Amadeus is a three-year-old, easy-going, sweet and gentle, female tri-color smooth coat guinea pig looking for loving guardian.
Amadeus was found abandoned in an apartment when her guardian moved. She landed at Chicago Animal Care and Control and then came to Friends of Petraits Rescue.
She is a easy to pick up and cuddle.
Guinea pigs eat a diet of unlimited Timothy hay (or Orchard hay if you have allergies), limited pellets, and fresh greens including romaine, red leaf and green leaf lettuces, cilantro, etc. And, since guinea pigs can’t manufacture their own vitamin C, they need daily Vitamin C in the form of a treat or red pepper slice.
Please read up on guinea pig care and diet before adopting by visiting this excellent web site http://www.guinealynx.info/.
She would love a home with a family who will handle her daily, keep her well fed, and keep her habitat nice and clean.
If you’re interested in meeting and possibly adopting Amadeus, please contact [email protected].
She is being fostered in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood.
Her adoption fee of $30 benefits the friends of Petraits Rescue. For an additional $50, we’ll include a starter kit of everything you need to care for her including cage, hay, litter, food, hidey hut and water bottle.
I thought long and hard about writing this post. How do I justify or authenticate an exhortation that cries out for indignation and protest against the racial violence that consumes our country when I am writing this from my plush condo overlooking the lake?
And then it comes to me. That is the point of it, the desperate need to speak out from a vantage point that is not a makeshift desk in a four-flat in Englewood!
I take up the cause because I represent all of us with open-hearts, yet faint of heart, taking refuge behind the justifiable concerns of our rational minds: I don’t have the credentials; nobody is going to listen to me anyway; what good will come out of it compared to the risk of some troglodyte MAGA fanatic insulting my lineage, citing my membership in a deep state conspiracy of Jews and dybbuks and accusing me of running a child pornography ring out of a pizza shop.
Better to keep quiet.
Yes, we sympathize with the broken-hearted mothers wearing Black Lives Matter tee-shirts; we feel for the generations of children with second rate educations and stunted opportunities; we are appalled by violence in marginalized neighborhoods and the despair that seeps into the lives of millions of families struggling to survive income inequities, food deserts, health discrepancies and a continuing, unrelenting Jim Crow mindset still pervasive in America.
But better to keep quiet.
Of course we admire the exemplars who decried bigotry and advocated with their lives in behalf of equality and diversity and brotherhood, but really, isn’t it a bit far-fetched to think we’re going to trade in our manicured lawns and expensive condominiums for a rehab in Garfield Park or North Lawndale.
If we speak out, the foul comments aroused on Twitter will be sickening; it will be a shitstorm of insults and threats.
But the start of this week has headlined more disturbing events, final straws that compel me to speak out. I ask you; how can we keep quiet any longer?
Coronavirus is devastating African American communities. CDC data reveals that one third of COVID-19 infections and deaths nationwide have affected black Americans, although blacks represent only 13 percent of the U.S. population. The environments where most live, the jobs they have, the prevalence of health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, and the lack of adequate medical treatment have created a toxic storm of severe illness and death.
The shooting death in Georgia of Ahmaud Arbery has added another entry to the list of unjustified murders of black men by white vigilantes or police officers; rest in peace Laquan McDonald, Freddie Gray and Eric Garner.
The election of a rabid Trump fanboy to union president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, an often-suspended and currently sidelined cop with 35 complaints against him for personnel violations. Imagine the dismay in the black community to have this officer heading up the police union, even as he is under investigation by the department on allegations related to the 2018 march protesting police violence.
So I ask again, what can we white people do?
Do our homework!
Acknowledge the true history of the continent’s colonial origins which exterminated 33,000,000 indigenous peoples in the name of God, Gold and Glory.
Reexamine your benign schoolboy education that glossed over the heinous wrong of slavery with ballads about the Boll Weevil sung by Uncle Remis.
