Antioch Police partner with local agencies to host community Opioid/Drug Awareness Resource Fair

Watershed in Wisconsin and Illinois. This full day event will examine watershed management issues and challenges in both the Illinois and Wisconsin portions of the river basin, and it is also an opportunity to celebrate the success stories along the Fox River. A key goal will be to continue the dialogue between stakeholders in Illinois and Wisconsin on many topics including recreation, economics, fisheries and other wildlife, soil health, water quality, stewardship, and other ongoing activities to improve this shared resource. The full list of presentations can be found at www.southeastfoxriver. org/2023foxriversummit.

The Summit reaches across the state line, just as the Fox River flows.

The collaborative effort to develop the bi-state Fabulous Fox River Water Trail was born out of the Fox River Summit. The sponsoring Fox River-based organizations strive to continue these collaborative efforts in the watershed, and the Fox River Summit is where everyone in the watershed comes together to share challenges and successes. Anyone with interest in watershed issues is invited to attend the summit. The planning team has seriously considered participant safety in designing the event. All attendees are encouraged to follow the current CDC COVID guidelines.

The Village of Antioch Police Department is partnering with nearly a dozen community organizations to host the first-ever Antioch community Opioid/Drug Awareness Resource Fair. The event is designed to focus on “a hometown response to a national crisis.” The resource fair will expand community education initiatives about this problem to inform residents about the impacts of addiction and what law enforcement and other local agencies are doing to combat its effects.

The event will be held at Antioch Community High School on February 25, 2023, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

According to studies by the American Psychiatric Association, nearly one in three people know someone addicted to opioids. Locally, the number of opioid overdoses, both fatal and nonfatal, has trended upward. In 2022, the Village of Antioch had 22 drug overdose instances in the village, up from 10 the previous year.

“With the prevalence of addiction, we saw the need to expand our community education initiative about this problem,” said Antioch Police Chief Geoffrey Guttschow. “Our goal is to inform people about the impacts of addiction and what we are doing to combat its effects.”

Drug use is always a complicated and complex subject for communities across the nation to face. The Antioch Police Department along with its partner agencies has decided that doing something would always be better than doing nothing.

“As an organization, we have a sworn duty to serve and protect everyone in our community,” said Guttschow. “If we protect one life or serve one person who struggling with addiction through this initiative, we have done our job.”

This event will feature a few short presentations explaining the scope of the problem in Lake County and how different organizations are working together to make services more accessible. Anyone in the community, especially concerned parents are encouraged to attend to learn about what the signs of drug use might look like. Parents and others may not know what to look for because many of the commonly abused drugs that are causing problems today resemble legitimate prescription and OTC medication.

Following the keynote presentations, attendees will have the opportunity to engage with the following organizations: Nicasa Behavioral Health Services (will provide training and free access to naloxone), Lake County Opioid Initiative, Live4Lali, Mobile Crisis Teams will provide information on crisis services, Metropolitan Enforcement Group (MEG) will have visual examples of what these drugs look like, Lake County Coroner’s Office, Lake County States Attorney, Open Arms Mission, NAMI (National Alliance of Mental Illness), and ARC – Antioch Recovery Club.

Village of Fox Lake hosting ‘Sweetheart Dance’ Saturday

The Village of Fox Lake will be holding a ‘Sweetheart Dance’ on Saturday, Feb. 18.

This dance was formerly called the mother-son or daddy-daughter dance.

This country themed dance will take place at the Lakefront Park Building, 71 Nippersink Blvd. The first dance is from 4:30-6:00 p.m. and the second dance is from 6:30-8:00 p.m.

Tickets include pizza, dessert and dancing. Tickets are $15 per couple for residents and $20 per couple for non-residents. Each additional child is $5. Payments and registration forms need to be turned in by Friday, Feb. 18 at the Village Hall located at 66 Thillen Dr., Fox Lake. For questions or more information call 224-2251404.

Morgan Bubash, of Cub Scout Pack 87 (Lindenhurst, Ill.) shows off the bullseye he got at Boo Camp, October 2022 at Camp Okarro.

Nancy

• Creativity

(Continued from front page) spot and view is not easy. He marks the spot and always sets his tripod in the exact same place, following careful notes he has taken and noted references such as rocks, stumps, or even a crack in the sidewalk.

While Brown began his career as a traditional photographer but he soon became fascinated with the 3D photography and the kinetic photos and taught himself these skills.

