Wednesday Journal 072920

W E D N E S D A Y

40 YEARS 1980-2020

VOL. 40, NO. 52

OF OAK PARK & RIVER FOREST

JULY 29, 2020

Oak Park parents weigh in on school reopening plans D97 changes course, opts for remote only

By MICHAEL ROMAIN Staff Reporter

As Oak Park schools grapple with how to approach the upcoming school year, there’s been intense debate on social media among parents and community members about whether or not schools should reopen remotely or allow students to return to classrooms, at least for part of the week.

By most accounts, the loudest voices in chat rooms and private groups and board members’ inboxes have been those of parents adamant that their students return to class. Earlier this month, administrators with both Districts 97 and 200 announced plans to start the fall on a fully remote learning model.

Speaking on Oak Park Village Trustee Dan See PARENTS on page 15

AS JOURNAL TURNS 40, OUR READERS SPEAK UP Find out what they had to say.

Pages 39-45

ALEX ROGALS/Staff Photographer

GOODMINTON: Teresa Herrion, left, and Journi Bolar play badminton, and savor late July, in Oak Park.

Oak Park renews health emergency declaration The declaration will be in effect until Sept. 14

By STACEY SHERIDAN Staff Reporter

Due to an increased number of positive COVID-19 cases locally and in the state of

Illinois, the Oak Park village board voted 6-1 during its July 27 meeting to reinstate a declaration of emergency affecting public health. The declaration extends until Sept.

14. It does not require businesses to shut down or people to shelter in place.

“Following a sustained period of declining new positive cases in Oak Park of COVID-19, the village has seen the seven-day and 14-day rolling average of new positive

cases trend in an increasing direction during the month of July 2020,” the resolution reads.

“There’s no shelter-in-place order associated with it,” Oak Park Health Director Mike Charley told Wednesday Journal.

“We’ve started to see an increase in the number of cases again and it’s just a way See DECLARATION on page 5

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

Emergency Housing Assistance is available for COVID-19 response in our community.

Suffering from job loss or loss of income due to the current global pandemic?

Worried about maintaining stable housing?

Help is available.

Housing Forward will begin accepting applications for distribution of CARES Act funding beginning August 3.

Funds have been allocated to help individuals and families who are experiencing challenges with housing expenses—rent, mortgage, utilities —as a result of the crisis.

Any Oak Park resident whose income is 80% or less of the Area Median Income* is encouraged to apply for emergency rental, mortage and utility assistance. Funds will be distributed for as long as they last.

To learn more, and access funds visit www.housingforward.org

*Income Limits for 80% of AMI determined by HUD for 2020 in Cook County Size of Household Total Household Income

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L

ast week, I got a call from a proud grandfather who lives in Austin. He wanted to ask if Austin Weekly News could cover a trunk party his family had this past Sunday for his granddaughter, who is heading off to college.

“She reads the paper all the time,” the man said.

We don’t normally cover trunk parties, but how could I say no? What 18-year-old still reads print newspapers? Let alone a community print newspaper? I felt like I owed her something for paying us any kind of attention.

I couldn’t make the trunk party in person, but I called the proud graduate, Jamara Gilmore, on Sunday to express my gratitude and to ask how she formed such a rare habit — for anybody nowadays, let alone a teenager.

I was suddenly an anthropologist conducting a field study on a vanishing culture that just happens to be my career.

“Reading the newspaper broadens your view on multiple things and gives you the opportunity to know what’s going on around your neighborhood,” Jamara said. “It gives you the idea to try to make a change and to inform others about what’s going on.”

Jamara gave me hope in a moment when I was not particularly hopeful. A few days before my conversation with her, I’d allowed myself some time to look beyond the communities I cover to understand the depth of the danger this country is in.

A sitting American president has politicized federal troops, who are now storming into “Democrat-controlled” cities like Portland to squash peaceful protestors, among them mothers who have offered their bodies as shields to hopefully prevent more unconstitutional kidnappings of dissenting civilians by unidentified federal officers.

And just as this is happening, the coronavirus pandemic has prompted mass layoffs in the media, just as it has in other industries. In April, one prominent Portland media company that publishes some two dozen local papers in the state announced that it had laid off 40 employees in a week — a fifth of its workforce.

We rely on local news outlets to get a snapshot of what’s happening on the ground during instances of protests and other forms of civil unrest, in a manner that is not warped by the toxic and cheap Red-Blue partisanship and tit-for-tat “objectivity” that we see in so many national media outlets.

As local newspapers wither so do perspectives like Jamara’s. What fills the void, particularly in chaotic, overly complex moments like this one? Too often, conspiracy theories like QAnon that are powered by a social media/cable news/talk radio industrial complex that runs on tribal conflict and harebrained divisiveness.

This week, Wednesday Journal turns 40 years old, which is roughly half the average

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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In praise of the primitive American lifespan. In 1980, the to use nature’s bounty had to total circulation of U.S. daily get someone else’s permission newspapers was around 62 miland had to pay for it with taxes, lion, according to Pew Research tribute, or extra labor. …

Center. By 2018, Pew shows, “For the first time there aptotal circulation was less than peared on earth kings, dictators, half that — around 29 million. high priests, emperors, prime The decline represents more ministers, presidents, governors, than a loss of newsprint. It mayors, generals, admirals, represents a loss of an instipolice chiefs, judges, lawyers, tution that is as vital to the and jailers, along with dungeons, democratic state as suffrage and jails, penitentiaries, and concenthat performs perhaps the most tration camps. Under the tutelage important function in society. of the state, human beings “Who tells the story creates learned for the first time how to Commentary the world,” writes Christopher bow, grovel, kneel, and kowtow.

Ryan in his 2019 book Civilized to Death: “In many ways the rise of the state was The Price of Progress. the descent of the world from freedom to Ryan argues, persuasively in my opinion, slavery,” Harris writes. that progress is not inevitable and that civiIf there was one redeeming institution lization, for all of its glory, is not necessarthat emerged after that descent into stateily an advancement — in fact may very well hood, that gave humankind some hope be much worse from a quality of life standof retaining the “noble” qualities of our point — over the various nomadic hunterhunter-gatherer ancestors — it was newsgathering cultures that it has dominated gathering and, eventually, newspapers.

In his book, Ryan shared a Sebastian and banished into so-called “savagery.”

Junger quotation: “Subsistence-level hunters Ryan explains that the consensus among most anthropologists is that foraging societ- aren’t necessarily more moral than other people; they just can’t get away with selfish ies, throughout the hundreds of thousands behavior because they live in small groups of years of their existence, have all shared where almost everything is open to scrutiny.” three “essential qualities”: fierce egalitariIn the absence of a culture based on small anism/sharing, mobility and gratitude. nomadic groups or villages or hamlets, What we might consider to be our innate what other institution cultivates and human qualities of generosity and mutual invites consistent scrutiny? What other respect are, to a large degree, extensions of our hunter-gathering ancestry, whom we tend institution is, by definition, without walls and is committed to openness as an operatto dismiss as “noble savages,” Ryan writes. ing principal?

“Unpredictable environments generate Despite our 21st century gadgetry — from challenges best met through reciprocal Facebook to the iPhone — mankind has generosity and hospitality. To the extent yet to invent a technology as effective at that ‘savages’ are noble, it’s because they evolved in social groups that cultivate and holding our post-nomadic institutions accelebrate generous, respectful behaviors as countable and at cultivating a sense of coma means of risk mitigation and self-presmunity and shared existence (beyond our ervation. If these behaviors have become particular tribe or congregation or locality) ‘innate,’ they are as innate to you and me as than the old-fashioned print newspaper? they are to any ‘savages.’”

