It’s on you; what are you going to do? Because you went for the rebound, the ball is in your court; what play are you going to make? You showed up early for every practice and you even studied the game book, yet you rode the bench all season long, but for some reason, the coach decided to put you in the game. Are you going to make a strategic play, maybe pump fake the opposing team? Or are you so intimated by the other players that you travel? Are you going to hog the ball and not pass it to your teammates because you’ve waited so long for this moment? Are you going to play offense or defense? Are you going to lead the team to victory and take the shot or keep dribbling? The shot clock is ticking; you don’t have much time to decide.

Now that you’re in the game, you feel the pressure that you didn’t feel before on the bench. Now you understand how your teammates missed opportunities, turned the ball over, fouled other players and sometimes lost the game. Watching the game and playing the game are on different levels. Make sure you watch closely, learn from other players, and strategize so that when you get in the game, you help your team win the game!

When asked what their book groups are reading, friends often reply with a complaint. “I never like what this one person picks.” “I can’t get through the book.” “It’s too shallow to say much about.”

Then I’m grateful for my book group. It’s been going for 21 years, with four of us founding members and the other two added early on. Over the years our lunchtime group of coworkers lost members who left for other jobs, but our workplace base also contributes to our success. We don’t have to catch up before getting down to business, and a lunch break is a limited time.

The main reason we thrive, though, has to be the personalities. Everyone contributes; no one talks too much. In the rare instance someone hasn’t finished the book, he or she listens more than talks. None of us is argumentative, so we seldom have extended disagreements, but everyone makes insightful points.

We also were unwittingly wise about the guidelines we chose back in 1999:

PICKING THE NEXT BOOK: I’ve been in groups that brainstormed what to read next as a meeting wrapped up, and a couple of dominant people always got their preference. The friend who never likes so-and-so’s choice is in a group whose members take turns dictating the next read. Our group gives each person a chance to suggest but not impose. On your turn you propose a few books from which the group chooses. We read only novels, which is a preference, not a key to success. Because we have different tastes, suggestions have ranged over centuries, countries, and genres, from Candide to Sula, from Fahrenheit 451 to Right Ho, Jeeves. Often someone comments, “I wouldn’t have thought to read this, but I’m glad I did.” I have the distinction of having suggested the only book we all hated, a novel by a Middle Eastern author that I thought might be enlightening after 9/11.

AVAILABLE IN LIBRARIES: Unlike my friends’ groups, which usually read recently published books that members may have to buy in print or ebook form, our group requires that all suggested books be readily available at libraries. Not reading recent bestsellers, we usually can get books easily at a library without going on a waiting list.

NOT TOO LONG: We adhere to a 350-page limit except when we decide to take on a longer novel in more than one session.

SIX WEEKS TO READ: Instead of meeting monthly, as many groups do, we set the next meeting date at the end of a discussion, usually giving ourselves six weeks to finish. Members with jobs say they are grateful for the longer timeframe.

ROLE OF THE SUGGESTER: The person who suggested the book prepares an introduction to the author for the start of the discussion. Before the coronavirus, when we met in person in the office, he or she also coordinated a carryout lunch. Some groups like themed meals corresponding to the book, but we prefer minimal fussing over food, keeping our focus on the novel.

I’ve remained in the group since retiring, and we have a second retiree now. Maybe we’ll keep going into everyone else’s retirement. We’re on our 166th novel, as documented in a list kept by Roseann, our unofficial secretary. If anyone would like the reading list, email me at mgoss@northwestern.edu.

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VOTE — AND DO MORE IF YOU CAN

In February 2018, wanting to take some action against Donald Trump, I began ending every post with anti-Trump quotation from the previous week’s news. Last week’s was the 129th.

Since Illinois will start sending out vote-by-mail ballots on Thursday, I was going to assemble my favorites quotations into an indisputable condemnation of the scoundrel. But then it seemed a lot of work for little payoff: people who read my blog likely aren’t Trumpers.

So instead, I’m adding an exhortation. Anti-Trumpers, please urge everyone you know to vote. The Senate, as well as the White House, is in play. The frenzy over Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement shows how important this election is. If you’re able to do more than vote, see the websites of the Biden campaign and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee or Let’s Swing the Senate.

