A messy completed crossword puzzle.

It gets messy.

There are scratch-outs and write-overs and margin-scribbles. Some of the little square boxes, originally white, now are so intensely filled that only I can tell what letter I have ultimately figured out is the right one.

And that’s the way I like it. Doing my puzzles in ink, I see every step I have taken, every twist and turn and wrong approach. No nice clean erasures.

Those scrawls are what I look on fondly and with immense satisfaction as I review the completed challenge. Those scrawls are where I learn.

It has only been for the last year or so that I have been a daily crossword puzzle zealot. I had been known to take a puzzle magazine with me on a poolside vacation and I have killed some time post-surgery with goofy Cryptic Crosswords. But the obsession to solve everything that the Tribune throws at me, including 3 challenges on Sunday, erupted out of nowhere. And of course, it is a nice distraction during the COVIDaplooza.

And while I have been at it, I have learned a few problem-solving tools;  tools that are helpful in more than just the crosswords. They help with solving real-life problems too.

1. Look for a way in: Sometimes at first glance, the puzzle will seem overly difficult, filled with clues I have no idea about–things like opera and Australian geography or Ethiopian pronouns. But with a little digging, I can usually find a clue or two that makes sense. Maybe it is a simple fill-in-the-blank. Or an easy reference to Mel Ott, the old-time Giants outfielder who is a crossword creator’s favorite shortie. Fill in enough of those, and the trickier ones become easier. Same with any problematic task–figure out what you know, then use that to work on what you don’t.
2. Find the fork in the road, and take it: Is the right answer to “Long forgotten President” with 8 letters, when you know the last letter is “n” Harrison, or is it Buchanan? Don’t spend forever dithering. Pick one and see where it takes you. Undecided about which vendor to buy your supplies from? Sure, do your homework, but eventually, you’ve got to choose. You can always backtrack later–if you have to.
3. You may be right, I may be crazy: I could swear that the answer to “The album with the song “Just You ‘n’ Me” at 10 Down is “Chicago XI.” But maybe, just maybe, it is really “Chicago VI.” So get rid of that misplaced “X” and swap in the “V.”  All of a sudden it all makes more sense. And maybe that prostate cell I was convinced was a cancer cell isn’t. All of a sudden the diagnosis of benign atrophy becomes much clearer. Let’s do a special stain to prove it.
4. Love your messes: Every messy square on the finished puzzle is one I struggled over. But in the end, I got it right. Just as every step we take in initiating some new testing may be messy. Time frames are relative, supplies ephemeral, especially in this resources-limited COVIDenvironment. But if in the end when we can look back and say we did it, the previous messes make it all the more rewarding.

So keep on plugging and solving and giving your all. Don’t erase your mistakes-remember them. And we will get this right.

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Jeff Berkowitz: So, the cop gets out of his car, shoots sixteen times in six seconds a 16 year old black teen who is …walking away from the cop…

Berkowitz: …Mayor Emanuel keeps the Laquan McDonald video from the public, Emanuel is re-elected…a War on Cops or War on Blacks?

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Now it’s BLM, Looting, Riots & George Floyd; Is the Laquan Mac Donald murder by a Chicago cop & a Sep. 2016 discussion relevant to our World of July 13, 2020? You betchem, Red Ridem. As the French say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.   

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Heather Mac Donald: …You could remove all police shootings in Chicago… stop them entirely, and you would have an entirely negligible effect on the “Black death by homicide,” rate… because blacks are being killed overwhelmingly by other blacks.

Mac Donald: Police need better tactical training [to avoid] the appalling tactical decisions that resulted in Laquan McDonald’s shooting but…

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Public Affairs, featuring Heather Mac Donald, a senior fellow at the free market oriented Manhattan Institute, airs:

—Tonight at 8:30 pm and midnight on Cable Ch. 21 [CAN TV] throughout the City of Chicago

You can also watch, 24/7, Heather Mac Donald, author of the still extremely topical, NYT best selling book, “The War on Cops,” interviewed on September 28, 2016  by “Public Affairs,” show host Jeff Berkowitz, by clicking here: 

Taped in the Gold Coast’s Nico Osteria, with an intriguing, Mona Lisa type smiling counselor in the background, the show is just as relevant today as it was in 2016

The on screen, mysterious & omnicient Modern American Woman who counseled the host prior to the show.