And I have to distinguish print newspaRyan quotes anthropologist Marvin pers from digital-only news or TV news or Harris, who writes that in “most band and even radio news, because as much as I love village societies before the evolution of the those other technologies, they’re just not state, the average human being enjoyed the same as print. Reading a print newseconomic and political freedoms which paper forces your attention in a way that only a privileged minority enjoy today. Men the internet does not. And reading a print decided for themselves how long they would newspaper with news about your own comwork on a particular day, what they would munity is particularly empowering. work at — or if they would work at all …

Can you imagine anyone nowadays, let Neither rent, taxes, nor tribute kept people alone a teenager, saying about Facebook or from doing what they wanted to do.”

TikTok or Instagram or even online news And, in many hunter-gathering societies, sites what Jamara said about print newsthat radical freedom also applied to women papers? and LGBTQ individuals (“only in the most As Ryan explains, just because something progressive modern societies are LGBTQ is increasingly considered old-fashioned or people and women regaining the accepprimitive doesn’t mean that it’s unnecestance and respect they typically received in sary or not vital or most foraging societies,” Ryan writes). without a lesson for The shift from the “egalitarian autonomy our lives today. of foraging to the coercive power structures Right now, as I type, of civilization” was traumatic. Again, quoting from Harris, Ryan explains that with “the rise of the state, ordinary men seeking

MICHAEL ROMAIN

there are fully grown, bipedal Homo sapiens who can’t name their mayor or local city council members, but believe that the Black Lives Matter movement is controlled by trained Marxists or that the coronavirus is a hoax or that Donald Trump was chosen

by God for God knows what.

In 2018, Politico reported that in the 2016 election, Trump “outperformed the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, in counties with the lowest numbers of news subscribers, but didn’t do nearly as well in areas with heavier circulation.” Politico’s study covered “more than 1,000 mainstream news publications in more than 2,900 counties out of 3,100 nationwide from every state except Alaska, which does not hold elections at the county level.”

And the results, the publication explained, “show a clear correlation between low subscription rates and Trump’s success in the 2016 election, both against Hillary Clinton and when compared to Romney in 2012. Those links were statistically significant even when accounting for other factors that likely influenced voter choices, such as college education and employment, suggesting that the decline of local media sources by itself may have played a role in the election results.”

In the last week, as I’ve watched the country descend deeper into authoritarianism, I’ve clung to books like Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century, a pocket-sized pamphlet of just 125 pages that I urge you to run out and buy from Oak Park’s beloved Book Table, 1045 Lake St., if you don’t already have a copy.

Lesson two is this: “Defend institutions.”

“It is institutions that help us preserve decency,” Snyder writes. “They need our help as well. Do not speak of ‘our institutions’ unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about … and take its side.”

With that said, your local newspaper is accepting donations.

Find more about the AWN and Block Club newsletter on page 10.

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

BIG WEEK July 29 - August 5 Outdoors While Black Friday, July 31, 6 p.m., Zoom

Watch short films and join the discussion. First, view “This Land” and later hear from filmmaker Faith Briggs. Wildlife ecology professor, author and birder J. Drew Lanham is featured in short films, including “Behind the Binoculars,” which shows his care for people as well as birds. Then unpack history, reframe safety and learn about opportunities for action with Lanham and Chicago-area environmentalists of color Olatunji Oboi Reed and Candace Clark. Free; $8, suggested donation per person. Brought

by One Earth Film Festival and Environmentalists of Color. Register: oneearthfilmfest.org/virtualscreenings

Neshama Carlebach, Tisha b’Av and Tu b’Av Wednesday, July 29, 8:45 p.m., Zoom with Temple Har Zion of River Forest On a Day of Commemoration for Tragedies in Jewish history, Tisha b’Av, join a Jewish music superstar who will explore the themes of brokenness and rebirth through song and stories. More/ Zoom info: harzion.org Wednesday, Aug. 5, at 2 p.m., Zoom with Temple Har Zion On Jewish Valentine’s Day, Neshama Carlebach joins Rabbi Yoel Glick, Rabbi Adir Glick, Rabbi Menachem Creditor and Neila Carlebach to sing, lead meditation and teach the transformative power of love. More/Zoom info: harzion.org

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

COVID-19 & Race

Caregiver Support Group

View a recording of a local, virtual town hall addressing this important issue. Held in July by the Village Free Press. Access at: bit.ly/replay-vfp-covid19-race

Friday, Aug. 28, 10 a.m. to Noon, virtually with Oak Park Township For caregivers of loved ones with disabilities or 60 and older, this group can assist with some caregiving needs. To receive gotomeeting.com platform info, contact Calvin Berg, Caregiver Specialist: cberg@oakparktownship.org or 708-383-8060 ext.

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Substance-use Support Group Sundays through Fridays, 10 to 11 a.m.

Addiction recovery requires daily practice for success. Stay connected virtually by joining a free support group for those with lived experience and those touched by addiction. One-time registration is required, and individuals can attend one or more groups. 21+. Brought by Riveredge Hospital and NAMI Metro Suburban. Register: riveredgehospital.com, 708-990-2009, rick. schwartz@uhsinc.com.

“Fly By Light” Thursday, July 30, 6:30 p.m., Zoom Engage in a virtual film screening and discussion. When a group of DC teens head to the mountains of West Virginia, they break the cycle of violence and rewrite their future, when they play in mountain streams, sing under the stars and confront the entrenched abuse, violence and neglect cycles of their past. For teens and adults. Brought by It’s Our Future and One Earth Youth Advisory Council. Free; $8, suggested donation per person. Register: oneearthfilmfest.org/virtual-screenings

Five Ways to Preserve the Harvest Wednesday, Aug.5, 7 p.m., Virtually with Oak Park Conservatory River Forest cookbook author Emily Paster will cover freezing, drying and root-cellaring, fermentation and water-bath canning. $10; free, FOPCON members. Register: pdop.org. For membership: fopcon.org.

All About Succulents Thursday, July 30, 7 to 8 p.m., Virtually with Oak Park Conservatory Discover the best light, location and humidity for your plants, and learn when and how to re-pot and determine signs of stress. $10; free, FOPCON members. Register: pdop.org. For membership: fopcon.org.

Managing Back to School in COVID-19

Kiss Me Through the Phone: A Conversation on Teen Dating & Digital Safety

Tuesday, Aug. 4, 7 to 8:30 p.m., Zoom with the River Forest Public Library Join this parenting workshop led by therapists Layton Kirk and Natalia DeSouza from Individual and Family Connection. Learn how to mentally prepare children for the return to school in these stressful times. Register: riverforestlibrary.librarymarket. com/events/managing-back-school-covid

Thursday, July 30, 5 p.m., Virtually with Sarah’s Inn Join the Prevention Department for a parent workshop on teen dating and digital safety. Learn about the impact of technology — like social media and smartphones — on teen dating relationships, as well as the connection to digital abuse, and tips for helping youth create digital boundaries. Register: sarahsinn.org/events

Author Talk: Michael Zapata Thursday, July 30, 7 to 8:30 p.m., Zoom with Forest Park Public Library Hear the author talk about The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, a “mesmerizing story of a Latin American science fiction writer and the lives her lost manuscript unites decades later in post-Katrina New Orleans.” Register: fppl. evanced.info/signup/Calendar

In Ernie’s Footsteps: Friday, July 31, 10 to 11:30 a.m., Meet at Hemingway Birthplace Take a walking tour of young Hemingway’s Oak Park in this outdoor exploration of sites including the Ernest Hemingway Birthplace Museum, Boyhood home, Oak Park & River Forest High School, Oak Park Public Library, Congregational Church and WWI Memorial in Scoville Park. Led by Dr. Nancy Sindelar, author of Influencing Hemingway: The People and Places That Shaped His Life and Work. $35, includes tour and Sindelar’s book. $20, each additional person in party without book. 15 max. Also Aug. 28, Sep. 25. 339 N. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park.

