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Art festival online

It feels as if we’re awakening from a deep, uneasy sleep as Chicago begins to take tentative steps to return bit by bit to a wary, new normal. Street festivals may or may not be back this summer but hopes are high. The organizers of the 57^th Street Art Fair, one of the best fairs of the summer, are hoping to produce a safe in-person event on June 5-6 if the city gives the OK. In the meantime, a virtual edition of the fair is available online, featuring more than 40 artists and their creations including paintings, photography, ceramics, jewelry, woodworking, printmaking, fiber, furniture and more. Find artists and links to their websites at 57thstreetartfair.org/virtual-fair.

Drive-in film fest

Provided

Asian Pop-Up Cinema presents its sixth annual spring film festival showcasing 10 movies from across Asia, this year spotlighting work from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. The screenings begin with Chiu Sin-hang’s “One Second Champion” (April 15), a story of a single father with the power to see one second into the future; Cheng Yu-chieh’s “Dear Tenant” (April 16), which explores nontraditional family love; Lik Ho’s “I Still Remember” (April 17), a drama which follows several characters as they discover running a 10K can help them through their ups and downs, and “One Summer Story” (April 18), the story of a young girl’s search for her biological father. Also on the roster is Korean-American director Lee Isaac Chung’s Oscar-nominated film “Minari” (April 29, May 1). The films, running through May 2, screen at Lincoln Yards Drive-In, 1684 N. Throop. Tickets: $15 (several of the films are free — first come, first serve). For more information, visit asianpopupcinema.org/12drivein.

From Carnegie Hall

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Since 2004 City Winery founder Michael Dorf has presented an annual Carnegie Hall concert called “Music of…” and has donated 100% of its proceeds to organizations that provide music education programs and opportunities to underserved youth. This year’s livestreamed show features a lineup to please many musical tastes: Patti Smith, Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), Glen Hansard, Keb’ Mo’, Rosanne Cash, Shawn Colvin, Raul Malo, The Mountain Goats, Marc Cohn, Martin Sexton, Joseph Arthur, Bettye Lavette and many more. The concert streams at 7 p.m. April 15. Tickets: $25. Visit citywinery.com/chicago.

An artist’s vision

Horace Perry/Courtesy of Alabama State Council on the Arts

Bill Traylor has been called “the greatest artist you’ve never heard of.” Jeffrey Wolf’s new documentary “Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts” wants to change that by exploring the life of the unique American artist. Born into slavery in 1853 in rural Alabama and later residing in Montgomery, he lived a hardscrabble life, and it wasn’t until his late 80s that Traylor began to draw and paint. Between 1939-1942, he made well over 1,000 strikingly modern paintings and drawings inspired by the profound social and political changes he witnessed during his life. This original and powerful vision would bring him acclaim as one of America’s greatest self-taught artists. The film streams beginning April 16 via the Music Box Theatre. Tickets: $12. Visit musicbox.com.

Classical concerts

Provided

Pianist Wael Farouk joins the New Philharmonic for a performance of Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concertos No. 1, 2 and 3.” Streams at 7:30 p.m. April 17 and on demand to June 15. Tickets: $40. Visit atthemac.org. … Tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist Imogen Cooper perform songs of love and longing by Beethoven and Robert Schumann. Streams at 7 p.m. April 16. Tickets: $15. Visit tickets.uchicago.edu. … The Orion Ensemble returns for a limited in-person and virtual performance of Michele Mangani’s “Sonata for Clarinet and Piano” and Anton Arensky’s “Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 32.” At 3 p.m. April 18 at PianoForte Studios, 1335 S. Michigan. Tickets $25, virtual access is free. Visit orionensemble.org.

Virtual stage

Maureen Janson

Northlight Theatre’s free reading series continues with Jeffrey Hatcher and Eric Simonson’s “Wright/Rand,” a drama about the friendship between architect Frank Lloyd Wright (BJ Jones) and Ayn Rand (Tracy Michelle Arnold). Streams at 6:30 p.m. April 18 and on demand to April 22. Visit northlight.org. … Chicago Shakespeare Theater presents two radio plays: Henry Godinez’s adaptation of “Measure for Measure” and Barbara Gaines’ adaptation of “Twelfth Night.” Both stream April 19-May 16. Visit chicagoshakes.com. … A free stream of Noah Haidle’s “Smokefall” is available through April 25 at the Goodman Theatre. Visit goodmantheatre.org. … Pride Arts presents a reading of Stephen Karam’s dark comedy “Speech and Debate” at 7 p.m. April 20. Tickets: $10. Visit pridearts.org. … Ghostlight Ensemble offers readings of Alice Dunbar Nelson’s “Mine Eyes Have Seen” and Marion Craig Wentworth’s “War Brides.” Streams at 2 p.m. April 18. Tickets: $5. Visit ghostlightensemble.com.

