Caramel is a beautiful, young friendly tortie.

Her fosterers write: “She’s been very friendly with us as well; sat on our laps all night and let us pick her up. She is definitely a very sweet and cuddly one!”

She has been spayed/vaccinated. Carmel has tested positive for FelV, so can only live with other FelV positive cats. She can life safely with dogs and other pets, however.

To meet Caramel, write to us at [email protected] !

Hyde Park Cats is a local, all-volunteer group dedicated to helping stray and homeless cats in and around Chicago’s Hyde Park. We received our 501(c)(3) status in 2014 and have had over 1,200 adoptions since our founding in 2008. See all our adoptable kitties on our webpage: http://hydeparkcats.org/adopt/

All of our cats are in loving foster homes, which means the cat you adopt will be familiar with the sounds, smells, and movements of life in a home and accustomed to living with humans. He or she has been interacting on a daily basis with people who know this particular cat intimately, and the foster mom or dad can tell you all about the cat’s individual personality, habits, preferences. You can’t judge a cat by its cover! And while we can’t predict the future or know everything about a cat, we can help you choose the cat who is right for you. We have an adoption application and an adoption fee, $125 for the adoption of one cat, or $250 for a pair. This fee goes towards covering their vet costs. All cats adopted out by us are neutered/spayed, micro-chipped, tested for FIV/FeLV, and treated with Revolution.

2,403 U.S. personnel died in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941.  On the morning of September 11, 2001, a surprise terrorist attack killed 2,977 civilians.

Almost 3,700 Americans died of COVID-19 during the Republican National Convention last week.

Of course, “Whatabout” Ronnie asks, “What about the Democratic National Convention? How many people died during that?”

All through high school and college, I remember teachers saying that there were no stupid questions. That wasn’t quite accurate, but let’s address this one, anyway.

About 1,000 Americans die each day from COVID-19, so the number that died during the DNC is about the same as the number that died during the RNC.  That however, is where all equivalence ends.

No one at the DNC was in the unique position to have prevented a majority of those unnecessary deaths. Up to 90% by some estimates.

No one at the DNC acted like COVID-19 is behind us when, in FACT, the worst may be yet to come.

No one at the DNC is trying to convince you that 200,000 dead Americans is a good job.

No one at the DNC ever said that there were only 15 cases of COVID-19 in America and that will soon go down to “near zero,” a number that is apparently somewhere between one and 2.5 MILLION.

No one at the DNC repeatedly said that coronavirus was under control or that it would magically go away.

No one at the DNC said that coronavirus would disappear in April, like a miracle.

No one at the DNC spent two precious months downplaying, lying about and covering up the threat of a pandemic, allowing the virus to infiltrate our country undetected.

No one at the DNC told you to drink bleach, inject yourself with disinfectant, shove a light up your ass or take an unproven, dangerous drug in which he has a financial interest.

Do you see the difference, “Whatabout” Ronnie?

One convention was composed of people who want to do something about America’s mounting death rate and shattered economy.

The Republican National Convention was composed of people who are so enslaved to the lies of Donald Trump and so afraid of his maniacal cult that their only platform is that they will say “How high?” when he says jump.

Republicans nominated Donald Trump as their candidate, but they chose Vladimir Putin as their leader.

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I never thought I was a great singer, so I hesitated before I joined a choir a few years ago. But it was for a good cause — my congregation’s High Holiday services — with a limited yearly engagement. Even though I can’t read music, I was sure that if I stood next to an alto who knew what she was doing, I could stay on pitch. Plus, it was a convivial group. Go to a choir party, and you’ll see what I mean.

With services reimagined in this pandemic year, I figured I’d be singing along mutely on Zoom. Instead, I ended up recording myself for a virtual choir. Doing so meant I had to conquer technological challenges — involving earbuds, Photo Booth, and a case of beer — only to discover that I have a truly terrible singing voice.

Here’s how it went down. Our congregation hires ringers — a choir director and four professional singers — to enhance our amateur group. This year, working remotely, that talented core of pros recorded their solos and then laid down a track so that the rest of us could add our voices.

To record ourselves we needed two devices, one so that we could listen to the recording via earphones and another to make a video of ourselves singing along. Thinking I’d record myself with my phone, I tried, and failed, to sync my earbuds to my desktop computer to hear the track. When that didn’t work, I decided to do things the other way around. I used my phone, already in an intimate relationship with my earbuds, to tune in to the track.

But how to record myself? Google informed me that my iMac has a power I had never tapped: Photo Booth. The app records stills and videos and issues a retro 3-2-1 warning before recording begins. Problem solved.

With that worked out, a new problem emerged. Singing is best done standing, and when I stood up, the little green light above the screen lined up with my diaphragm. Angling the screen up wouldn’t work, because we had been instructed to stand close to the recording device to capture the sound at full volume, but that would have distorted the video. The solution was the case of beer. Placed beneath my computer, it raised it to the perfect height.