“For many, the 3D photos take one back to childhood when early 3D photos were sometimes the prize in Cracker Jack,” Brown said. “Today the photos I create are more complex.”

Throughout the year, Brown, and his wife, Nancy, travel to various art shows throughout the nation. At the art shows his booth is always filled with spectators who enjoy seeing his unique art.

“You will see a lot of commotion in my booth as people sway from side to side to make the pictures transform from one season to another,” Brown said. “It is a very happy booth, filled with laughter.”

During the pandemic, Brown was basically only selling art through his website while he continued to work on perfecting his techniques. But now he is back to attending art shows about 25 per year from local shows such as The Lake Geneva Art Fair and the Naperville Art Fair to others as far away as Boca Raton, Florida.

“We pack up all the art in the van and make our way to the art fair of choice,” Brown said.

Brown worked for Kodak, which downsized in 2005. He like many others lost his job. He did not see this as a problem but as an opportunity.

“I had been doing some art fairs part time while working for Kodak, so when they downsized and I lost my job with them, I realized that I now had the chance to try doing art shows full time,” Brown recalled.

So armed with a severance package, he was ready to jump start his personal art as a full time job.

“Since our children were home schooled, we were able to pack up the family, leave our home base and travel to art shows. I was able to turn this into a full time job and support the family.”

Brown succeeded in doing so. His children are grown and now just he and Nancy travel to the art shows.

His work is on display in many places. In 2008, the State of Illinois created the States Art in Architecture. He contributed 12 unique large format kinetic art pieces which are on permanent display at the University Center of Lake County. Public collections are owned by the villages of Oswego and Schaumburg. Brown continues to work out of his studio in his home in Antioch.

Nancy Carpentier Brown

Nancy Carpentier Brown is the wife of lenticular photographer Michael Brown, and often helps him with his art shows. But Nancy is also a creative person, an author, in her own right.

While raising her children, Carpentier Brown became interested in G.K. Chesterton, the prolific writer of the 20th century. According to the G.K. Chesterton website, Chesterton wrote 100 books, contributed to 200 more, wrote hundreds of poems, and some two hundred short stories including the popular series featuring the priest detective Father Brown, seen on PBS television.

“While there was plenty of information about G.K. Chesterton, there was little information easily attainable about his wife, Frances, who loved and lived with this extremely intelligent absent minded man,” Carpentier Brown said.

She researched Frances Chesterton for eight to 10 years with much of that research conducted at the Wheaton College library. She subsequently wrote the book “The Woman Who was Chesterton,” the story of Frances Chesterton.

Adapting the Father Brown mysteries for children has been another job that Carpentier Brown has undertaken. She has adapted four of his books for them.

The “Father Brown Reader” is another of Nancy Carpentier Brown’s creations. This book has been adopted as part of the home school curriculum, bringing the Father Brown stories to children.

“The Chestertons and the Golden Key” is a stand-alone book, a work of juvenile fiction that brings Gilbert Chesterton into the lives of a local family with three young girls all with dreams of their future. The effect of the Chestertons on their dreams and plans makes for an interesting story.

When Carpentier Brown is not writing or traveling around the country helping her husband set up and manage his art displays, she is at home in Antioch.

Advocacy groups push for expansive paid family, medical leave in Illinois 26-week leave policy would make Illinois the 12th state with paid leave laws

By Hannah Meisel CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS

A coalition of advocacy and labor groups is pushing for a state law to give Illinois workers 26 weeks of paid leave if they need to recover from an illness, domestic or sexual violence, or take care of a sick family member or new child.

The same groups just celebrated a legislative victory last month with the passage of five days of paid leave—negotiations that took four years but were ultimately agreed to by the state’s most influential business groups and even garnered some Republican votes.

After a quick rebrand to the Illinois Time To Care Coalition, advocates are pushing for a more ambitious leave policy, which would make Illinois the 12th state with mandatory paid family and medical leave. The United States is the only industrialized nation without a national paid parental leave law, while dozens of developing countries also have such policies.

“No one should have to choose a paycheck over their health and the health of their family,” said Wendy Pollack, Women’s Law and Policy Initiative director at the Chicago-based Shriver Center on Poverty Law.

The coalition’s initial proposal—encapsulated in Senate Bill 1234 and House Bill 1530—would cover all employers in Illinois and all employees who earn at least $1,600 annually. Paid leave would also apply to contract workers.