Mary Houlihan is a Chicago freelance writer.

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For those families that have suffered the devastating blow of losing a teen, the grieving never goes away.

The hurt remains an open wound for the rest of their lives. These mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles go on, but that gaping place is never filled.

So it is with Adam Toledo’s family.

On March 29, a Chicago police officer fatally shot the 13-year-old after a foot chase. The teen was with a 21-year-old male, but he was the one allegedly armed with a handgun.

The boy’s mother didn’t learn of her son’s death for a couple of days because he did not have identification on him at the time of his death.

No amount of time will erase the pain of those circumstances.

Several years ago, I was sitting in a family’s living room when police knocked on the door and asked the father to identify a photograph. It was his son. The teen had been shot, his body dumped in an alley behind my garage.

I will never forget the sound of his mother’s wails coming from the bedroom.

Adam’s mother has waited patiently for answers, supported by a small group of peaceful protesters that demanded the release of video from the police officer’s body camera.

On Tuesday, the Toledo family was finally allowed to view that video.

“The experience was extremely difficult and heartbreaking for everyone present and especially for Adam’s family,” attorneys for the family said in a statement.

There is no escaping that hurt, even if the tragic events depicted on the video unfold exactly as police have described.

Adam Toledo was a 13-year-old boy, and his violent death should make us recoil in horror.

Out of deference to his family’s grief, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability decided to delay the release of the police body-cam video until Thursday.

Under the city’s Video Release Policy, video and audio recordings “shall be released to the public no more than 60 calendar days from the date of the incident unless a request is made to delay the release.”

Such requests are usually from investigating agencies or families of persons injured by police.

“[W]hile it is acutely sensitive to the family’s grief and their desire to avoid public release of materials related to Adam’s tragic death, COPA is mandated to comply with the City’s Video Release Policy,” COPA said in a statement Tuesday.

The public has a right to know what happened in a Little Village alley that night, just as it had a right to know what happened in 2014 when Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times.

It took more than a year before the city released a dash-cam video of the shooting. That long delay led to the ouster of former Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, and likely to former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to not seek a third term.

How Adam’s case is handled will give the public some insight into how police reform is actually working and answer the questions that activists are asking:

Is the Chicago Police Department more transparent? Are police officers following the training? Is there more that could have been done to disarm a 13-year-old with a gun?

So far the protests over this police shooting have been peaceful, and Adam’s family has asked for “privacy” as they mourn this loss.

But COPA has shown a lot of courage.

Their decision to release the body-cam video now was tough given the violent protests in Brooklyn Center, Minn., over another shocking police shooting. A white female police officer fatally shot 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a Black man, during a traffic stop. Kim Potter allegedly fired her weapon when she intended to fire her Taser.

The images of the fatal shot have been shown repeatedly on news broadcasts.

While police bodycams allow the public to view videos of deadly police encounters, they have a down side.

We can turn these images off in our minds and in our hearts. But after Thursday, and for days thereafter, the Toledo family will be forced to relive the worst day of their lives.

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A bold plan to convert a shuttered downstate movie house into a den of all things dank is beginning to take shape — and the businessman behind the idea believes it can be replicated nationwide.

If everything falls into place, an old AMC theater at 3025 Lindbergh Blvd. in Springfield will be transformed into a cannabis co-op housing a dispensary, a greenhouse and a lounge to get high.

The first piece of the puzzle is a pot shop operated by Maribis, which is expected to open Saturday. The dispensary — Maribis’ fourth in the state — will occupy the former concession stand and two of the cineplex’s eight theaters.

Dan Linn, general manager of the Summit-based firm, said the idea is ultimately to create a kind of “craft brewery but with cannabis.” Linn said those involved are “leaning on the idea that down the road the regulations will be a little bit relaxed so you can actually have tours of the craft grow.”

Provided/Dan Linn

Springfield lobbyist Chris Stone said he started developing the concept around the time he launched HCI Alternatives, a pot firm that earned licenses to operate two downstate dispensaries in 2016.

“I don’t know of any co-located operation like this in the country,” said Stone, now a senior adviser to Ascend Wellness Holdings, a Massachusetts-based company that bought out HCI last year following an earlier merger deal.