Reject out of hand the insidiousness of “polygenism” the pseudoscientific ideas about race that distorted the collective American subconscious with the bullshit theory of supposed black inferiority. Such pernicious thought exists today despite the advent of modern DNA science, which has shown humans share about 99.9 percent of their DNA with each other, and outward physical characteristics such as hair texture and skin color, about which racists have long obsessed, occupy just a tiny portion of the human genome.
Stop being quiet. Stop being indifferent. Look deep inside and see our own potential for racism… and recognize it as the bleeding, original sin of our country that has been allowed to fester.
Do your homework.
Stream “13th” on Netflix, a 2016 documentary by director Ava DuVernay that explores the “intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States.”
Ditto the documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro,” a 2016 film directed by Raoul Peck, based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript.
Ditto “Where to invade next,” a documentary by Roger Moore which cites the mass incarceration of African-Americans for petty drug crimes, slavery in a new guise, he suggests, backed up with unsettling newscast images of black people being savagely abused by white police officers.
Read the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “Guaranteed Privileges and Immunities of Citizenship, Due Process and Equal Protection” – nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Respectfully, I ask for forgiveness and submit this poem as a small offering of atonement:
Apology to my African-American brother
Some of my best friends are black.
Hold the snickers and ‘woke’ guy jokes.
I’ve been to wakes and weddings
And blessed am I
To have the colors scrubbed
Blind to the third eye.
Not wholly erased;
How can they be!
The stories my friends have shared
Make me want to strip the white
Off my privileged pale hide.
My friend,
When you tell me the tales of horror
The words go through my ears
And travel into my body
Penetrating deep into my heart.
Swallowing me whole.
And I am not me
Listening to you.
I am you.
I am Black.
And I start to shutter with the fear
That now is mine.
Chained to the wall
In the basement of Comiskey Park
By a Chicago policeman
Who serves and protects
Me.
From you.
Dinner in a loop restaurant.
You the lone black man in the room.
Stares burning a hole our heads.
“What are you looking at? I mutter,
Knowing all too well.
Inspired by and dedicated to:
Lily, the gentle presence in my childhood who taught me that kindness and patience and the sweetest of dispositions have nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.
Marion, the Salutatorian of my high school class who taught me that intelligence and perseverance have nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.
Rufus, my teammate on the high school track team who taught me that humor and adaptability and team spirit have nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.
Barnsie, my army bunkmate and comrade in arms who taught me that forbearance, resilience, and humility have nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.
John, basketball icon, groundbreaking first Black head coach in professional basketball, inventor of the fast break and my partner, mentor, father figure who taught me that patience, competence, and character have nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.
Jolyn, my client, businesswomen and assertive female entrepreneur who taught me that trust, gratitude, and civility have nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.
And especially, Brian, my brother of the soul, brilliant life coach and family patriarch who teaches me daily that courage, redemption, forgiveness, and love in all its purity have nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.
In the course of a long business career I held many titles familiar to the corporate world. But as I quickly learned the lofty nameplates no longer apply when your career comes to a close and you move from the corner office to a corner of the den. The challenge was to stay vital and active rather than idling on the sidelines. I had to create a new foundation upon which to build life’s purpose and joy.
I stopped adding up my stock portfolio as a measure of my net worth and developed a healthy self esteem independent of applause from others.
I am the co-author of The In-Sourcing Handbook: Where and How to Find the Happiness You Deserve, a practical guide and instruction manual offering hands-on exercises to help guide readers to experience the transformative shift from simply tolerating life to celebrating life. I also am the author of 73, a popular collection of short stories about America’s growing senior population running the gamut of emotions as they struggle to resist becoming irrelevant in a youth-oriented society.
Damn, it looks scary. The anti-vax Facebook post shows a baby doll with 20 or so needles sticking out of its arms and legs. Listed below the picture are 26 toxins, antibiotics, pesticides, and other chemicals that are said to be ingredients of the vaccinations your child should receive by the time they are six years old. Wow, those needles must be sharp and the chemicals sound nasty: Formaldehyde and Borax and Sodium Hydroxide and Many More Awful Things. What could possibly tempt you to shoot those into your defenseless child’s body?
