Saying no to a patient, is certainly one of the most difficult things for us, as hearing health care providers to do. At our practice, the answer is always a resounding, yes! No matter what. We personally accommodate individual needs and agendas by squeezing patients in to fit their schedules. We stay late, we start early, we work through lunch, we come in whenever it is convenient for our patients. For without them, we would not exist.

We have established new guidelines to keep our patients and staff safe and healthy. And when we answer “yes”, it may sound a bit different.

-Yes we can help you. This is a specific time for you to come in to avoid contact with other patients.

-Yes we can help service your hearing aids without you physically coming into the office. Just call us from your car when you arrive.

-Yes, if you need to see an Audiologist, we can help you, when a room is available and properly sanitized.

-Yes we can help you, but we have a few questions to ask and new procedures to protect all of us.

-Yes, your needs will be met. You can expect the same high level of care that we have always provided.

Please be patient with us as we navigate the future and know that we will always have your best interests and safety at heart. When you are ready, call us. We will make sure to address what is important to you because you are very important to us.

Well, my fellow COVID-19 hostages, it’s been over two months since we were commanded house-bound by the State.  And there’s no practical end in sight, for all that Governor Pritzker moved the finish line to May 30th.

If you believe that, I have a 55-gallon drum of Purell in my garage, just for you.

Years ago, I think it was the Oprah show that coined the phrase, “new normal.” I don’t remember in what context it was used, but it was novel, new-agey and on-point.

Now I can barely hear the phrase without wanting to sob and puke, in tandem.

Because, my babies, our new normal SUCKS.  And it’s gonna be with us for a looong time yet. Masks, social distancing, staying home, deprivation – the full monty.

Further, it just stinks that daily, we either have to go to (essential) work and risk our lives, or stay at home (by compliance or unemployment) and decimate our personal and national financial health.

But absent a vaccine, this IS our fate.  You can rail against it all you want, but newsflash – the virus is in charge, not you.

I know, I know – just a scant few months ago, the stock markets, though volatile, still were bullish, and unemployment was at an historic low.

Then, one day in January, a tiny organism (that, magnified, resembles a land mine – apropos, no?) began invading our orifices, infecting the populace one respiratory tract at a time.  Its name: COVID-19, a new, nasty and exceptionally virulent coronavirus.  Infected and deceased victims tally by the day. No treatment, no cure and no vaccine.

Unemployment has risen to Depression-Era percentages, as businesses struggle to hang on.  Many have closed, with more to come.

And the scourge still hasn’t officially peaked. Newly-infecteds and deaths abound on a daily basis. Doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, duty-bound by oath, forge daily into the breach, often working inhumanely-long shifts, and far too many with inadequate protection. Every infected person they treat harbors the possibility of death for them; many doctors, nurses and caretakers have, in fact, succumbed to the virus.  Demoralized beyond measure, some even have committed suicide.

As time slogs on in COVID-ville, it was inevitable that conspiracy theorists and the just-plain-dense amongst us would fly in the face of government directives and scientific evidence, pooh-poohing the severity of the situation, growing more strident by the day.  “Nobody’s gonna take my rights!”  “It’s just like a flu epidemic, nothing worse.” “I’m opening up my bar, come hell or high water, no matter what the government says!”  Ad nauseum.

It has been just over 100 years since a plague so-decimated the world – the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918.

We seem to have learned little, behavior-wise.

So, what are the lessons here?  What’s the crux?

I’ll tell you what I think.  I think it’s a test from God or the cosmos or Yoda or whomever the heck is in charge.  The message is simple – and something too many of us long-ago discarded.

We ARE our brother’s keeper. Whether we like it or not.

What we do here on a daily basis – how we comport and protect ourselves – has direct bearing on everyone around us, especially, in this case, the “least” amongst us – the old and the sick, i.e., those with the most risk factors.

Empathy and compassion often are lacking in COVID Land.  In their place are selfish, callous thoughts of instant gratification and “Fuck off  – protect YOURSELF if you believe this shit, but I’m going back to my life!”

Could this whole thing be a test?  One to see if we can walk the talk of brotherly love and compassion?