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

DECLARATION

Extended to Sept. 14 from page 1 to ensure there’s recognition and the village has the authority to make decisions quickly.”

The board of trustees previously declared an emergency affecting public health due to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 13. Under an emergency declaration, the village manager, with the board’s approval, has the ability to “authorize any purchase or contracts necessary to place the village in a position to combat effectively any disaster, and to protect the public health and safety, protect property, and to provide emergency assistance to victims in the case of any manmade or natural disaster.”

According to Charley, a reinstatement of the declaration comes as part of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s “resurgence” plan to mitigate outbreaks of COVID-19 so the state does not have to revert back to Phase Three of Restore Illinois. Oak Park falls under the Suburban Cook region of the “resurgence” plan. Charley said Oak Park will not deviate from the state.

“If we start to see the cases skyrocket, or hospital use skyrocket, or use of ventilators skyrocket, then they’re going to put measures in place to reduce people’s risk,” Charley told Wednesday Journal.

Since the resolution to make the declaration has no language in it that requires business shutdowns or shelter-in-place directives, the public health emergency has no material effect on the day-to-day lives of people in Oak Park. It is neither the intention of village government nor Charley to regress to a state of lockdown.

“I prefer we don’t. I hope that everyone continues to mask and social-distance,” Charley said in his Wednesday Journal interview. “Nobody should be worrying; people should just be taking precautions.”

Combatting COVID-19, Charley said, is “really a team effort” by citizens, local government and businesses, which need to monitor capacity limits and ensure their staff and customers wear facial coverings.

Under a public health emergency declaration, the village has the authority to enter into contracts without public advertisement and make emergency purchases, with which Trustee Simone Boutet took issue during the July 27 meeting.

Boutet believes that, due to the ongoing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, staff should anticipate spending and contractual needs and then present them to the village board for approval.

Village Manager Cara Pavlicek explained that doing so would create several hours’ worth of work for village staff, delaying the process. Boutet remained unconvinced and cast the sole vote against reinstating the declaration.

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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40 years in, building Journal’s future

I

Looking back for a moment but focused on what’s next

t’s the 40th anniversary of Wednesday Journal. July 30, 1980.

Good time to get all weepy and nostalgic.

Or we could summarize. We worked hard. We did good.

Sometimes we screwed up.

Growing a company from scratch is a wild ride. But spending 10 years shrinkfitting your company, which we’ve done since the 2008 recession and the growth of digital, is emotionally exhausting.

So here we are now, reinventing independent community journalism as a nonprofit 40 years in.

Exhilarating — also exhausting.

But it is the single path to a future for an independent community newsroom. And we’re doing our damndest to build this out.

It’s a hybrid model and, so far, a rare bird in community publishing. We’re still in print.

Pre-COVID-19 selling a healthy amount of advertising. Relying on loyal subscribers.

And building a wide base of donors from among our readers, local philanthropists, and, a small number of generous foundations which see how precarious is the state of local news.

Are we going to pull this off ? Yes. If you help.

Our four flags across seven neighborhoods all have deep connections to our communities. So in our first months as Growing Community Media, more than 1,200 readers have stepped up. We’ll need to double and triple that as time goes on. We’re aiming to add 250 new donors during August as part of an anniversary push. You can donate at GrowingCommunityMedia.org.

Forty years back, there were three of us on the staff that launched this improbable venture. My two co-founders each left Chicago within a couple of years. Anne Dug-

gan moved to Iowa City where her husband Ken got a post teaching history. Sharon Britton moved back to Boston after her husband John finished his residency at Cook County Hospital.

I’ve endured and too often get too much credit for founding this outfit. Sharon and Anne (and our spouses, including my Mary) were essential partners.

None of us had a nickel. So we invented a new way to start a newspaper. Seems sort of familiar to what we’re doing now. We sold shares of stock in a newspaper that would be intensely focused on Oak Park and River Forest.

More than 70 local people stepped up. Most invested $1,000. Over time many of them joined our board of directors which was led for decades by Bob Downs, a local attorney.

Ed Panschar, a local CPA, kept track of our limited finances. One of the early investors, Andy Johnston, came on staff at a critical moment and played a vital role in our growth over 30-plus years.

This week, because we are in full generational shift, we are carrying the obits of two of our early investors: the wonderful Marge Gockel and Mary Lee Janis. Best to Galen and to the Janis family.

Next week we’ll announce the members of the new board for Growing Community Media. It is a stellar group and I can’t wait to work with them and for them.

Way back when, circa 1980, my primary motivation for working to launch the Journal was to cover race and diversity in Oak Park. It is still the most compelling story in our villages. We’ve evolved from a focus just on racial integration to getting to the root of systemic racism, the opportunity to not just pat white folks on the back for moving to Oak Park but to demand better, to demand more of ourselves as white people.

DAN HALEY

Photo by Tom Johnson

DUNKED: Dan Haley goes down again in the Wednesday Journal dunk tank at A Day in Our Village.

Bob Downs, Chair

Andy Johnston, Operations chief

Anne Duggan, Co-founder

Sharon Britton, Co-founder

Now there’s the rub. Feel-good Oak Park, always an illusion, meets real Oak Park.

Working on a 40th anniversary section sends you to the archives. An aside, but since our physical downsizing a couple of years back, all of the back issues of our papers and all the barely sorted file folders of photos have been on permanent loan to the Oak Park River Forest Museum. The right caretaker for this trove of history.

And while I’m mostly proud of our coverage of race, it is undeniable, looking at the

staff photos, that this has been an overwhelmingly white enterprise. It has limited our perspective, perpetuated our mythtelling and diminished the critical role of people of color in these villages.

We need to do much better.

That’s why we’ve got another 40 years of work to do.

Thank you for being with us up until now. And I ask that you join actively as our partners in fostering an independent community newsroom for the next 40.

File photo

EATING THE PROFITS: Eric Linden, early ace reporter, with Marge Gockel and Rae Kalin at an early Journal annual shareholder meeting at La Majada restaurant.

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

Oak Park activists lead West Side protests

Anthony Clark and Oak Park students organize recent demonstrations

By ZACH CUNNING & IGOR STUDENKOV Contributing Reporter/AustinTalks

For the last few weeks, Oak Park activists have led protest marches against police abuse on the West Side.

On July 18, a few hundred people gathered at Columbus Park in Austin for a march in remembrance of Elijah McClain — a 23-year-old African-American Colorado massage therapist who was killed after an encounter with police while walking home — and to protest police brutality in general.

