived talk show, “Kocktails with Khloe.”
Kris briefly had an eponymous talk show in 2013, culminating in an appearance by Kanye West and his reveal of the first photos of North. The Fox network did not offer her a second season.
After Caitlyn came out, she got her own show: “I Am Cait.” It was a serious dive into her transition and whether she was up to being a role model as new friends educated her on issues facing the trans community. It was canceled after two seasons amid low ratings.
APIn this Nov. 14, 2016 file photo, Caitlyn Jenner arrives at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards in Los Angeles.
ROBBERY, NUDITY & MORE MOMENTS
Perhaps the scariest of all developments was Kim’s 2016 armed robbery in a luxury Paris flat during fashion week. Season 13 of the series took on the case and the emotional aftermath. She has openly discussed her terror at being tied up at gunpoint and robbed of her jewels. Kim said she thought she was going to die.
Among their far happier moments: All those over-the-top birthday bashes, lavish weddings and baby showers, let alone the weddings themselves.
Two of Kim’s weddings were on air and in the news. Khloe’s 2009 wedding with Odom a month after they met was featured on Season 4. After the Khloe-Lamar nuptials, the two bought a dream house while Kim was still in a condo. Just sayin’. Mansion is now Kim’s middle name.
The sisters are also fond of posing for photos sans clothing, though Kim wasn’t always comfortable with the idea.
Soon after turning that sex tape into gold, an up-and-coming Kim had a Playboy magazine moment, appearing on the cover of the December 2007 celebrity issue. After an initial photo shoot, Playboy’s Hugh Hefner came back for more.
“Does she have to take her clothes off,” Kris asks Hef in the show’s first season.
“Oh yes,” he responds.
They compromised: Kim posed naked, strategically draped in long strands of pearls.
Kylie also landed on the cover of Playboy, in 2019 wearing nothing more than a cowboy hat with a shirtless Travis in jeans.
PR Newswire/Rowan Daly/Harper SmithKendall and Kylie Jenner pose at photo shoot in 2012 wearing items from their new fashion line “Kendall and Kylie” available exclusively at PacSun.
And then there’s Kendall. The supermodel — along with an entire world of other celebrities — has taken her share of nudes and has weathered a few scandals of her own, though her love life has been on the down-low in comparison to her siblings.
There was her ill-fated Pepsi commercial in 2017, when she hands a frontline lawman a can of soda during a protest. The imagery was bashed as stolen from the Black Lives Matter movement. It was pulled and Kendall sobbed an apology on air.
Kylie and Kendall were accused of exploitation the same year for superimposing their faces onto images of Tupac, Notorious B.I.G. and a host of other music icons for a line of $125 T-shirts. They pulled the merch.
Fans need not worry. The series is ending, but this famous family isn’t going anywhere.
The village of Oak Park’s annual Fourth of July parade and fireworks have been canceled. Officials cited a “cautious approach to large events.” | Sun-Times file
“Emerging from the pandemic is not a sprint,” Oak Park officials said in announcing their decision. Autumn, they said, will hopefully be a better time for community events.
It’s a double dud.
The Fourth of July parade and fireworks show aren’t happening this year in Oak Park.
Village leaders canceled the parade and cited a “cautious approach to large events” as COVID-19 restrictions ease, according to an announcement posted to the village’s website.
Though restrictions on capacity and social distancing are being lifted by the state Friday, leaders in Oak Park pointed to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that states anyone who is not fully vaccinated remains at risk of contracting and spreading the virus.
“Emerging from the pandemic is not a sprint … and taking precautions now hopefully will help ensure a safe return in the not-too-distant future to the types of large community events many have missed over the past year,” the announcement stated.
“The community fireworks display has never been a village-sponsored event but was presented by a local not-for-profit organization. The village board is required to approve a permit for such exhibitions. No applications for a permit were filed this year or in 2020,” the announcement stated.
Oak Park anticipates moving toward a full reopening later this month if local and state COVID-19 rates remain on track.
Residents should look forward to opportunities to plan for community events in the fall, Oak Park officials said.
A 32-year-old man has been charged with a fatal shooting June 4, 2021, in Austin. | Adobe File Photo
Marshawn Pierce allegedly shot 23-year-old Michael Cooper “without any provocation” last week, prosecutors said.
Mental health issues may have played a role in the allegedly unprovoked killing of an Austin man last week, the accused gunman’s lawyer said Tuesday.
Marshawn Pierce, 32, has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, Pierce’s defense attorney told Cook County Judge Arthur Wesley Willis.
“I do believe that may have played a role in this,” the attorney said after prosecutors detailed the allegations against Pierce.
Pierce told detectives he shot 23-year-old Michael Cooper because he was a “snake” who had “tried to set him up before,” Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy said.
Cooper was hanging out at an apartment in the 5200 block of West Le Moyne Street with Pierce’s brother and two other people around 7:25 p.m. Friday when Pierce walked in, Murphy said.
“Without any provocation,” Pierce racked a .380-caliber handgun and shot Cooper once in the head as he sat on a rear stairway, Murphy said.
Cooper was pronounced dead at the scene and a shell casing was recovered.
Pierce was taken into custody during a traffic stop the following day and charged with first-degree murder.
Pierce told detectives he had been talking to his brother and that Cooper only said “what’s up?” to him before he fired the shot, Murphy said. Pierce also allegedly told detectives they could find the gun in his car’s glove box, where it was later recovered.
Pierce, works in construction and lives with his girlfriend, who gave birth to the couple’s child 10 days earlier, his defense attorney said.
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