Now I’ve got a scarier list for you:
Hepatitis A and B
Rotavirus
Diptheria
Tetanus
Whooping Cough
H. Flu
Pneumococcal Meningits and Pneumonia
Polio
Measles
Mumps
German Measles
Chicken Pox
In case you haven’t figured it out, that’s the list of diseases that all those needles and vaccines protect your kids from. And in doing so, help protect your neighbor’s kids and your kid’s schoolmates. Protect you too…adult chickenpox is not a pretty sight. You do not want to catch it from your unvaccinated kid.
And don’t tell me that even unvaccinated your child would never get any of those diseases. Don’t say that nobody gets measles anymore. That’s like the old Yogi Berra non-sequiter “No one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” Kids normally don’t get measles because most kids are vaccinated. When vaccines rates go down, disease rates go up.
Sure. it would be great if we could produce immunity in our kids without injections, or if the injections and the few oral vaccines that are used were 100% chemical-free. But if you have been paying attention lately you know that vaccines are tough to create–and as we will see when a COVID vaccine is available, tough to manufacture and distribute. I’ll suffer a tiny drop of a preservative if it lets me hug my grandkids.
You may hate big pharma. You may admire the brave anti-vax stances of Robert Kennedy Jr, Kristin Cavallari, Robert DeNiro, and other celebrities. And you may think you are doing your child a service by not having them vaccinated. You are not! Now and forever, believe the science. You’ll be doing right by your kids, and doing right by all the rest of us, too.
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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!
Since we are all still working to limit the effects of this pandemic as much as possible, I wanted to let everyone know about something that I personally am doing this Friday that everyone can take part in.
I have been running free walking tours through my non-profit “Friends of The White City” since 2014 in conjunction with the Jackson Park Advisory Council.
The tour is meant to showcase Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair also known as The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and nicknamed “The White City”. Anyone who has read Erik Larson’s amazing book, “Devil in The White City” can attest to the significance of this world’s fair on the city of Chicago and it was important enough to be represented as the third star on the current Chicago Flag.
Court of Honor from the Chicago 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition
The tour will take visitors to the sites in Jackson Park and The Midway Plaisance where the fair was held and where visitors can still see relics of the fair in the park and at different locations.
Unfortunately, the walking tours have been put on hold during the Covid-19 crisis but Vamonde has been kind enough to feature the tour as one of their Happy Hour Virtual Tours. So I have been working with them over the last week to put together the visuals and materials for the tour and we are planning to go LIVE this Friday!
This Friday, May 15, 2020, the virtual tour will start at 4:00 pm. The tour is FREE but you must register for the tour at the link below. This would be a great experience for those who are homeschooling as a virtual field trip. There won’t be any walking involved but it will be fun just the same. Great thing is that we don’t have to worry about getting rained out!
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Ray Johnson is a former criminal investigator in Du Page County, Illinois. He was born in Chicago and has spent his entire life in the Chicagoland area. He is a graduate of The University of Illinois at Chicago and has taught College Classes in Criminal Justice at the College of Du Page in Glen Ellyn as well as lecturing on Chicago folklore and history and teaching adult education classes on historical research techniques. He is a former Chicago Area Representative of the Association of Professional Genealogists, a member of the Jackson Park Advisory Council and a member of the Hyde Park Historical Society. He is a life-long fan of Chicago history and especially the stranger side of Chicago’s history which really makes history come alive for adults and kids alike. His first published work is “Chicago’s Haunt Detective”, Schiffer Publishing, Atglen, PA, 2011. His website for the stranger side of Chicago is HauntDetective.com He also runs a historical research service from his other website, HistoryCop.com. His second book, “Chicago History – The Stranger Side”, Schiffer Publishing, Atglen, PA, 2014 was released this February.
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition is one of Ray’s favorite historic topics in Chicago history and he recently started a not for profit called “Friends of the White City”
A vintage six-bedroom brick mansion in Kenwood, which boasts renovated interiors designed by famed Chicago architect John Vinci, hit the market Monday with an asking price of $2.5 million.