Pretty slick setup, if I do say so myself. And thus I heard myself sing for the first time. My disappointment was profound. Caterwauling would be too kind a description. Even with pitch-perfect voices inside my ears, I couldn’t land a note. I deleted the recording and tried again. And again.

I used my MasterClass subscription to take a voice lesson with Christina Aguilera, who reminded me that a cup of hot tea would soothe my vocal cords. I practiced outside and far apart from a couple of choir members who live nearby. Eager to get the case of beer off my desk, I gave it one last try. Still awful, but I needed to put an end to this. I sent in my recording with permission to mute my audio and just show my smiling face — except that I wasn’t even smiling as I struggled to look at the lyrics.

But here’s the miracle of a choir. The whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts. When I watched the video of the entire choir singing together from boxes stitched together on the now familiar patchwork of Zoom, I heard harmony. I couldn’t make out my voice — and I had been assured that despite my permission, I would not be muted. All I heard was the beauty of communal song, more powerful than any aria. Time to crack open one of those bottles of beer.

Beautiful Harper is a young new intake. She has had two faint positive tests for FELV. For more information on meeting her, write to us at [email protected]

Hyde Park Cats is a local, all-volunteer group dedicated to helping stray and homeless cats in and around Chicago’s Hyde Park. We received our 501(c)(3) status in 2014 and have had over 1,200 adoptions since our founding in 2008. See all our adoptable kitties on our webpage: http://hydeparkcats.org/adopt/

All of our cats are in loving foster homes, which means the cat you adopt will be familiar with the sounds, smells, and movements of life in a home and accustomed to living with humans. He or she has been interacting on a daily basis with people who know this particular cat intimately, and the foster mom or dad can tell you all about the cat’s individual personality, habits, preferences. You can’t judge a cat by its cover! And while we can’t predict the future or know everything about a cat, we can help you choose the cat who is right for you. We have an adoption application and an adoption fee, $125 for the adoption of one cat, or $250 for a pair. This fee goes towards covering their vet costs. All cats adopted out by us are neutered/spayed, micro-chipped, tested for FIV/FeLV, and treated with Revolution.

No segment of the economy has been harder hit by the pandemic than restaurants. Limited to “carryout-only” for months, followed by the addition of outdoor dining, followed by the addition of limited dine-in service, chefs and restaurateurs have reinvented themselves time and again to survive.

Bistronomic’s carryout salmon

For Bistronomic, a French bistro located just a block west of the Water Tower, carryout was a new option, something the restaurant had never done before. Chef/ owner Martial and his wife Laurence spent the weekend before the quarantine rules went into effect weighing the options, and by Tuesday, March 18, they had a new strategy.

“We decided to focus on French comfort food, dishes like coq au vin and beef short ribs,” Martial says. “We also decided to do complete three-course dinners, with everything done in portions large enough for two. Since the entrees could all be reheated, the format also worked for people dining alone.”

Bistronomic’s Chocolate Hazelnut Bars

Because the restaurant had never done carryout before, getting the message out was crucial. They could reach their existing customer base via their email newsletter, but to survive, they had to bring in new customers. Enter social media, an option they’d never really explored before. Time was limited, so they did what a lot of parents do: they asked their children for help.

Working together, the family used Instagram and Facebook to develop a marketing strategy that paid dividends from the get go. Current plans include continuing both the marketing plan and the carryout service- which now includes access to the entire menu-after the virus subsides.

When I wrote about Prairie Grass Cafe at the beginning of the summer, chef Sarah Stegner, who together with chef George Bumbaris owns Prairie Grass Cafe in suburban Northbrook, was doing Zoom cooking classes, in addition to the restaurant’s carryout and limited onsite service. Building on the success of the classes, they’re frequently offered in conjunction with a meal kit.

Prairie Grass’ meal kit scallops

Meal kits are one of the restaurant industry’s newer concepts. The amount of required cooking varies, as does the number of courses. A recently purchased kit from Alinea, for example, included a green salad, dessert, two sides, and two ready-to-grill kabobs per order.

Alinea’s meal kit kabobs

A lot of restaurants, including Prairie Grass, will be offering kits for the Labor Day weekend. Options are typically listed on the restaurants’ website, and most have to be ordered by Thursday or Friday.

The supercilious, arrogant Biden supporters. This is from a Facebook post by an Illinois public official. I’ll keep his name out of it. Here it is:

Now is the most consequential election in Anyone’s (sic) lifetime (sic) we are faced with a choice of a good decent man, Joe Biden  and the worst sewer trash a horror movie fan could ever imagine. Those voting for Trump are delusional, deceived or in a cult that can’t discern what a self centered (sic) egotist who is only concerned about himself could continue to destroy our Democracy. God help us if Trump is re-elected. I have never thought ill of anyone who expresses an opinion different than mine. Until now. I have a hard time respecting people I cared for professionally or personally supporting Trump.. Vote your conscience. If you have one.

In other words, he can’t respect the deplorables.