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ANTI-TRUMP COMMENTS: 130TH IN AN ONGOING SERIES

“Mr. President, this is low. Even for you. No, I didn’t write Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish to a nation she served so well, and spent her whole life making a more perfect union. But I am going to fight like hell to make it come true. No confirmation before inauguration.”
— Rep. Adam Schiff, one of the Democrats who Trump suggested may have written RBG’s wish that she not be replaced until there is a new president

A piece of Chicago history, Lawry’s The Prime Rib (100 E. Ontario St.) inside the iconic McCormick Mansion, has been a favorite with Chicagoans for 46 years.

Known for its signature Prime Rib from antique silver carts, Yorkshire Pudding, and Spinning Bowl Salad, the Mansion was the perfect setting f0r Lawrys. 

The McCormick Mansion was commissioned in 1889 by L. Hamilton McCormick (nephew of the inventor of the McCormick Reaper).

Longtime Chicagoans may remember going to the Mansion to attend the the renowned Kungsholm Puppet Theatre that was home to the theatre from from 1937 to 1971.

Lawry’s The Prime Rib, which closed due to the pandemic in March and reopened in July, announces that they will be cosing December 31, 2020.

The iconic steakhouse was founded in Beverly Hills in 1938 as America emerged from the Great Depression. At the time a Prime Rib dinner cost $1.25.

Chicago became the first location for Lawry’s outside of Beverly Hills in 1974 when it set up shop in the McCormick Mansion becoming a special part the River North community.

 “It was an extremely difficult decision to close Lawry’s The Prime Rib in Chicago, a stalwart location for our brand since 1974,” says Ryan Wilson, CEO for Lawry’s, Inc. “It will always hold a special place in our hearts and we will never forget the memories made in the McCormick Mansion. We welcome our beloved Chicago community to the restaurant throughout the next few months to celebrate the last 46 years and enjoy the best prime rib in the city before we close and reassess what our presence looks like in the ever-evolving Chicago food scene.”

 Lawry’s The Prime Rib plans to host a variety of celebrations over the next few months, including welcoming guests to the McCormick Mansion for private mansion tours, intimate special occasions, holiday celebrations, and delicious dinners leading up to its last day of service on December 31, 2020.  

For more information click here

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Watch the video to see a motorist confront several Trump supporters who had a Trump poster in Triangle Park area near Downtown. The sight apparently so provoked a motorist that he left his car in a rage to confront the Trumpers and ultimately tried to ripe the president’s banner from a supporter’s hands.

The Trump supporters were there because another sign earlier posted in Triangle Park not so subtly blamed the 200,000 American deaths on Trump. It’s called the death scorecard, meant to remind local residents that we’re in the midst of a pandemic–something everyone already knew. The scorecard named Trump, implying that he caused the deaths–now the preferred trope of the left. (Look for details in an earlier story.)

I’m told that the village does not allow the space to be used for political signs and that officials cleared the death scorecard for display even though it has an anti-Trump message. It doesn’t seem to be to be in the spirit or the letter of the First Amendment to allow all kinds of speech, except political speech. That’s what the free speech provision of the First Amendment was first and foremost meant to do.

Last week, I wrote about growing up in Park Forest when it was a newly minted community and, in my mind, a children’s paradise. I decided to check that memory against the recollections of friends and discovered that they used strikingly similar language.

“Park Forest was a magical place to grow up,” says Jill Carlson, who was in sixth grade in 1955 when IBM transferred her father from New York to Chicago. The family moved from one planned suburb to another: from Levittown, in Long Island, New York, to Park Forest, the Levittown of the Midwest.

“I had an idyllic childhood,” echoes Dianne Mears-Mustafa, who was in second grade when her family relocated from Toronto. “My dad chose Park Forest because University of Chicago professors lived there, which meant that the schools had to be good.”

Paradisiacal, magical, idyllic — a great place to grow up. But by high school, I was less enchanted, and I urged my parents to consider a move to the city, where the action was. The topic was a nonstarter, given Park Forest’s excellent schools and above all its affordability. I made the move by myself in 1966, when I graduated from Rich East and entered the University of Chicago — a few stops north on the Illinois Central line but what seemed like a world away to me.