Society, more than ever,  continues to grapple with balancing the use of procedures that allow police to make the public safer by employing pro-active policing with the passage of laws that protect constitutional civil liberties for all of its citizens.

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A partial transcript of tonight’s show is included, below:

Jeff Berkowitz: We have as our guest, Heather Mac Donald … who wrote, “The War on Cops.” We are taping this show in Nico Osteria, Chicago, on September 28, 2016… and  just about 2 years ago [now 6 yrs] Laquan McDonald– you know that name?

Heather Mac Donald: Sure.

Heather Mac Donald, yet another Modern American Woman & best selling author whose range of research interests and written subject matter includes, but is not limited to, higher education, policing and race relations.

Berkowitz: So, the cop [Jason Van Dyke] gets out, six cops are already there and they are doing nothing, so the cop… shoots sixteen times in six seconds a kid (Laquan McDonald) who appears to have been harmless and walking away from the cop [Van Dyke] when the cop gets out of his car.

Berkowitz: McDonald is doing nothing, African-American, he has a [3 inch] knife, harming nobody, and then the kid is dead… there is a cover-up by the State’s Attorney of Cook County, Anita Alvarez.  Ok- not a cover up, but a year later, Alvarez still hasn’t indicted [the shooter– the cop, but Alvarez did indict Van Dyke 2 months after the taping of this show. Van Dyke was convicted of murder in a Cook County trial and sentenced to six years, which meant he served about 3 yrs.

Berkowitz: There is a video of the incident… you have to know this is a murder after a month or two of an investigation. A year goes by, nothing from the State’s Attorney, Mayor Emanuel keeps the video [from the the public], the Mayor is re-elected….War on Cops or War on Blacks? Come on…

Heather Mac Donald: Jeff, Laquan McDonald was an appalling shooting by the [Chicago] Police Department. The false narrative that was put out by those cops and not blocked by Police Supt. Garry McCarthy [now a failed 2019 Candidate for Chicago Mayor] or the Detectives Bureau was a complete betrayal of the public trust. But that is one police shooting.

Mac Donald: This year in Chicago 3000 people [as of Sep. 28, 2016] have been shot. If the Black Lives Matter narrative is correct, since almost all those victims have been black, you would assume that cops are responsible for a considerable part of those shootings.

Mac Donald: In fact, the cops have shot 18 people, six of them lethally, virtually all armed and dangerous, that’s 0.6 % of all people who have been shot in Chicago.

Heather Mac Donald: Absolutely, the police need better tactical training, not to make the appalling tactical decisions that resulted in the Laquan McDonald shooting. But, you could remove all police shootings, in Chicago or as a whole, stop them entirely, and you would have an entirely negligible effect on the black death by homicide rate because blacks are being killed overwhelming by other blacks [who are not police].

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This episode of Public Affairs featuring Heather Mac Donald also  airs: 

–Tomorrow, Tuesday at 8:30 pm  in 24 Chicago Metro North and Northwest suburbs, as indicated, below:

—Comcast Cable Ch. 19 in Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove Village, Hoffman Estates, parts of Inverness, Lincolnwood, Morton Grove, Niles, Northfield, Palatine, Rolling Meadows and Wilmette and on

—Comcast Cable Ch. 35 in  Arlington Heights, Bartlett, Glenview, Golf, Des Plaines, Hanover Park, Mt. Prospect, Northbrook, Park Ridge, Prospect Heights, Schaumburg, Skokie, Streamwood and Wheeling. 

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COVID-19 has hit a lot of different sectors of the economy hard, for many different reasons, but perhaps none is as complicated as the entertainment industry. Basically, if it’s something you had to go buy a ticket to, with long advance notice, it just isn’t happening in 2020.