The march was organized and led by Oak Park activist Danielle Kovack, along with members of the Revolutionary Oak Park Youth League, or ROYAL, a group of middleand high-school students from Oak Park, formed in early 2019.

Taylor Montes-Williams, a member of ROYAL, said their goal is to fight for equity in their community.

She said the march was focused on the Colorado man because they “wanted to shine light on the fact that even somebody as sweet as Elijah McClain still has to face the wrath of police.”

McClain died in August 2019 after police placed him in a carotid control hold, which restricts blood flow to the brain, and paramedics gave him too much medicine when treating him. He suffered a heart attack on the way to the hospital and was placed on life support. About a week later, he was removed from life support after being declared brain dead.

Montes-Williams said police see any African American as a threat. “It doesn’t matter how nice or sweet or kind-hearted you are.”

That’s what ROYAL is fighting to change, she said.

The marchers left Columbus Park and started east down Jackson Boulevard.

As they walked, bracketed by cars carrying water and snacks at the front and back and cyclists on their flanks, Austin residents shouted support from their front lawns and windows.

The following Saturday, July 25, ROYAL was back on the West Side, this time at the corner of Corcoran and Lake Street in Austin, for what they billed as a Love March.

The young people of ROYAL banded together with Oak Park activist and former congressional candidate Anthony Clark, along with the Root2Fruit Youth Foundation and GoodKids MadCity — both youth-led social justice organizations.

At Saturday’s demonstration, some participants called for the city to shift 2 percent

of its police budget toward addressing the root causes of the gun violence that’s been so pervasive on the West Side.

Others, particularly mothers of gun violence victims, insisted that, while the police were hardly blameless, there was a place for them, and they argued that the marchers weren’t doing enough to speak out against gun violence.

Nita Tannyson, of GoodKids MadCity, said she was tired of burying friends and family members.

“We need to let everybody know [to] love everybody, because everybody in Chicago are family, and we got to love each other,” she said.

Kenyata Williams, mother of 15-year-old Michael Ike, who was killed on July 20 in Austin, became emotional as she called for peace.

“There’s no reason why I should be burying my 15-year-old son because your son killed him,” she told those in the crowd.

Miracle Boyd, an activist with GoodKids MadCity who was punched in the face by a police officer during a July 17 protest in front of the Christopher Columbus statue in downtown Chicago (which has since been removed), decried the police department’s approach to handling demonstrations.

“We come to protests and we show up with banners and songs and dance and prayers, and police show up with batons and tear gas

and mace,” she said. “That ain’t right.”

As they marched toward Garfield Park, the youth activists walked in front of the crowd, frequently chanting, “Defund the police!” and “F— 12.”

Keanna Lee Tywone, whose son was killed four years ago, said although she appreciated the diverse crowd that came out to march, she took issue with some of the chants, which she feared would paint all officers with the same broad brush.

“I’m not saying they’re all bad because it’s like saying that all black people are criminals,” she said, adding that she would like to see more rallies after shootings between community members.

“How we’re standing right now, that’s how it should have been when 15 people got shot,” she said, referencing the mass shooting outside of a South Side funeral home on July 21.

At the end of the march, Tywone’s sister, Tywane Watts, of Austin, who said she also lost her son to gun violence, insisted that any solution requires the community to take responsibility.

“We got to stop putting all the blame on 12,” she said. “Killings are happening in our basements, in our living rooms. Now, y’all quiet. Now, everybody looking at me like I’m crazy. If we want those cycles to break, we gotta tell our kids, ‘You shot that innocent kid, turn yourself in.’”

Oppose Annexation of the West Bank STEP UP FOR JUSTICE

Israel, supported by the Trump Administration, has announced its annexation plans. This action would deepen decades of dispossession and oppression of the Palestinian people and lead to increased suffering and insecurity for Palestinians and Israelis. Already, 13 U.S. Senators have stepped up to oppose using our tax dollars for annexation by co-sponsoring the Van Hollen Amendment, which is attached to the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Current co-sponsors in the Senate of this Amendment are: Chris Van Hollen (D-DE) Patrick Leahy (D-VT) Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) Chris Murphy (D-CT) Tom Udall (D-NM)

Brian Schatz (D-HI) Martin Heinrich (D-NM) Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Tom Carper (D-DE) Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)

Jeff Merkley (D-OR) Tim Kaine (D-VA) Sherrod Brown (D-OH

Act Today! Ask our Illinois Senators Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to support the Van Hollen Amendment to FY2021 NDAA.

Contact your Senators online: •durbin.senate.gov/contact/email (choose Foreign Policy) •duckworth.senate.gov/connect/email-tammy > Share Your Opinions (choose Foreign Policy)

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This message is sponsored by

The Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine was founded in 2002 as a diverse, community-based group dedicated to organizing local activities and educational events that advance the cause of peace and justice for both Palestinians and Israelis. www.cjpip.org

And co-sponsored by Chicago Faith Coalition on Middle East Policy The Chicago Faith Coalition is comprised of representatives from interfaith groups in Chicago that advocate for a just peace for Israel and Palestine.

Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago Chapter jvpchicago.org

Interfaith Action Group for Justice and Peace in Israel and Palestine IAG is a community-based group in Oak Park and River Forest working towards peaceful and constructive ways to express our faith and humanist beliefs in confronting the forces of international conflict and social injustice in Israel and Palestine. interfaithactiongroup@ gmail.com

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1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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ART BEAT

‘The Show Must Go Online’ at The Actors Garden Reinventing summer camp and musical theater

By MICHELLE DYBAL Arts Editor

+ Working together in the Oak Park/River Forest community for 40 years... here's to 40 more! www.hephzibahhome.org

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What happens to a theater school in Oak Park when the pandemic shuts everything down? The show must go online, of course.

But in this case, The Show Must Go Online, is a musical by a collaboration including Dave Hudson of Forest Park who believes the production is the world’s first virtual children’s musical. Gigi Hudson, who has been married to Dave for 29 years, is the owner and runs The Actors Garden at 909 S. Lombard Ave. in The Oak Park Arts District. Dave provides technical and music support. Needing material for their virtual Summer Camp was the impetus behind creating The Show Must Go On. During a 10-week spring session at The Actors Garden, the showcase weekend had arrived. On Friday, March 13, and Saturday, March 14, shows were performed at the theater studio space the Hudson’s have had for five years with seating capacity for 30; Gigi has run The Actors Garden for 11

years. When Sunday, March 15, 2020, arrived, everything changed because of COVID-19.

“We had this beautiful Alice in Wonderland set all built, ready to go for our shows on Sunday,” Gigi said. “These kids worked incredibly hard to get their show up and we never saw it come to fruition.“ Once the Hudsons realized the seriousness of the pandemic, Gigi said, they felt everyone in Oak Park, or even the country would be left without any opportunity to perform.

Virtual classes for spring were put together that were well received -- Intro to Theater, Storytelling, Radio Theater, Improv and an Auditioning for Musical Theater workshop.

Soon, the couple began thinking about Summer Camp, a mainstay at Actors Garden.

“I know that e-learning was problematic for a lot of families,” Gigi said. “So I was nervous about offering it, especially a camp that goes 9 – 3, but once we dipped our toes into the Zoom waters, we felt a little bit more comfortable on being able to create a program and curriculum for Summer Camp as well.”