Shuttered theaters could be perfect place to house the operation, he said.

“Because the way movie theaters are built — they’re all concrete blocked, they all have really good HVAC and exhausts and they all have really high electrical need because of the old projectors — you have everything that you need,” he added.

Stone is so high on the idea that he’s looking at AMC theaters across the country to see where the company is “liquidating and selling off their assets just because people aren’t necessarily going to as many movies.”

He intends to create a fund to acquire five more AMC theaters in states that don’t currently allow the sale of marijuana in any form. Then he plans to work with local legislators “to help enact cannabis legislation with the idea that … we hope to get a license.”

“But even if we don’t get licensed, I got a feeling that there’s going to be people that do get licensed that would want to look at these assets,” he said.

At the Springfield site, Stone hopes to ultimately use two of the theaters to set up an on-site consumption lounge and bar, which would be outfitted with “luxury boxes” to look in on flowering plants and a massive “TV wall” to screen movies. For now, those spaces would have to be separated because consumption lounges aren’t currently allowed to serve booze.

“Hopefully in due time we could open up that wall to combine them,” said Stone, who hopes legislation will be passed to change the rules.

Lawmakers labored over a provision in state law that tightly regulates public consumption spaces, but none have opened and only a few have earned local approval. Last year, Stone was instrumental in getting the go-ahead for a planned consumption lounge at a Springfield dispensary now operated by Ascend.

Stone said the four other theaters would be used to grow cannabis, though it’s unclear who will run the operation because the state’s 40 upcoming craft cultivation licenses have been delayed indefinitely along with all the state’s other outstanding pot permits.

Twitter/Illinois Supply & Provisions

Stone said he assisted groups on more than a dozen applications for the new cultivation licenses, though he acknowledged that state law prohibited him from joining more than one of them as an owner. While one of those teams has already expressed interest in growing at the theater, Stone said “it doesn’t matter what cultivation group would go in the back side.”

He hopes a portion of the grow operation can be used to cultivate designated plants for specific customers, an idea he co-opted from the marijuana programs in Oregon and Colorado.

“The people that are buying the product can actually see their product being grown from the time it was a clone all the way to the time that it was harvested,” Stone said of the process, which he believes is in line with the “farm-to-table” philosophy.

Though Maribis is already setting up shop at the theater, the rest of the audacious plan remains in its early phases. Still, both Stone and Linn remained confident.

“It sounds like the city’s on board,” said Linn.

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Daunte Wright became a father while he was still a teenager, and seemed to relish the role of a doting young dad, his family and friends said.

A family photo shows a beaming Wright holding his son, Daunte Jr., at his first birthday party. Another shows Wright, wearing a COVID-19 face mask and his son wearing a bib with the inscription, “ALWAYS HUNGRY.”

Wright, 20, was fatally shot Sunday by a police officer in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center. As protesters and civil rights advocates called for justice and police accountability over his death, his family asked people to also remember his life.

“He had a 2-year-old son that’s not going to be able to play basketball with him. He had sisters and brothers that he loved so much,” his mother, Katie Wright, said Tuesday on “Good Morning America.”

His aunt, Naisha Wright, said he was “a lovable young man.”

“His smile — oh, Lord — the most beautiful smile,” she said.

An older cousin, Mario Greer, said he and Wright loved seeing each other on holidays, especially on the Fourth of July, when they liked to shoot off Roman candles together.

Wright attended three different high schools, including Edison High School in Minneapolis, where he was voted “class clown” as a freshman.

Jonathan Mason, who worked as a youth development specialist and mentor at the school, said Wright was a gregarious, popular student who had many friends.

“He was a charismatic kid. He would joke with you, and he was so witty,” Mason said. “He was one of those kids that everybody looked up to.”

Wright played on the freshman and junior varsity basketball teams, and was known for having a good left-hand shot, Mason said.

During mentoring sessions, Wright would talk about what he hoped to do with his life, Mason said.

“He said, ‘I want to be an NBA player, I want to be a fashion designer, I want to be a business owner,’ ” Mason recalled. “I said, ‘If you grow up, you can be whatever you want to be.'”

The two also talked about how Black men should behave during encounters with police, because of the history of Black Americans being shot by police during traffic stops and other encounters.

“I talked about if they pull you over, make sure your hands are on the top of the steering wheel, don’t reach for anything,” Mason said.

