Blithe Spirit, the Blog

Discussing “the end of white flight” from major cities including Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, with resulting proportional increases in whites, Wall St. Journal has this:

As neighborhoods grow more multicultural, conflicts over home prices, taxes and education are opening a new chapter in American race relations.

Welcome to Oak Park 30 years later.

Oak Park (IL) village manager Tom Barwin is not apologizing for saying the Supreme Court is “in alliance with the gangbangers” in its ruling in favor of individual right to own a gun, but he does have advice for others:

“I really think we ought to tone down the emotion, which I will also try to do,” he said. “But I think we should be working harder to find common ground and eliminate these conditions that breed violence.

He will try very hard to tone it down but is willing to leave the Supremes dangling with gangsters.

“I think the … gangbanger comments really just were a way to succinctly express that, in my experience and view, the further proliferation of guns will inevitably result in more drug pushers and those of a criminal mind ending up with firearms.”

As it is, of course, they have to get along with their bare fists?

Later, from Dick Cutler in Ann Arbor:

I have strong sentiments about private possession of firearms.  I grew up on a farm; I had guns then; I have guns now (several, would you like an inventory and a report of my marksmanship?); and FINALLY, “I intend to keep my  guns and my skill in using them  — so as to be prepared to shoot the miserable ass off anyone who comes to take them from me.”

Hawthorne and Emerson did not see eye to eye when it came to “what evil lurks in the hearts of men.”

In one of his stories, [Hawthorne] has the devil say, “Evil is the nature of mankind.” [he] didn’t go that far, but argued time and again for the “evil impulse” in us all. “Oh, take my word for it,” his devil taunted reformers, “it will be the old world yet!”

Emerson, on the other hand, found The Scarlet Letter a “ghastly” book, apparently recognizing it as an attack on his feelings-based morality.

Read all about it in The Wednesday Journal of Oak Park & River Forest, out today, with special attention to “three discarded Oak Park school namesakes” — these two plus James Russell Lowell, whose paean to June — “what is so rare”? — gets special billing.

In the summertime spillover of West Side (Austin district) crime, bike-snatching has been to the fore in Oak Park.  But OP police have been at the ready.

Two 13-year-olds were nabbed yesterday afternoon as they pedalled east on Lake Street after copping the bikes of two 12–year-olds in the first block of Pleasant (yes, Pleasant), which is Fulton in the city, after eyewitnesses called the police.

About 90 minutes later, a 16-year-old Chicago boy approached a 13-year-old from Oak Park on a bike near Highland Avenue and Van Buren Street [a few blocks in], grabbed her rear wheel and reportedly said, “I need this more than you.”

This too was witnessed and called in, and the perp was spotted near Menard in the city (a few blocks in) and was chased by an OP cop to the 5500 block of Monroe (a half mile in) and nabbed.

It’s his perceived need that’s arresting here, offered as explanation if not justification to his victim.  How did he know she needed it less?  Or what made him think so?

An Oak Parker writes about economic stimulus check as bribery, and I agree with her.

Read it at my Oak Park Items blog at Wednesday Journal of Oak Park & River Forest.

Drove over last night to the Kerasotes ShowPlace 14 - Galewood Crossings a few blocks north of North, just off Central, first right off the bridge, to catch “Redbelt” as advertised for a 7:20 showing. 

“Not selling tickets to ‘Redbelt,’” said the young lady.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because it’s not showing on the scornay.”

“The what?”

“The scornay.”

“The scornay?” 

Her friend, standing with cell phone just outside the ticket booth, finally intervened: “The screen, the screen.”

Which under normal circumstances would have prompted another question, Why aren’t you showing it on the screen when it’s scheduled to be shown and in fact is on the electronic list blinking right above us? 

But stunned by defeat, I returned to my vehicle and took myself back to Oak Park.

UPDATE: Renona (sp?) called from Kerasotes in Galewood, an hour and 20 minutes after I emailed them a link to this posting, and she couldn’t have been nicer. 

She didn’t know why “Redbelt” was a no-show, was very apologetic, and nicest of all, she’s givine me two free tickets, to be picked up at the gate by asking for the manager!

But at $4 a senior citizen ticket, am I going to expose myself visually as the on-line complainer?  Let me think about it.

UPDATE 2: The manager also called, also wants to be friends.  I called back, he wasn’t there.

EXPLANATION: “Scornay” is combination of her accent and my imperfect hearing, FYI.

Here’s an Oak Park story with Washington Irving roots:

No Oak Park school is better named when it comes to kids’ reading than Washington Irving, on Cuyler in the village’s southeast corner. How can we beat The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, with the school teacher Ichabod Crane scared almost to death by a headless horseman.

Or Rip Van Winkle, asleep for 20 years and waking to find his children grown, his mean old wife dead, and the British no longer in charge in his upstate New York village?