Dave contacted children’s musical publisher and musician Denver Casado of Beat

ALEX ROGALS/Staff Photographer

SHOW TIME: Gigi and Dave Hudson outside The Actors Garden on Lombard Avenue.

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

@

Cheney Mansion & The Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest present:

ALEX ROGALS/Staff Photographer

MASK TASK: Technical Director Jeremiah Barr, of Chicago, packs materials for mask making at The Actors Garden on Lombard Avenue.

by Beat Press. Casado pulled in book writer Jessica Penzias. Dave wrote lyrics and the trio created The Show Must Go Online in 17 days from writing through release.

“The response was phenomenal because we really didn’t know … how many schools and programs around the country and the world were really impacted and looking for some outlet for their students and this really seemed to fit the bill,” Dave said of the musical which was released on April 13.

Because of Beat by Beat Press’ reach, The Show Must Go Online was quickly licensed to many worldwide, up to 700 at this point according to the website, in 30 countries including Japan, Norway and Canada. Dave had similar success with another show he collaborated on with Denver Casado – Tut Tut, where “King Tut meets Prince and the Pauper,” according to Dave.

The Show Must Go Online premiered at the Actors Garden in July during The Actors Garden first session of Summer Camp. Families sent photos of themselves gathered around watching the “silly show” about a musical being cancelled then resurrected online. Both campers and viewers, including grandparents living as far away as Australia, were treated to the completed production which pulled together the students’ individual recorded parts.

Another new show Dave wrote in its entirety was also put on, Through the Screen.

With the second session of Summer Camp in full swing, students, ages 8 to 15, are experiencing a camp that is as close to in-person for the 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekday schedule as Gigi can make it. She said she hired nearly as many employees as she would have if they were at Dominican University, where

summer camps have taken place in the past.

And making the theater experience a positive one throughout the process, while making a product that the kids are proud of, remains a goal, according to Gigi.

They have kept up traditions of past summer camps, too. There is daily trivia; a joke of the day; campers are highlighted, literally with the help of Zoom technology; and camp prizes are awarded, hand delivered to their doorsteps by Dave. Having high school and college counselors who are former campers helps bring more “human connection,” Gigi said.

Still, not everyone wanted to sign up for more screen time. The Hudson’s said they saw a 30 percent reduction in attendance for online offerings. And they felt they could not charge the same they would for an in-person camp even though the camp duration is the same each day. What was $800 per session before has been reduced to $650.

And they are finding much of what they are doing takes more time. There are technology hurdles and editing that needs to be completed. Most of this is done by Dave who has an IT background.

But the couple is upbeat and planning for fall.

Gigi said they will continue online classes and will consider adding in-person oneon-one sessions and possibly some small groups, up to eight. Programming at The Actors Garden can range from ages 4 to 94, she said.

“Our hope is we can offer something that’s an outlet…” Dave said. Gigi continued the thought, “And find ways to physically engage even though we still have a screen in front of us.”

MUSIC BY THE NUMB3RS!

#

This virtual, nine mini-concert series is offered to you through the Park District of Oak Park. The entire series is $50 for Residents ($67/Nonresidents) for all nine concerts.

The S/OP&RF performs in your home with the historic Cheney Mansion as the backdrop. The first concert is a solo concert and each week we add a performer to conclude with a Nonet.

Although this series has already started, you are still able to enjoy all nine performances through Labor Day.

Go to www.PDOP.org, call 708/275-2000, or go to either the S/OP&RF’s or Cheney Mansion’s Facebook pages to signup.

July 8 - SOLO July 15 - DUET July 22 - TRIO July 29 - QUARTET August 5 - QUINTET August 12 - SEXTET August 19 - SEPTET August 26 - OCTET September 2 - NONET

Our many thanks to Cheney Mansion, the Oak Park Area Arts Council, the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation, and the Park District of Oak Park for their help and support of this endeavor.

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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Austin Weekly, Block Club launch West Side newsletter The free newsletter debuted last week

By STAFF Growing Community Media/Block Club Chicago

Growing Community Media is proud to announce that one of our local weeklies, Austin Weekly News, has partnered with the highly respected Block Club Chicago to launch a new free newsletter for our readers on the West Side.

The newsletter, which debuted last

week, is sent via email on Wednesdays and Fridays, and aims to be a one-stop shop for Austin, North Lawndale and Garfield Park news and events.

Austin Weekly News editor Michael Romain and Block Club West Side reporter Pascal Sabino will co-curate the newsletter.

It will also routinely highlight crucial stories being told by other West Side-based or -focused newsrooms, including The Triibe, Austin Talks, Free Spirit Media and City Bureau.

The free newsletter is a new effort but Austin Weekly and Block Club have been quietly collaborating for months. Austin

Weekly routinely republishes Block Club’s West Side stories to our readers in-print each week and Sabino and Romain coordinate to ensure they are covering unique stories about the West Side instead of competing.

“Hopefully the partnership between Block Club Chicago and Austin Weekly News can become a model that other media outlets emulate,” Romain said. “Our readers are better served by this economy of scale that gives us more bandwidth — more resources, more reporters — to tell more West Side stories.”

Representative Davis, endorse the BREATHE Act STEP UP FOR JUSTICE

Friends and neighbors, who are committed to ensuring that Black Lives Matter, please support this visionary federal legislation. Originated by the Movement for Black Lives and championed by U.S. Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, the BREATHE ACT would: 4 Divest federal resources from incarceration and policing and end criminal-legal system harm 4 Invest in new approaches to community safety 4 Allocate new money to build healthy, sustainable and equitable communities for all 4 Hold officials accountable and enhance self-determination of Black communities

This message is sponsored by

The Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine was founded in 2002 as a diverse, community-based group dedicated to organizing local activities and educational events that advance the cause of peace and justice for both Palestinians and Israelis.

CJPIP advocates for full equality in Israel and Palestine as well as in the U.S. We are proud to support the work of the Movement for Black Lives on this transformative initiative. www.cjpip.org

Act Today! To express your support of the BREATHE Act to U.S. Representative Danny K. Davis (IL-7), please contact him at davis.house.gov/contact-me1

For information on this generation’s Civil Rights Act, see breatheact.org

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Get a list of Open Houses.

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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Oak Park continues relaxation of overnight parking Eased restrictions now extend to Sept. 30

By STACEY SHERIDAN Staff Reporter

During a July 27 meeting, Oak Park’s village board decided to extend the easing of overnight parking restrictions it had put in place back in March in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The relaxation of the regulations will now continue until Sept. 30.

“Everybody who’s had a car in Oak Park since cars were invented has had parking problems,” said Trustee Deno Andrews.

Those who don’t have garages or parking spots have to buy parking permits, which require some people to park several blocks away from where they live.

“I think this is a longstanding equity issue in the village,” said Andrews.

Andrews suggested continuing to lift restrictions until the village board had the opportunity to create a permanent system for overnight parking that is both equitable and that would not alter the village’s character.

Trustee Arti Walker-Peddakotla agreed with Andrews that Oak Park needed a better solution for parking.

“I actually had to pay a significant part

of my paycheck, both when I was a condoowner and a renter, for parking permits,” said Walker-Peddakotla. “I think a complete overhaul of the system is needed.”

Walker-Peddakotla told the board she did not understand why some citizens desired streets free of parked cars.

“We’re right next to Chicago,” she said.

“If you’re moving to Oak Park and think nobody is going to park in front of your house, that is not something we should give people an expectation for.”