The three-story mansion, which was built in 1910, is on the market for the first time in 30 years. Its current owners paid $566,500 for it in 1990. Designed by architect Horatio R. Wilson, the 6,320-square-foot house was gut-rehabbed by the current owners right after they bought it. They later enlisted Vinci to design two subsequent renovations, said listing agent Kevin Snow of Berkshire Hathaway HomeService Chicago.
The Chicago Cubs are losing a lot of revenue right now because of COVID-19. That might cause them to shed some payroll which means a few trades.
The Chicago Cubs are a team that is in trouble right now. Every team is in trouble thanks to the COVID-19 virus that has taken over our country. There are some teams that might not be able to pay their bills by the time this is all said and done and those teams are even worse off. The Cubs are in a bad spot because of the way they make their money.
The Cubs are down 70% of their revenue right now thanks to the coronavirus. That is a large chunk for them to be losing thanks to not playing games. The reason that is the case is that they are losing all the money they would be getting from the scene of Wrigley Field. The Cubs own a lot of the land and businesses that surround Wrigley Field so all of that money lost is going to hurt them. This loss in revenue is going to make things difficult on them from a baseball point of view for a while.
The Cubs have a high payroll. Just because they don’t spend it wisely doesn’t mean that they aren’t spending a boatload of money on their players. The fact that they are going to go through some financial difficulty means that they are going to have to make some tough decisions soon. They might be looking to shed some salary as soon as this upcoming offseason which could cause some good players to be on the move.
This virus might make it difficult for any big-time player to get the money that they thought they were going to get before this all happened. These are the three players that are in danger of being traded so the Cubs can shed some payroll:
The ChicagoBlackhawks have had way more than four all-time greats but four stick out as the greatest to ever dawn the red Blackhawks sweater.
The Chicago Blackhawks are one of the most historic franchises in the history of the National Hockey League. They, along with the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, and New York Rangers, form the NHL’s Original Six. They have been around for about a century so there is plenty of time in there for them to have some serious history. The Blackhawks alumni and current roster have some players that you see as the all-time faces of the franchise.
The Hawks won the Cup a total of six times in their history. Those came in 1934, 1938, 1961, 2010, 2013, and 2015. They also had many years of being one of the worst franchises in all of the sports. In fact, there was a year that ESPN named the Chicago Blackhawks as the worst professional franchise of the four major North American sports. Things were very bad at that point in time but things have gotten remarkably better over the past decade.
The Blackhawks have done a lot of winning and a lot of losing throughout their history but there were some really good players there that deserve some recognition as the best the franchise has ever had. The Mount Rushmore activity is an exercise that allows you to name the four best of something, and the Blackhawks have a pretty clear top-three of the four and the fourth is pretty clear in the minds of most people. There are also some honorable mentions to go through but these are the Mount Rushmore of Chicago Blackhawks players:
ChicagoBulls (Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)
With a new brass in place, the Chicago Bulls look to improve in every area going forward. Which free agent big men could they acquire this offseason?
Whenever the offseason period truly begins for the NBA, we are in for an unusual and interesting one for the Chicago Bulls. Having hired Arturas Karnisovas to come in and make all basketball decisions, we aren’t really sure what to expect going forward.
Obviously, we can expect Karnisovas to go to work. He’s not here to mess around, having already put together a strong staff with plenty of newcomers. Karnisovas specializes in international scouting and building a competitive roster overall, as he did most recently with the Denver Nuggets.
Speaking of his time in Denver, Karnisovas was responsible for finding Nikola Jokic. That type of gem doesn’t come along often, and the man was able to land him in Denver. This year’s draft isn’t necessarily full of international talent, but I’d trust Karnisovas will do his homework and come away with a potential star within the next couple of drafts.
Shifting gears to the entire offseason process, what exactly will Karnisovas decide to do in free agency? The Bulls may not have a ton of money to work with, unless they move some players around — and I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened.
What will the team do in the front court? Lauri Markkanen might still offer a lot of potential in Karnisovas’ eyes, but would he consider moving the former Arizona standout? How about Wendell Carter Jr.? Both of these guys are key players when analyzing the future of the front court, and if Karnisovas decided to move either one of them, the team immediately needs to add someone.