There’s more more more here at the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest.

Last night “What Happens in Vegas,” co-starring Cameron Diaz (or was it Jennifer Lopez? one of the Z-ladies) and (Half-) Ashton Something, with volume turned up so as to make this yet another cartoon with live people.  Comic books used to show “pow” and “bam” when hero socked bad guy.  Movies have bass chords or thunks.  This one had a series of thunks at one point, lest we hoi polloi moviegoers miss something.

That said, it was diversionary, in a semi-crowded theatre (Lake on Lake) half-filled with decent enough crowd.

First thing to remember (after thunks) is that this moviegoer had no spontaneous laughter coming out of his throat, nor any other kind, nor any smile.  The entire attraction was the plot line: something about this movie kept this m-goer wondering what comes next.  The characters, in addition, were not overtly off-putting, and once you accept the presumed sleep-around dating scene — if it feels good, it’s good, genitally speaking, which it is, genitally speaking — you can even appreciate the basically human (i.e., good) responses and developments of the hero and heroine.

Moreover, Dennis Miller as the judge unloads a hard-nosed, credible defense of wedded perseverance: he looks at his wife of 25 years sometimes and wants to set her on fire — but among other things, that’s not legal.

So for a night at the movies, 7:30 version, out in the sweet May air by 9:30, not bad.  What’s more, I had to correct the young woman at the ticket booth, prepared to charge me $8 — “I’m a senior,” I said, without adding my line, “not high school or college either” — and she switched it to $5.50.

Close call, reminding me of telling the booth lady at the State on Madison in 1944 that I was eleven, which I wasn’t, but twelve was the age of adulthood when it came to ticket price.

Phew.

The Chicago Defender has stayed with the “massacre” in the longtime-black, until recently peaceful Chatham neighborhood.

An unpaid debt by one of the five people found murdered inside a Chatham home may be at the root of the killings, sources said Tuesday [4/29]. A home in the 7600 block of South Rhodes Avenue was the scene of a backyard barbeque April 22 that lasted into the wee hours of the night.

When one of the attendees returned to the home the next day, she found the back door ajar and the music blaring. She went inside, saw her friends–two women and three men–dead and called 911. Police have not determined when the massacre took place, but a source said a neighbor heard gunshots about 2:30 a.m., but did not call police.

Oh my.  What’s in that not calling police at 2:30 when you hear shots?  It’s the beginning of the end of a quiet neighborhood.  There has to be indignation when shots are heard, and a willingness to raise hell.

I have felt that indignation, though not at gunshots.  Rather, on being told of lewd suggestions made by black kids from nearby Chicago to some of our kids playing in the Beye School playground across the street in the 70s.

They heard me yelling from a front porch a block away, as I ran across the street towards the offenders, kids in their early teens.  Someone else called the cops.  I chased the offenders off the playground.  They ran east toward Austin Boulevard, the Oak Park-Chicago boundary, not waiting to hear my beef because who wants to hear what a crazy man wants to say?

It was after school had been left out.  One of the teachers, a veteran whom we knew and liked, took umbrage at my display, commenting to one of our kids then or the next day, I forget.  I told the cop, who said they had hightailed out of reach, that at least they know a wild man lives here, meaning they would try some other block to pull their stuff.

Meanwhile, on the Chatham block, there had been problems that the alderman and police say they never had been told about. 

An investigation into whether a prostitution ring was being run out of the home is also underway. . . .   Neighbors said there was plenty of foot traffic in and out of the home during late night hours. However, there were no complaints filed with the alderman’s office, Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th) said hours after the bodies were found. The neighborhood’s police district commander also said no alarming activity has been reported to the police about the home.

““I’ve lived in this area for more than 20 years, and it’s always been quiet,” said one woman.

And maybe it will be for 20 years more.  But cops and residents and alderman have to be in contact.

Later: Reader B. wonders, “how the neighbors knew there was in excess of $20 grand taken??????  seems oddly specific.”

Regarding this in the Defender story:

Other neighborhood reports are that a large amount of cash–in excess of $20,000–and high end televisions and stereo systems were taken from the home before the bodies were discovered. While police declined to confirm or deny the allegations, they said the incident is isolated and robbery is the likely motive. 

Before there was Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School on Boul Wash, there was Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High, and before that, Emerson grade school. There still is the Emerson Library at Brooks. Old names fade away. This Emerson fellow bears looking into.

He was America’s chief public intellectual, to use a hot phrase of a few years ago, in the first half of the 19th century-”America’s greatest idealist thinker, America’s most peculiar thinker,” said the late James Tuttleton of New York University. He gave speeches and wrote essays, and people paid attention to him. So should we, especially Emerson students, teachers, alumni, parents, and anyone else who lives or ever lived or will live in Oak Park.

There’s more more more of this by me at the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park & River Forest.