Some believe that Pompeii and Atlantis met fates similar to Sodom and Gomorrah, due to reprobate behavior.  Wouldn’t it suck to suffer a similar fate?  Just sayin’, but who knows?

Jesus had a simple message: Love one another.

Dr. King said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?'”

Perhaps to gain deliverance, we have to upgrade our brotherly-love skills?

It’s worth a shot.  Maybe literally.

Thanks for reading.  Leave comments, snarky diatribes or declarations of love below, or old-school to: planetMichelle [email protected] 

Joining the Bears, Blackhawks, Bulls, Fire, Cubs and White Sox, Illinois, Notre Dame and other Big Ten schools have their own face masks to help fight coronavirus.

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Can you help us name these shining stars?

Friends, Readers, and Countrymen, I need your help! Like many of you, Barb and I have been looking for indoor entertainment during this long semi-lockdown. Early on, I reported on our jigsaw puzzle near-success (no, we still haven’t received the replacement for the missing piece). We were itching for the opportunity to do another puzzle to break up the nightly routine of Netflix streaming and online Mahjong and Scrabble, but all the puzzles we wanted to get were sold out.

And then…

Last Saturday we celebrated a 6-day belated Mothers Day. All the kids and grandkids on our back deck, each family at separate tables at least 6 feet apart. Each person had their own box from Superdawg (4 dawgs, 4 burgers, 1 chicken sandwich) and all the kids understood that Nana and Baba were off-limits for hugs and kisses, the only sad part of the day.

Of course, there were gifts and to our delight, Laury had found a site that had in stock the jigsaw puzzle you see in the picture above, Broadway’s Brightest Stars. It arrived at Laury’s house in that 6-day gap between the actual Mothers Day and our celebration–perfect timing.

If you have been reading the blog for long, you know Barb and I are huge Broadway fans. In Pre-COVID days we visited NYC  theaters at least annually and were planning our next visit to coincide with Hugh Jackman starring in The Music Man. With that trip on indefinite hold, the puzzle serves as a perfect connection to the Great White Way.

But this puzzle is hard! We finished the border and the next interior row, but after that, things have bogged down. When broken down into tiny pieces, everyone’s lips and eyes, and lots of their hair, look the same. And to make it more challenging, despite our Broadway acumen, we are having a hard time recognizing lots of the brightest stars. That makes it harder for us to cooperate. “Hey, Barb, have you seen another piece of the blue shirt on that guy over there?” It would be easier, and more fun, if I knew that guy’s name!

Yes, we know some of the faces. You can’t miss the Man Who Is Everywhere, Lin-Manuel Miranda.  Julie Andrews is easy to pick out for an old geezer like me. And though we just missed seeing Ben Platt on Broadway in Dear Evan Hansen we did recognize him in the upper right. But a lot of the others have us stumped.

So I ask for your help. I have numbered each actor, 1-20. Tell me, tell me, tell me who they are. A virtual high five and curtain call to all our helpers.

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Add Chicago foreclosure activity to the list of things that the Covid-19 pandemic is screwing up. On the surface it might seem pretty cool that all three components of April foreclosure activity were down 80%+ from last year. However, the reality is that this is nothing more than the result of the government mandated moratorium on foreclosures on federally backed mortgages which is designed to keep millions from slipping into foreclosure through no fault of their own. Once that moratorium ends all hell is going to break loose because a few of those 40 MM unemployed are going to have trouble paying their mortgages. Who knows where we will end up.

ATTOM Data Solutions updated their RealtyTrac data last week and also issued their April Foreclosure Market Report. I’ve incorporated the most recent RealtyTrac data in my graph below. You can see how dramatic the decline in activity is.

Chicago foreclosure activity plunged to unheard of record lows in the wake of pandemic policies aimed at softening the economic blow to struggling homeowners.

Illinois managed to maintain it’s position as having the third highest foreclosure rate in the nation.

Chicago Shadow Inventory

In light of the difficulty in interpreting foreclosure activity tracking the number of homes in foreclosure will probably prove to be more useful than ever. That shadow inventory decline by another 205 units in April. You can see the long term trend line in the graph below.

Chicago’s shadow inventory of homes in foreclosure is less than 1/8 of what it once was.

#Foreclosures #ChicagoForeclosures

Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service real estate brokerage that offers home buyer rebates and discount commissions. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market or get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.