The “event economy” or “fun sector” is basically wiped out for the time being. However, it doesn’t mean that it’s overall bearish for the entertainment sector until we pull ourselves out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The so-called “stay at home” economy is thriving, as this is now a great time for subscription streaming services. “Netflix and chill, anyone?”

However, the IRL (in real life) element is going to be absent at worst, severely altered at best, for quite a while. Take for instance the casino industry. Times are better for online sites like GambleGuys and worse for the brick and mortar casinos like MGM Resorts.

Consensus Estimates are calling for MGM earnings to hit -$1.21 per share, while still generating a revenue figure of $6.56 billion. That translates to year-over-year changes of -131.19% and -49.11%, respectively. Earnings season is always a volatile time of year, but as MGM approaches its next release of the earnings data, the projection for this quarter would be a reported earnings of -$1.52 per share. Extrapolate that to a full fiscal year, and you’re at a decline of 760.87%. Ouch.

Overall though, it’s less of a bloodbath then you might expect. When you look at how resort stocks are performing against the rest of the market, yes they are lagging the S&P 500 and most consumer indices, but the gap isn’t as wide as you might think. Once again, it’s complicated. With the states differing on their re-opening plans, and zero leadership at the Federal level, there is not centralized plan to handle the coronavirus crisis.

You can’t really balance the concept of “the economy” or “reopening the economy” against lockdown/quarantine or “containing the virus.” The A vs. B narrative is a false choice narrative. In order to get people going out and having fun, i.e. refueling the entertainment industry, they need to feel comfortable and safe in doing so.

The sports betting industry is a curious case. Obviously, the shut down of sports has inhibited the industry and most brick and mortar sports books are functioning at reduced capacity, if they’re even open at all. On the plus side though, the legalization process for sports betting could be rapidly accelerated now in states where the covid crisis has ravaged state budgets. That’s because the potential for additional tax revenue will be critical.

However, the brutal truth is this- we’re talking mostly about industries and cottage industries that are all work at home, if at all until phase 5 re-opening. And considering that phase 5 doesn’t get here until there’s a widely available vaccine and/or therapeutic, well, it’s going to be a very long while.

It’s an overlooked story angle, but it’s very true- the current struggles of the entertainment industry are having extreme adverse effects on the American population at large. It’s not the only factor, but it is one reason we’re seeing so much unrest in ths country, and everyday new viral videos of everyday people behaving monstrously deplorable emerge.

Having been in lockdown for long periods, plus all the furloughs, layoffs and special events that people really look forward to getting canceled- it all adds up and people starting behaving dangerously, like they now have nothing to lose. In other words, we need to get this pandemic under control, do the work, so that we can have fun again later.

Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly contributes to WGN TV, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Now and SB Nation.

You can follow Banks, a former writer for Chicago Tribune.com, on Twitter and his cat on Instagram.

Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

Each day Trump hits the bottom of nonsense and  foolery.

He now takes advice from the likes of  Chuck Woolery,

Judging from the number of reading lists returned by googling “pandemic books,” many readers aren’t looking for escapism during COVID.

A pandemic read was not my object on my first trip into the Harold Washington Library Center after it reopened a few weeks ago. Browsing in the Popular Library on the first floor, I noticed a couple of novels by Minette Walters, a Brit known as the queen of psychological mystery. Not until I returned home did I discover that the books aren’t mysteries but works of historical fiction about the Black Death’s rampage of Southern England’s Dorseteshire (as it was then spelled) in 1348–49.

The Last Hours was published in 2018 and its sequel, The Turn of Midnight, in 2019, before COVID, so Walters couldn’t have known how timely her foray into historical fiction would be. Modern medicine aside, it’s striking to see the parallels between 672 years ago and today.

• Both the Black Death, now known as the plague, and COVID were new, invisible, and mysterious. They both arrived, spread, and killed quickly. Decisions about what to do had to be made hurriedly.

• They weren’t confined to a small region. COVID has reached every continent but Antarctica. The plague spread from Asia to Europe, where it wiped out an estimated 50 percent of the population.