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There will be some intriguing names available, but let’s look at five in particular, ranging from role player to superstar.
Gossip Wolf is still digging through the heap of new Chicagomusic that came out on May 1, when Bandcamp waived its revenue share on all sales for 24 hours, but so far Berta Bigtoe is right at the top of the favorites list. The band’s cofounders and sole members, Ben Astrachan and Austin Koenigstein, made Berta Bigtoe Publicity Stunt as a lark. They decided to write and record an entire album on May 1, specifically to post on Bandcamp then (though they spent much of that 24-hour period working on it). The sweet, joyous indie pop on Berta Bigtoe Publicity Stunt feels effortless but clearly takes a lot of skill to pull off–especially in less than a day. Berta Bigtoe moved to Chicago from Boston last year, and this wolf is already looking forward to one day seeing them play a show in their new hometown.
Sunshine Boys’ debut full-length, Blue Music, was one of Gossip Wolf’s most-loved indie-rock albums of 2018, and this local trio (guitarist Dag Juhlin, drummer Freda Love Smith, and bassist Jackie Schimmel) played such a killer set opening for Juliana Hatfield at SPACE in January that the band couldn’t release new jams soon enough! After a successful Indiegogo campaign earlier this year, Sunshine Boys dropped a scrumptious sophomore album, Work and Love, on Friday, May 1. It’s filled to the brim with jangling power pop, and standout singles “Infinity Girl” and “Summertime Kids” sound like instant classics. Naturally, the band were forced to cancel an April 30 record-release show at SPACE due to the pandemic, but this wolf strongly recommends going whenever it’s rescheduled!
When Gossip Wolf last checked in with producer Jeremiah Meece, he was finishing a Halloween-centric album called Mutant Future. Earlier this month, he self-released a full-length of material he’s made during self-isolation–it’s called Suffering, but these warped pop tracks won’t make you suffer unless you miss them! v
This week’s fantasy gig comes to the Reader from local artist Daniel Williams and takes us to a long-shuttered venue in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
Williams created a gig poster for an imaginary concert at the Peoples Theatre, which once stood at 1620 W. 47th. The Peoples Theatre opened in 1919 and hosted vaudeville and musical acts. The theater later added movie screenings to its mix of entertainment, and it continued to operate until 1989. The building, near the corner of 47th and Ashland, was demolished in 2001, and a Walgreens took over the site a few years later.
The artist imagines a Patti Smith concert at the Peoples Theatre, taking place in perhaps the late 1970s or 1980. “Being in quarantine in Chicago had me thinking about artists, landmarks, things that have vanished, history, and the stories we tell,” says Williams. “Plus it’s Patti Smith performing on the south side.” Though she actually made her Chicago debut at the Park West in April 1978, it’s easy to imagine a young, punk Patti Smith commanding a stage in the shadow of the stockyards, bringing her sonic poetry to life for the neighborhood.
The Reader continues to accept submissions of fantasy gig posters to be featured in this column. To participate, please e-mail [email protected] with your name, contact information, and your original design or drawing (you can attach a JPG or PNG file or provide a download link). We won’t be able to publish every submission, but we’ll feature as many as possible while the pandemic continues. Your submission can also include a nonprofit, fundraiser, or action campaign that you’d like to bring to the attention of our readers.
Not everybody can make a fantasy gig poster, of course, but it’s simple and free to take action through the website of the National Independent Venue Association–click here to tell your representatives to save our homegrown music ecosystems. And anybody with a few bucks to spare can support the out-of-work staffers at Chicago’s venues–here’s our list of fundraisers. Lastly, don’t forget record stores! The Reader has published a list of local stores that will let you shop remotely.
ARTIST: Daniel Williams FANTASY GIG: Patti Smith at the Peoples Theatre on Friday, June 20, 1980 ARTIST INFO:cargocollective.com/djw NPO TO KNOW: Williams would like you to learn about and donate to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS).
Haunt Detective
Strange Chicago History
lesraff
January 17, 2020 at 12:00 am