Due to the unknown length of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact, Walker-Peddakotla said she was against putting an expiration date on the lifted overnight parking restrictions.

Trustee Jim Taglia wanted to know the financial effects to the village in continuing to lift overnight parking restrictions which do result in fee revenue to the village government.

“Ultimately, it’s going to affect our [tax] levy,” said Taglia. “One way or another, people are going to have to pay.”

Village Manager Cara Pavlicek said that the “bottom has really fallen out” regarding parking revenues as a whole due to the COVID-19 crisis with discounted permit costs, lifted restriction and decreased usage of meter parking.

“Any conversation should also understand the economic entanglement that the entire parking system has and understand what obligations you have in terms of debt that you may not be able to pay in revenue,” said Pavlicek. “You would then need to pay for those with property taxes.”

Trustee Susan Buchanan voiced her support for Andrews’ suggestion but asked for more information on the parking pilot program, as it pertained to overnight parking.

The pilot program was adopted by the village board in 2018.

However, due to the shutdown and the paused enforcement of parking restrictions, the village was unable to gather the needed data to make an assessment of the pilot program’s efficacy.

According to Pavlicek, enforcing the overnight parking limits generates a very small amount of revenue, about $30,000, for the village’s parking fund.

“I don’t consider that substantive in a fund that generates $6 million worth of revenue,” said Pavlicek.

Trustee Dan Moroney said trying to fix parking in Oak Park was “a fool’s errand” and impossible.

“The reality is that we do have limited parking in Oak Park,” said Moroney.

According to Moroney, one of the reasons

people move to Oak Park is to escape the city of Chicago and its perpetually clogged streets. Moroney said he’d sold many homes in Oak Park to people who were moving out of Chicago.

“I think the goal of parking is to have cars put away and reduce the number of cars,” said Moroney. “Whatever parking you provide will get filled up.”

Moroney said the village needed to incentivize people and landlords to park their cars in designated areas.

The village board opted to extend the eased overnight parking ban until Sept. 30 and directed village staff to create a calendar of meetings wherein the public could share their thoughts on the parking system.

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Oak Park plans community policing meetings

Tentatively scheduled for Aug. 5 and 6

By STACEY SHERIDAN Staff Reporter

As part of following the Obama Foundation pledge to review police use-of-force policies, the village of Oak Park has tentatively scheduled two community police listening sessions. Residents will have the opportunity to share their experiences with the Oak Park Police Department and its officers. The police department will not actively participate

in the sessions.

“The purpose is to gather testimonials,” said Oak Park spokesman David Powers.

The tentative meeting dates are 10 a.m., Wednesday, Aug. 5 and 7 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 6. Village staff will distribute information on how to sign up to speak later this week, according to Powers.

“It is important to note that these sessions are not for questions or group discussion,” said Powers.

Powers directed only those who wish to speak to sign up.

Those who do not want to speak but would like to share can

email their testimonials to an as yet undetermined address.

The village will live stream the sessions t www.oak-park. us/boardtv. The sessions will also air live on Comcast channel 6 and AT&T U-verse channel 99.

According to Powers, village staff are still working out the details, but expect more information soon regarding the sessions.

“We will issue a news release, post to our Facebook and Twitter pages and distribute via our email list service,” said Powers. “The news release will be posted on the village website and the dates/times posted to the website calendar.”

Two referenda make it on November ballot

Referenda are non-binding

By STACEY SHERIDAN Staff Reporter

During the Oak Park Township’s annual meeting July 21, two advisory referenda regarding taxation and expenditures of Oak Park taxing bodies were added to the November ballot. Posited by citizen Kevin Peppard, the two referenda were approved by the electors, or registered voters in Oak Park.

The referenda are posed in question format, so that Oak Park voters may vote yes or no on the ballot items come voting day Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Peppard’s first referendum proposes requiring that Oak Park taxing bodies get voter approval on capital expenditures: “Shall any capital expenditure of $5 million or more by any local taxing body within Oak Park be subject to a binding referendum for approval or rejection by the voters?”

The second proposes limiting the operating cash balance of Oak Park taxing bodies and having any excess money returned to taxpayers: “Shall the Operating Cash Balances of

local Oak Park Governments be limited to one-half year’s Operating Expenses, as measured at the start of the fiscal year, with the excess returned as soon as possible to the taxpayers through temporarily lowered taxes?”

Both referenda are advisory measures. If passed, Oak Park taxing bodies are not legally bound to adhere to them.

Peppard could not be reached for comment.

The annual township meeting was originally scheduled for April, per state requirements, but was canceled due to Governor J.B. Pritzker’s stay-at-home order linked to COVID-19.

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Temple sign request sends RF officials back to drawing board New regs now in place for staff OK of minor variances

By ROBERT J. LIFKA Contributing Reporter

Officials of Temple Har Zion are likely to be given permission by River Forest to hang an oversize banner on the exterior of their building but village officials had to go through a few hoops and over a few hurdles to make it possible.

The village board cleared the final hurdle at the July 13 virtual meeting, unanimously approving changes to the village sign ordinance that will provide staff members with the authority to approve the temple officials’ request.

Village Administrator Eric Palm said when temple officials requested the addition of a sign measuring approximately 300-inches-by-66-inches on the front of their building at 1040 N. Harlem Ave., staff members realized the village did not have any sign regulations for buildings within the public, recreational and institutional (PRI) zoning district as all previous sign requests in that zoning district had been handled through planned development permits.

Jackie Wells of Houseal Lavigne, the village’s planning consultant, recommended

Provided

SIGNS OF CHANGE: Temple Har Zion’s new banner may mark the beginning of a revised sign policy in River Forest. mirroring the C2 zoning district regulations with regulations for the PRI but staff members determined that the request by temple officials would not meet the new criteria but realized that the village sign ordinance does not include a mechanism to allow sign permit applicants to seek relief from estab-

lished standards. The C2 district includes retail, office, service uses and multi-family.

After further consultation, staff members determined that a mechanism should be put in place to allow further consideration of minor and major requests. Staff members would be authorized to grant approval for

minor variations, such as the temple officials’, but major variations would need approval of the zoning board of appeals and village board.

Under the ordinance change, a minor variation request would be for up to a 10 percent increase in individual sign area limitations for all structural sign types with the exception of walls signs and an increase in the area of a wall sign in excess of the maximum square footage of wall sign area permitted in the district in which the sign shall be located but less than or equal to 5 percent of the wall to which the sign should be affixed. A major variation request would be for an increase greater than 10 percent in individual sign area limitations for all structural sign types with the exception of wall signs; an increase in the area of a wall sign in excess of the maximum square footage of wall sign area permitted in the district in which the sign to be located and in excess of 5 percent of the wall to which the sign shall be affixed; and an increase in the total area of all signs permitted on a zoning lot.

Under this scenario, Palm explained, temple officials will be allowed to seek a minor variation for their sign, as the sign request would be within the 5 percent of the total square footage to which the sign would be affixed, indicating that staff members would approve the request.

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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D97 switches to full remote learning for first trimester Decision reverses earlier hybrid model

By MICHAEL ROMAIN Staff Reporter

Students in Oak Park Elementary School District 97 may not be returning to classrooms, after all. At a special meeting on July 22, D97 Supt. Carol Kelley announced that after releasing a preliminary plan to reopen in the fall with a hybrid model entailing students being in class twice a week and learning at home three days a week — the district has decided instead to start the fall on a full-remote model.