• They were spread by travel from Asia. The plague moved along the Silk Road, the land and sea network connecting China and the Far East with Europe. COVID originated in China and was carried from there by travelers.

• No one was invulnerable. The diseases killed rich and poor, the powerful and the lowest strata.

• Neither disease affected everyone the same way. Walters’s characters attempt to understand why the serf Gyles Startout survived when all his traveling companies died. COVID has affected people in vastly different ways ranging from no symptoms to death.

• Neither disease had an effective treatment.

• There was an expectation that life would not return to what it had been. “In twelve days, the world had changed beyond all recognition,” Sir Richard observes in The Last Hours before he dies.

• Quarantines were used and proven to work to keep people safe. In Walters’s story, Lady Anne, a woman ahead of her time, barricades the people of Develish in a manor house surrounded by a moat. Anyone exposed to the outside world, like Gyles Startout, must quarantine for 14 days before being allowed in. Everyone within the manor house survives, while other Dorseteshire towns are decimated.

• Superstitious people in the Middle Ages believed the plague was a punishment from God, and religious people thought that God would protect them. Evangelicals said the same thing about packing people into churches during COVID.

• Walters’s hibernating characters wonder how people would know when it’s safe to come out. Phased reopenings during COVID address the same question.

• People seek to know how other places have fared. A delegation of brave serfs leaves Develish to find out. The news comes to us today, with the same purpose: to inform decision making.

When someone in my book group suggested reading a novel about a pandemic, the rest of us demurred, saying that we were hearing enough about a depressing disease in real life. The Last Hours and The Turn of Midnight are not depressing, however. They offer inspiring examples of people whose enlightened thinking and courageous actions ensured the survival of those who listened to them. There lies a lesson for us about listening to Anthony Fauci instead of Donald Trump.

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ANTI-TRUMP COMMENTS: 122ND IN AN ONGOING SERIES

“Trump’s nihilistic approach to the worst crisis of our time, which now includes pretending the virus doesn’t exist other than as a vehicle to demonize his enemies, is short-circuiting the wiring inside the heads of his Red Hat fanboys, who are now witnessing their own people succumbing to the virus and trying to somehow square this brutal reality with the “everything’s fine!” attitude coming from their addled messiah. No wonder they’re losing their shpadoinkle — again, facts and Trump-fiction are colliding in their heads and they’re powerless to recalibrate their bullshit detectors.”
— Bob Cesca, Salon

So Much to Love about 618 5th Street – a new listing in Wilmette

This delightful Wilmette home for sale is for someone who’s looking to buy a newer home that is move-in-ready.

The home is in a prime east Wilmette location near Gillson park and beach, CTA, and a short walk to Wilmette’s hopping downtown area.

Address:  618 5th St., Wilmette IL

Built: 2007

Bedrooms: 3 + 1 in the basement

Baths: 3 full, 1 ½ bath (includes full basement bath)

Square footage of home: 2,932

Square footage of lot: 5,500

Elementary School: Central School

High School:  New Trier High School

Price: $1,195,000

Taxes: $14,677

Some highlights: 

• A chef’s kitchen with Wood Mode cabinets, high-end appliances, and a pantry closet.
• Functional open floor plan.
• Separate dining room.
• Family room adjacent to kitchen with views of back yard.
• Master bedroom with fireplace and private balcony.
• Two more bedrooms with Jack-and-Jill bathroom
• 2nd floor laundry
• Outdoor patio, fireplace, and shower to wash sand off from the beach!

Perfect if you’re looking for a comfortable cozy home with a manageable lot!

To see photos, floor plans, map, room sizes,  and more, please see:

618 5th St., Wilmette, IL

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Margaret Goss is a full-time real estate broker since 1998 working for Baird and Warner in the North Shore communities of Winnetka, Wilmette, Kenilworth, Glencoe, Northfield, Glenview, and Evanston.

She can be reached at:

Phone:  847-977-6024

Email:  [email protected]

See her full BIOGRAPHY