“He would always say, ‘Man, why we gotta do all that just for people not to kill us?’ “

Wright moved to Patrick Henry High School in Minneapolis in 2018, where his sister is also a student. Principal Yusuf Abdullah said he left after one semester and then went to Stadium View School.

“We got to know Daunte really well through his sister. Many staff worked with him through the years, trying to build a relationship with him, connect with him,” Abdullah said.

He said Daunte wasn’t a difficult kid, but had some of the typical issues of teenagers: “A troubled life? No. I think just along the lines of a teenage life.” He wouldn’t elaborate.

“He was a good kid — excitable,” he said.

Police have described the shooting of Wright as “an accidental discharge” that happened as officers were trying to arrest Wright on an outstanding warrant after stopping his car for having expired registration tags. Wright’s mother said he called her just before he was shot and told her police had pulled him over because he had air fresheners hanging from his rearview mirror.

The city’s police chief, who resigned Tuesday, said he believed the officer who shot Wright, Kim Potter, meant to use her Taser on him, but instead shot him with her gun. A prosecutor on Wednesday charged Potter, who also resigned, with second-degree manslaughter.

According to court records, Wright was being sought after failing to appear in court on charges that he fled from officers and possessed a gun without a permit during an encounter with Minneapolis police in June.

A search of court records shows Wright had a minor criminal record, with petty misdemeanor convictions for possession/sale of a small amount of marijuana and disorderly conduct.

After he was killed Sunday, his family learned of a connection between Wright and George Floyd, the Black man whose death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer nearly a year ago sparked nationwide protests. Floyd’s girlfriend, Courteney Ross, said she worked with Wright while he was a student at Edison High School. Ross was a teacher’s assistant and counselor at the school, said Mason, who worked with Ross.

“(I’m) crushed. It’s enough that Floyd is gone, but for one of my youths to be gone as well,” Ross said Tuesday during a protest against police brutality in Minneapolis.

“He was just a wonderful, beautiful boy,” Ross said.

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AP writer Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis; Kat Stafford in Detroit; and AP researcher Rhonda Shafner also contributed to this report.

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MILWAUKEE – Things can’t get much worse for the Cubs’ offense right now and sooner or later, things are going to have to improve, even with 150 games left this season.

Following a much-needed win that was capped off by Willson Contreras’ game-winning home run, the Cubs offense had another lackluster showing against the Brewers, ending a rough, six-game road trip with a 7-0 loss to the Brewers.

The offense has looked lost at times this season and with just four hits in Wednesday’s series finale in Milwaukee, there haven’t been many signs of life.

“It’s something we have to get better at,” president Jed Hoyer said. “We have to have better at-bats, we have to keep going, Obviously, we are going to swing the bats better than we have. I think that sort of goes without saying but at the same time, there are certainly some things that we’ve struggled with that are carryovers from not just last year, but the previous years.”

Through 12 games this season, the Cubs are hitting .162 as a team with 59 hits, which ranks 29th in MLB and a National League-leading 29.4% strikeout rate. Brewers’ ace Corbin Burnes didn’t have much problem going through the Cubs’ lineup in Wednesday’s loss, striking out 10 over six innings.

The Cubs have now had five or fewer hits in eight of their 12 games this season and scored more than four runs in a game twice. They’re averaging an MLB-worst 2.7 runs per game. Even with a veteran group of hitters, it’s hard not to notice hitters who might be pressing in hopes of getting the team out of their current rut.

“I thought I saw that in Pittsburgh more than I did here, to be honest with you,” manager David Ross said.”I just think this was some good pitching [in Milwaukee]. When we faced Pittsburgh, I thought we were trying a little harder than we were here. I thought the quality of the at-bat was a little better here.

“I still think we’ve got some work to do. We got to put the ball in play a little more. Take our singles when they give it to us. We can’t live and die by the home run. I know we’re built to slug, but we have to move the baseball a little bit better, especially when we get opportunities to score off the really good pitchers. We’ve got to take advantage of that.”

The Cubs needed to get off to a fast start for many reasons, and the offensive woes have been a big reason that hasn’t happened. They had the opportunity to take advantage of the rebuilding Pirates and an injured Brewers team, but after stumbling out of the gate during this 12-game stretch, the road doesn’t get any easier.

Three of the best teams in the NL await the Cubs after their off-day on Thursday as the Braves, Mets and World Series champion Dodgers all lurk over the next two weeks. By the first week in May, the “small” sample size will be large enough to know what this Cubs team is made of.