The benefits to workers would be paid out of a newly created special state fund. The law would require employers to pay 0.73 percent of the wages for their employees and contractors into the Family and Medical Leave Insurance Fund, similar to the state’s Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund. An additional fee of up to 0.05 percent could be imposed through administrative rules for administering the program.

Those who need paid leave would need to provide documentation of pregnancy, adoption or guardianship of a new child, their own injury or illness, or that of a sick family member. The leave policy would also cover military-related time off and time needed to recover from sexual assault or domestic violence.

Those workers, if approved for leave, would receive 90 percent of their average weekly wages for their leave period, up to a maximum of $1,200 per week. Eventually that maximum would be adjusted to 90 percent of the average weekly wage in Illinois

Those potential payouts are in line with the policies of the 11 other states with paid leave laws, although no other state’s law is quite as permissive as the proposal being pushed in Illinois. For example, although Massachusetts allows for up to 26 weeks of total paid leave in one year, it provides for only 12 weeks of paid leave for new parents and those caring for a sick family member, and 20 weeks for those who can’t work due to a long-term illness.

But advocates pushing for paid leave in Illinois are aiming for loftier goals than the programs in other states.

Christina Green, who now works for Chicago-based advocacy organization Women Employed, was only eligible for two weeks of leave when she gave birth to her son in 2020. She would only have had access to 12 weeks of paid maternity leave at the private school she worked at if she had been employed for seven or more years.

Instead of returning to work after those two weeks, Green said she drained her savings in order to take the 12 weeks she anticipated needing. And even then, Green said it wasn’t enough.

“It actually took me around 20 weeks to fully heal,” Green said. “Unfortunately, I had no other options but to return to work… I literally budgeted down to the last dollar.”

Angelica Arreguin, a single mom and temp agency worker who organizes with the Chicago Workers Collaborative, shared through an interpreter that she was fired by her former employer when she couldn’t return to her job because her “injury did not heal on their schedule.”

“And if there comes a day that my children become ill and I need to leave work for a month, I expect to be fired instead of being allowed to return,” Arreguin said.

Advocates say paid parental leave would help ease the racial inequities suffered by women like Arreguin and Green, who is Black. The advocacy groups behind the proposal point to a permanent decrease in earnings for women who take time off to care for children or aging parents – an issue set to become more prominent as Baby Boomers age into needing more medical care over the next decade or so.

The coalition is also selling paid leave as a boon for businesses, especially in a labor market where many employers have found it difficult to find or re-hire workers in the wake of COVID-19.

House sponsor state Rep. Sonya Harper, D-Chicago, said lack of a safety net is preventing many women from re-entering the workforce.

“If women in Illinois participated in the labor force at the same rate as women in countries with paid leave, there would be an estimated 124,000 additional workers in the state and 4.4 billion more wages,” she said.

But business groups aren’t engaging with the proposal yet.

Rob Karr, President and CEO of the influential Illinois Retail Merchants Association, turned the focus back to last month’s legislative agreement on five days of paid leave.

“Our focus is on the proper implementation of the historic paid leave bill that just passed the General Assembly and has yet to even be signed into law by the governor,” Karr said in a statement.

Paddock named to Dean’s List

Amanda Paddock of Antioch, was named to the dean’s list at Olivet Nazarene University during the recently completed fall 2022 semester. To qualify for inclusion on the dean’s list, a student must have been enrolled as a fulltime undergraduate student and must have attained a semester grade point average of 3.50 or higher on a 4.00 grading scale.

Albion College names fall Dean’s List honorees

Annika Lindstrom was recently named to the Albion College Dean’s List for the fall 2022 semester.

Lindstrom is a sophomore at Albion College, and a graduate of Antioch Community High School.

Dean’s List honors are given to students who achieve a grade point average of 3.5 or higher.

Rohmann earns

Dean’s List honors

Nicholas Rohmann of Antioch is among the more than 1,300 students honored on the Lewis University Dean’s List for the 2022 fall semester. Rohmann is studying Physics at the Romeoville, IL university.

Hedger named to

Dean’s List

Sarah Hedger, of Antioch, earned dean’s list honors at The University of Tampa for the fall 2022 semester. Hedger is majoring in Nursing BSN. Students must maintain a GPA of 3.75 or higher to be eligible for the dean’s list.

Augustana College announces Dean’s List

Augustana College announced more than 1,000 students were named to the Dean’s List for the 2022-23 fall semester. Students who have earned this academic honor have maintained a grade point average of 3.5