During this time when Americans are looking for something positive to watch, to do, to hear, The Last Dance has provided that much needed boost of fun, taking us all back to the 1990s when the Chicago Bulls dominated the NBA.  Most of you, I believe, will say you have really enjoyed it. I know I have loved every minute of it.

Then, I thought I would check out ESPN Radio to see if they would be talking about it in order to extend that fun experience. Oh yes, they were talking about it nonstop. But they were focusing on the negative. Host David Kaplan interviewed some of Jordan’s teammates who weren’t so thrilled about the documentary. That seemed fair, getting reaction from other members of the team.  Whereas Horace Grant railed against ESPN and Jordan, B.J. Armstrong was more tempered and positive about MJ and the experience. I was surprised Bill Cartwright and Ron Harper got sucked into the negative side of the discussion to some extent. And when Kaplan interviewed legendary broadcaster Bob Costas, he brought a far more positive and level-headed tone to the discussion; far more professional!

“That was a dysfunctional team, a dysfunctional family,” said the now famous Chicago talk show host David Kaplan, who I first met in the late 1980s when he came into the Sun-Times sports department hawking a 5’10” and under basketball league featuring Larry Jordan. “Can you tell me why was this team so dysfunctional?” he asked Costas, who didn’t quite see it that way and listened to Kaplan repeat “dysfunctional’ about 10 more times over the next five minutes.

Kaplan, who actually used to be a pretty nice guy, has now shifted to the negative side of the equation on both ESPN Radio and NBC Sports Chicago. I can speak mostly to his TV gig, because I had watched it for years, but felt compelled to turn it off more than a year ago when I saw Kaplan and the show going negative, like sports talk radio in Chicago.  I swore off of sports radio two decades ago during the Bulls’ Glory Days when I listened to Mike North on WSCR Radio go off on critical rants about the Bulls – when they were winning championships! I wanted none of it when it became clear that the cynical and negative dominated most of the sports talk discussion.  My son and I joke about it because after listening to one of the first White Sox games of the 2012 season, which they lost when shortstop Alexei Ramirez failed to turn a double-play and the other team scored what turned out to be the winning run of the game. We listened to the post-game show when a  very upset fan called in to ask, “Do you think the White Sox can ever turn another double-play again?” I wish he were joking with the question, but he was quite serious as he continued his complaint. My son and I just laughed at the stupidity of it all.

I certainly know there are many radio fans who do love to live in the negative, ripping every athlete, coach, moment, etc. I’m just not one of them. I ran into WBBM Radio sports reporter, George Ofman, about five years ago and asked him that question directly. He told me that research has determined that sports talk radio listeners want to hear the negative. “That’s what draws them in to the listen,” he said.  George is a good example. His entire tone is negative. Listen to him once and even if he is reporting the positive side of a story, the tone in his voice is negative.  Okay, I’m kidding, you’ll never hear him report the positive side of a story. But I’m sure he is right about sports talk radio fans. If it weren’t true, they would have gone out of business a long time ago.

So basically what I’m saying is that if you are like most Americans living in this crisis situation and want to surround yourself with fun and interesting experiences, positive words and thoughts, watch The Last Dance, but don’t turn on sports talk radio.

Most everyone’s habits have shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic and people have turned to video games in big numbers as a result.

Video game sales have been up since everyone is spending more time at home. It makes sense. People need ways to kill time and video games can be great time-sinkers.

Last week, a friend recommended Days Gone to me, a PlayStation 4 exclusive that came out in April 2019. She said it should be my “quarantine game.” That sparked an interesting concept to me.

The idea of picking a massive game that you can pour dozens of hours into, gets lost in a world and look at a clock at some point to realize you’ve just killed an afternoon or evening playing the game is nothing new. But that type of game might be more in demand now. Just look at how popular Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been on the Nintendo Switch. It’s a game that is really all about time-wasting and it has become a cultural phenomenon. There’s not really a story and the objectives are whatever you want them to be (I think. Honestly I have no interest it and haven’t fully grasped the point of it yet.).

However, there’s probably another reason why Animal Crossing is hitting right now. It’s not just a low-stress time-waster; it’s set in a happy, smiley world. Even as someone with no interest in that game, I am not surprised by its popularity.