“I think it’s just a tough stretch that we’ve been on,” said Jake Arrieta, who allowed three runs over five innings. “We’re gonna have periods of struggles like this throughout the season. We’ll have ups and downs. We’ll also have periods where we go 9-1, 8-2 and things tend to balance themselves out over the course of a six-month season.

“There has been some frustration, but it’s not going to do us any good to dwell on it too long and take it for more than what it is. I think it’s just a period of 10 games or so where we haven’t found a way to get things going the way we would like.”

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Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine will remain in limbo a while longer after U.S. health advisers told the government Wednesday that they need more evidence to decide if a handful of unusual blood clots were linked to the shot — and if so, how big the potential risk really is.

The reports are exceedingly rare — six cases out of more than 7 million U.S. inoculations with the one-dose vaccine. But the government recommended a pause in J&J vaccinations this week, not long after European regulators declared that such clots are a rare but possible risk with the AstraZeneca vaccine, a shot made in a similar way but not yet approved for use in the U.S.

At an emergency meeting, advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrestled with the fact that the U.S. has enough vaccine alternatives to do without the J&J vaccine for a time, but other countries anxiously awaiting the one-and-done shot may not.

One committee member, Dr. Grace Lee, was among those who advocated tabling a vote. She echoed concerns about getting more data to better understand the size of the risk and whether it was greater for any particular group of people.

“I continue to feel like we’re in a race against time and the variants, but we need to (move forward) in the safest possible way,” said Lee, of Stanford University.

The clots under investigation are highly unusual. They occurred in strange places, in veins that drain blood from the brain, and in people with abnormally low levels of clot-forming platelets. The six cases raised an alarm bell because that number is at least three times more than experts would have expected to see even of more typical brain-drainage clots, said CDC’s Dr. Tom Shimabukuro.

“What we have here is a picture of clots forming in large vessels where we have low platelets,” Shimabukuro explained. “This usually doesn’t happen,” but it’s similar to European reports with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The clot concerns could undermine public confidence in a vaccine many hoped would help some of the hardest-to-reach populations — in poor countries or in places like homeless shelters in the U.S.

“We know we are fighting a war against COVID-19,” Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine chief, said Tuesday. But when it comes to side effects, “we don’t, in the United States, have a lot of tolerance for friendly fire.”

Health officials recommended the J&J timeout in part to make sure doctors know how to recognize and treat the unusual condition. On Wednesday, the CDC said four of the six women with the unusual clots were treated with a blood thinner named heparin — a treatment the government is warning doctors to avoid.

The U.S. set up intensive systems to track the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, knowing that side effects too rare to have occurred in studies of thousands of people could pop up once millions rolled up their sleeves. Shimabukuro said spotting such a rare potential risk amid the nation’s huge vaccine rollout “is an example of a success story for vaccine safety.”

The setback for J&J comes as the worldwide death toll from COVID-19 approaches 3 million, including more than 560,000 who perished in the U.S., which continues to report tens of thousands of new infections every day and an average of almost 1,000 deaths.

So far, the J&J vaccine has been a minor player in U.S. vaccinations. More than 122 million Americans have received at least one vaccine dose, the vast majority with shots made by Moderna or Pfizer, and nearly 23% are fully vaccinated.

Both companies are on track to have delivered 300 million doses each by mid- to late July — and federal health authorities stress that there are no signs of the unusual clots with the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

Vaccinations are slower in Europe, where many countries have struggled for supply. J&J delayed some of its European deliveries amid the clot evaluation, but Poland said it would use the batch it already has in hand. European medical regulators plan to issue their own evaluation of the J&J clot issue next week.

When those weird clots were spotted after AstraZeneca vaccinations, scientists in Norway and Germany raised the possibility that some people are experiencing an abnormal immune response, forming antibodies that disable their platelets. That’s the theory as the U.S. now investigates the J&J reports.

Health officials caution against confusing the normal flu-like symptoms that occur a day or two after many COVID-19 vaccination with the clot concern. The problematic clot symptoms, such as severe headache or severe abdominal pain, have occurred about a week to three weeks after the J&J shot.

For vaccine recipients, the headlines can be scary. Holli Vrenon, 35, who got her J&J shot three or four weeks ago in Reno, Nevada, had flu-like symptoms after the vaccination and asked her brother, a doctor, what to think.

He told her to monitor her symptoms but not to worry too much, “but obviously it worries you,” Vrenon said. “If they’re suspending it, obviously people are getting side effects.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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