After that, I returned to Park Forest only as a visitor. As my younger siblings left the nest, I again urged my parents to consider a move to the city. And again, they resisted. No longer crammed with seven people, the house seemed spacious, and the mortgage was paid off. They lingered until few of their original neighbors remained. Finally, in 1997, after nearly 50 years in Park Forest, my parents moved to a Chicago condo with a view of Belmont Harbor.

Although I wasn’t there to experience how Park Forest evolved after the mid-1960s, Carlson and Mears-Mustafa were. After college and marriage, both returned to Park Forest to raise their families and continued to live there until only a few years ago. They witnessed what I had missed: Park Forest’s path toward racial integration.

No Blacks lived in Park Forest in 1953 when sociologist William Whyte visited the village to document life in America’s new suburbs for a series of magazine articles that became the book The Organization Man. Whyte’s vision of rigid conformity — something like the Stepford Husbands — was challenged by many Park Foresters, who resented being pigeonholed and viewed themselves as progressive thinkers.

Unlike Levittown, where early lease agreements capitalized the restrictive covenant that homes be occupied by whites only, Park Forest had no such restrictions. Nevertheless, neither Carlson nor Mears-Mustafa nor I remember having any Black classmates through high school. Today Park Forest is diverse: about 60% percent Black, 34% white and 6% Hispanic or Latino, with smaller percentages of other races.

Norman Rockwell’s ‘New Kids in the Neighborhood’

The beginning of the shift toward diversity is documented in the May 16, 1967 edition of Look magazine in an article by my father, Jack Star, a senior editor at Look. In the article, he highlights Park Forest as a case study for suburban integration nationwide. Look commissioned a painting from artist Norman Rockwell to accompany the article. Rockwell’s “New Kids in the Neighborhood” tells the story succinctly. Divided and united by a moving van, two groups of children, Black on the left and white on the right, lean in, curious to see their new neighbors. All the boys, Black and white, carry baseball mitts. In the background, a man peeks out a window.

The article opens with this: “’Being a Negro in the middle of white people is like being alone in the middle of a crowd,’ says Mrs. Jacqueline Robbins, a young Negro housewife who lives in the Chicago suburb of Park Forest, Ill.”

The article continues: “In December, 1962, Mrs. Robbins, her chemist husband Terry, 32, and their two sons moved into the then all-white suburb, whose first, and only, Negro family had just recently moved out. ‘I was apprehensive,’ she recalls. ‘If anything happened, I knew I’d be here by myself.’”

Isolation was an understandable concern. In Becoming, Michelle Obama writes of visiting friends in Park Forest in the 1960s. After their visit, the Robinson family discovered that their Buick had been keyed. Fast forward to 2014, when Park Forest-Chicago Heights School District 163 renamed Forest Trail school the Michelle Obama School of Technology and the Arts and Beacon Hill School the Barack Obama School of Leadership and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

In the Look article, my father went on to write that Park Forest “has become a model for Chicago suburban integration, very modest though it may be.”

The homogeneous Class of 1966, a page from the 1965 Rich East yearbook, the ‘Lagoon.’ Class treasurer Kathy Toelle — now Kathy Reichs — went on to write forensic investigation novels that spawned the television series ‘Bones.’

Mears-Mustafa, my friend and classmate at Rich East, moved back to Park Forest in 1986 and noted the changes. “As a child, there were no Black kids in my classes,” says Mears-Mustafa. “When we came back, there were many Black families on our street and at the high school.” Mears-Mustafa worked as a school social worker, and her husband worked at a center for developmentally disabled adults. Their daughter, who is bi-racial, grew up in a Park Forest that differed from her mother’s but that continued to be a nurturing place for children. Mears-Mustafa moved to Florida in 2018.

Carlson moved back to Park Forest in 1966 as a newlywed and experienced those changes in her work as a teacher and assistant principal at a nearby Catholic school. “When I started teaching in 1985 there were few Black students. When I retired in 2013, more than half were Black.” Carlson moved to Chicago in 2016.

That sends me back to my original question: what does the Park Forest I grew up in look like today? To answer that I’ll need to revisit the village, and that will have to wait until after the pandemic. Some of the statistics worry me. Population and property values are trending down. GreatSchools.org rates Park Forest School District 163 as below average in comparison to the rest of Illinois.

But statistics don’t tell the whole story. To explore how and why Park Forest has changed, I spoke with a regional planner. I’ll report on that next week in Part 3.