By contrast, in late March Doom Eternal came out. I played the 2016 Doom, which served as the first game in a rebooted series for the franchise. It was great fun. It’s a fast-paced first-person shooter with music that makes you wan to run through a wall, something you do several times throughout the game. You are a badass taking out demons from hell.

I eagerly awaited the sequel when we were relatively early in quarantine. I figured it would be something to distract me from the stress of the outside world. Then I played it and my reaction was very different.

It didn’t click in the same way the 2016 game did. The first couple times I booted up the game I checked out after less than an hour. The high-stress gameplay and dark world (Doom Eternal takes place after the demons from hell have invaded earth) were not what I wanted. I didn’t know I didn’t want that until I played it. On top of the dark setting, it’s a difficult game. The 2016 game pushed me, but this one asks more of you. The stress of struggling to stay alive in the middle of an apocalypse was not serving as a positive outlet so I turned away from Doom Eternal.

Normally I am into the dark and gritty tone that a lot of movies, shows and games have leaned into for the past several years. Everything has been getting a dark and gritty reboot. Now I want sunshine and rainbows. That’s why I went back to an old friend, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

I played and beat Odyssey in late 2018/early 2019 and had more recently started the first of its two DLC packs. In returning to Odyssey, I found what I was looking for. While the game had gotten a bit stale by the end of my 100-plus hours in the base game, stale wasn’t a major complaint anymore. I was just looking for something mostly mindless that gave me boxes to check off. Go here, collect this, clear out this location, etc.

The game’s Greek world is a beautiful landscape with green grass, vast open fields, flowers and picturesque sunsets. The gameplay isn’t stressful after you’ve put in over 100 hours. I had more or less mastered the stealth and fighting mechanics. Even as the game introduced new ones, it was easy to adapt.

My point is, the hellish world of Doom Eternal wasn’t what my brain needed to decompress. I wanted the opposite. So I plowed through the rest of Odyssey’s DLC over the course of about three weeks and loved it. It was my “quarantine game.”

For the record, I have since gone back to Doom Eternal (determined to get my money’s worth) and have found enjoyment after lowering the difficulty (something I reserve for desperate times, but it was that or delete the game). I now try to play it in daylight hours and not late at night, which is typically my gaming time. Thankfully it’s not a 100-hour epic like Odyssey or I wouldn’t be able to get through it.

Now my concern shifts to The Last of Us Part II, which is set to come out June 17. The original game is my favorite of all-time, but it is nothing if not a dark world. A post-apocalyptic world where a fungus spreads among humans and controls their brains turning them into hyper-violent enemies? It’s hard to say that feels real, but it feels more real now than a few months ago.

Let’s see if I can handle the world of The Last of Us during a real-world pandemic or if I’ll need to turn to a game with more sunshine and rainbows.

What do Star Trek and Mies Van der Rohe have in common?  Record rain and flooding.

Heavy rains and flooding over the weekend threatened two iconic buildings in the Chicago area –the Farnsworth House along the Fox River in Plano Illinois, and the Sears/Willis  Tower  in downtown Chicago.

The Farnsworth House is a masterpiece of modernist architecture designed by Mies van der Rohe between 1945 and 1951. At the time, the site along the Fox River was a rural area, and the elevated design  could accommodate the spring rains and rising Fox River.

Since then, the area has become much more built up, and the flooding is more severe. Here is an article about the recent flooding at the Farnsworth House, as well as a striking image of the dark Sears/Willis Tower and the Chicago skyline.

The Sears/Willis Tower was also affected by the recent rains. Flooding along Lower Wacker Drive also flooded  the basement of Sears/Willis Tower, causing  a power outage to the entire building, which  houses the transmitters of many TV stations, including WCIU, Channel 26.

Its sub-channel–Channel 26.4 is the home of the Heroes and Icons Channel, which features re-runs of all the Star Trek shows 6 nights a week.  There was NO SIGNAL on Monday night, after the rain and flooding on Sunday.

Today, Wednesday,  I am happy to report that the TV signals are back, and the flood waters are receding by the Farnsworth House.

There is more rain in the forecast for the Chicago area. This may turn out to be the wettest May on record!