“While our team has been working through the logistics of our hybrid model over the past week, we have also been monitoring the uptick in COVID-19 cases locally and nationwide,” Kelley said in a statement released July 22. “We have heard serious concerns from our staff and families about returning to in-person learning, and there is speculation that stricter guidelines could be imposed at the state level to control the spread of the virus.”

Kelley said she believes the best approach now is to implement a remote-only option for students starting in the fall and committing to that model “for the first trimester

only” while working toward developing a hybrid plan that her administration would implement later in the school year.

“I recognize that this shift may provide relief to some, but I also know that this is unwelcome news for others,” said Kelley. “We share our families’ desire to return to onsite learning as soon as possible, but we also believe we must continue to make decisions that prioritize the health and safety of not only the students and staff in our buildings, but the Oak Park community as a whole.”

Shayna Connelly, the mother of two children in D97 who will be in sixth and eighth grades in the fall, said she’s encountered some of the pushback to full remote learning in various parent groups on Facebook.

Some parents, she said, think the fall experience will be equivalent to the remote learning experience that took place in the spring and summer, after Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered schools closed in late March.

“I’ve been very vocal about the parent response and a lack of understanding about what real online learning is,” said Connelly, a film professor who has herself had to adjust to online teaching since the COVID-19 pandemic upended daily life in America.

Connelly, who said she’s been trained by her institution in online learning and that her daughter went through D97’s full-remote summer program, said unequivocally that

the online experience from last semester is not what’s in store for students in the fall.

“I have empathy for the parents because there are a lot of other issues like child care that come into play and everyone is on edge and people are worried about their futures, so I have a lot of empathy for people on both sides,” she said. “But it’s been frustrating as a teacher to see people again and again stating that spring was terrible so online learning is the worst. It wasn’t real online learning.”

Connelly said she was “really impressed” by the district’s summer program.

“My daughter made friends, it was interactive, she learned a lot and it was well-organized,” she said. “I think the thing parents really want is structure and an ability for students to work in a way that is self-directed. They need that in order to work from home.”

She added that Zoom lectures and phone calls between teachers and students do not make up the totality of remote learning.

Caroline Nikolakakis, a D97 teacher whose two children attend school in the district, told board members earlier this month that she was “terrified of sending my own kids back to school. I am terrified for my students — past and present — returning to school. I am scared for myself and my fellow teachers and staff, and I am scared to say

that in the current climate of our village.

Most of all I am so very terrified we will ignore the facts and spread COVID-19.”

OPRF announces school year start date, upcoming town hall Last week, District 200 Supt. Joylynn Pruit-Adams announced that the administration is adding two teacher and staff planning days at the start of the year, on Aug. 14 and Aug. 17.

Pruitt-Adams said Huskie Kickoff for freshmen will be Aug. 18, with the first day of classes for all students on Aug. 19. Administrators announced in early June that students at Oak Park and River Forest High School will start the fall on a fully remote learning curriculum.

Pruitt-Adams said the district will publish an FAQ about the upcoming school year in the coming days and has scheduled a virtual town hall meeting on Aug. 10, 6 to 8 p.m., “to address the many questions shared with us by families, students, and staff.”

Turano Baking snags Roosevelt Road property

Site is a former Salvation Army thrift store location

By STACEY SHERIDAN Staff Reporter

With its new corporate headquarters in Oak Park just reaching completion, Turano Baking Co. has again grown its Roosevelt

Road footprint with the acquisition of the adjacent former Salvation Army Family Store and Donation Center.

The long-time thrift retailer closed its doors permanently earlier this year.

Turano did not respond to interview requests.

The Salvation Army storefront and its accompanying parking lot abuts the parking at the new Turano corporate headquarters.

According to public records, Turano acquired the property under a limited liability corporation called Dei Cugini, meaning “cousins” in Italian. Property records list the manager of Dei Cugini LLC as Lisa Solano. Solano is the married name of Lisa Turano, vice president of legal at Turano Baking Co. and a member of the Turano family. The land changed hands in May with the change in ownership recorded in June.

Turano, a fixture on Roosevelt Road for decades, has gradually increased its commercial bakery, truck parking and office space.

On the Berwyn side, Turano now extends from almost Ridgeland Avenue all the way to East Avenue. In Oak Park, a handsome two-story headquarters building is now in place starting at Gunderson and stretching west. With the Salvation Army site, Turano now reaches almost East Avenue.

ALEX ROGALS/Staff Photographer

EMPIRE RISING: Turano Bakery’s holdings on Roosevelt Road continue to expand with the acquisition of the former Salvation Army Thrift Store.

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PARENTS

Remote vs. in-person debate from page 1 Moroney’s podcast Common Ground Oak Park that was uploaded July 26, District 200 school board member Matt Baron said that he’s been getting more feedback from people who want students to return to classrooms to get “a meaningful educational experience, at least some of the time, as soon as possible.”

Oak Park parents Cara Carmody and Mara Maas were on Moroney’s podcast in July to explain their support for a return to in-person classes.

Carmody, a pediatrician with four children in D97, and Maas, a teacher with two children in D97 and a child in D200, both started a petition earlier this year to encourage D97 to plan for a return to in-person learning in the fall.

The parents said that they were concerned about the lack of communication coming from D97 about a reopening strategy and wanted to ensure that the voices of parents who support in-person learning were represented in the planning process. Carmody also spoke out against the apparent harms of remote learning.

“Ideally, e-learning is not for children, anyway,” she said on the June 20 show. “Kids sitting in front of the screen for four-plus hours is not a good way to learn. It’s not edu-

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS cationally appropriate. Kids want to be in a classroom setting … not in their home setting with distractions,” she said. “It’s kind of like setting them up for failure.”

Carmody added that “research shows that [e-learning] is just not a good and feasible academic plan and takes completely away from [students’] social and emotional skills that they’re not getting in a school setting.”

Baron said what may account for why those parents who don’t agree with remote learning may be louder than those who support the measure.

“People who are not supportive of the direction that we’re headed in are less likely to reach out to us,” said Baron, the parent of two rising seniors.

“And we’ve had some people, a smaller percentage, say, ‘Hey, thank you for what you’re doing, I’m behind you, we understand this is complex and I want to make sure you know there’s people on this side of the equation, as well,’” Baron said. “And that’s human nature. There’s more likely to be a response from people who are opposed to something than there are [people who are not opposed].”

Leona Fleisher, an adult librarian whose son is a rising senior at Oak Park and River Forest High School, is among that relatively quiet contingency of parents who nonetheless agreed to voice her opinion on the record.

“There’s been a lot of discussion about going all-in virtually or going to a hybrid model,” she said during a phone interview last week. “All along, I really just wanted to keep

my son at home. Even though it’s his senior year, until we come up with a vaccine, the virus is impossible to control.”

Fleisher said she understands the concerns of people who want students to return to physical classrooms, particularly families who have children with special needs and worry about the physical isolation that may come with remote learning.

“I know there are parents who are upset, but this is a really good opportunity for us to maybe not push our kids so hard,” she said.

“School is always so high pressure. Maybe we can use this time to reevaluate our lives and what’s going in the world. My family has had so many dinners at home together that we never would have when everyone was at work. We’ve actually been able to kind of come together.”

Shayna Connelly, the mother of two children — a sixth grader and an eighth grader — in District 97 schools, echoed Fleisher’s sentiment and pushed back against the notion that remote learning is inherently harmful.

Connelly, a university professor trained in remote learning and who supports remote learning in D97, said in a phone interview last week that remote learning, while difficult to implement, can be effective and engaging if implemented correctly.

“I’ve been very vocal about the parent response and the lack of understanding about what real online learning is, which is not what happened in the spring,” Connelly said. “That was an emergency situation.”

Connelly said that effective remote learn-

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

ing shouldn’t be reduced to Zoom lectures and Google Hangout study groups. She pointed to her daughter’s experience with remote learning over the summer as a case in point.

“I was really impressed,” she said of the remote learning summer session. “My daughter made friends. It was interactive.

She learned a lot. It was well-organized. I think the thing parents really want is structure and an ability for students to work in a way that is self-directed. They need that in order to work at home.”

Echoing Fleisher, Connelly added that the pandemic is an opportunity for schools to shift from a very constrained idea of what education is supposed to be about and toward a more holistic understanding of learning that is more about inculcating global skills like media literacy or the ability to empathize, think critically and tolerate ambiguity (“skills that go beyond the classroom, but aren’t testable”).

“One of the good things about this situation is that it might give students an idea of what it is to experiment and fail, and to understand that that’s part of learning.

[Failure] is not the end of the world and the recovery from whatever that failure looks like is what makes the person. That’s a very important part of education, so I wish parents would be less worried about achievement and more concerned with just facilitating an environment where students feel like they can explore their interests, which is not something that can typically happen in a regimented school situation.”

Congratulations and thanks to Wednesday Journal for four decades of: • Keeping the community informed • Covering issues of neighborhood interest • Providing a forum for a wide-range of reader opinions, including the need for common-sense gun regulation, universal background checks, safe gun storage requirements, and red-flag laws • Practicing fair and honest journalism • Celebrating local students • Covering high school athletics and eSports • Advertising and promoting items of local interest such as yard sales, block parties, restaurant specials, real estate transactions, historic restoration, church activities, obituaries, and community events such as Farmers Market and Day In Our Village And in general working hard to build a strong sense of community, in keeping with the company’s new name, Growing Community Media.

Here’s to 40 more years … at least!

Facebook.com/GunResponsibilityAdvocates

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Chicago Reader finds new partner in Community Foundation Foundation will be altweekly’s fiscal sponsor for move to non-profit

By STACEY SHERIDAN Staff Reporter

The Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation has signed on as the Chicago Reader’s fiscal sponsor as the biweekly newspaper transitions to 501(c)3 non-profit

status. The partnership allows the Reader to receive foundation grants so that its staff and freelancers can continue reporting on arts, culture and politics in Chicago.

“Independent journalism is a vital service to our local communities, and support of the Reader is a good fit with the foundation’s vision of a vibrant, sustainable and caring community,” said Tony Martinez Jr., foundation CEO in a letter to Wednesday Journal.

Multiple news organizations throughout the country, including Growing Community

Media, owner of Wednesday Journal, have converted or are in the process of converting to non-profit models.

“I certainly believe that journalism is different than a lot of other for-profit businesses,” Tracy Baim, Chicago Reader publisher, told Wednesday Journal.

Baim said using the traditional corporate media model has continuously proven to be a “bad idea.”

“For decades but especially the last decade, arrays of corporations come in and analyze media companies like they analyze anything else, which is they look at assets they can sell off and make a profit from,” said Baim.

The corporations gut the organizations with little to no regard for the product – journalism.

“It is something that should not just be considered an asset on a line,” said Baim.

“The reporter is critical.”

Journalism’s role in keeping the public informed and educated make it an altogether different type of product that should be treated as such.

“It’s not that conflict of interest and problems and funding issues don’t happen in the nonprofit journalism space, but they are

less at the mercy of being raided [by corporations],” said Baim.

Baim said she and the Reader are very grateful to the foundation for providing their fiscal sponsorship.

“They’ve been great to work with,” Baim said. “It was a perfect opportunity.”

The community foundation also worked with Growing Community Media as its fiscal sponsor on a grant earlier this year.

Growing Community Media has since been designated a 501(c)3 by the IRS.

Let ICE and Trump Know:

No Vigilante “Citizens’ Academies” on Our Doorstep!

STEP UP FOR JUSTICE

The Trump Administration continues its attacks on immigrants. We continue to fight against it! U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is planning to pilot a “Citizens’ Academy” in Chicago in September. This is an effort to train a “citizen vigilante force.” These “citizens” would aid ICE to harass, arrest, and deport members of our immigrant community.

The academy would include courses for individuals on defense tactics, firearms instruction, and targeted arrests.

Given ICE’s history of abusing its power and engaging in racial profiling, this must be stopped! Congress must block any funding that would be used to support these kinds of programs that could lead to increased profiling and militarization by ICE. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL-5) has introduced an amendment to the FY2021 Homeland Security funding bill; the amendment prohibits funding ICE’s “Citizens Academy” pilot program.

Act Today! To voice your opposition to the “Citizens Academy,” write to Robert Guadian, ICE Chicago Field Office Director, at chicago.outreach@ice.dhs.gov

This message is sponsored by

CJPIP advocates for full equality in Israel and Palestine as well as in the U.S. We have supported Oak Park becoming a sanctuary city and have marched with tens of thousands of Chicago-area residents against child separation and detention at the border. www.cjpip.org

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Oak Park Public Library calls for submissions to virtual community cookbook

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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Many Recipes, Many Stories

By MELISSA ELSMO Oak Park Eats Editor

The Oak Park Public Library (OPPL) is inviting community members to add their treasured family recipes to a virtual community cookbook entitled, Many Recipes, Many Stories.

Juanita Harrell, health and wellness librarian, reinvented the teen and adult summer reading program in response to COVID-19. The all-virtual program entitled Many Voices, Many Stories featured six books from various genres about immigration including 1919 by Eve L. Ewing and Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams.

In conjunction with the program, she and coworkers Rose Barnes and Kristen Romanowski have introduced an on-line cookbook through biblioboard in hopes of creating an anthology of recipes that reflect food traditions in the Oak Park community.

“The summer reading program was designed to celebrate different cultures and backgrounds,” said Harrell. “The cookbook is there for people to share a family recipe that has been passed down through the generations.”

The project is in its infancy and currently contains less than a dozen recipes, but librarians are

eager to see the collection grow. Currently visitors can find local cookbook author, Mary Anne Mohanraj’s recipe for Sri Lankan beef curry on the website as well as Swedish Cardamom Buns and Street Style Elotes from other contributors.

Barnes submitted her recipe for strawberry basil pie to the growing recipe collection, while Harrell, still needs to get her mother’s approval before submitting her family’s favorite fried peach pie recipe.

“Oak Park is a diverse and open community,” said Barnes, adult digital learning librarian. “Trying to capture that spirit in a cookbook is interesting to me.”

Barnes can be seen in a short video on the OPPL website explaining how to submit a digital recipe and optional photo. The process is quick and easy, but people with questions or technical issues are encouraged to reach out via email (contactus@ oppl.org) for assistance.

“We’d love people to submit stories with their recipes,” said Romanowski. “If people think that is too much just a recipe is more than fine. Don’t feel like you have to tell a story, too.”

All three librarians are steadfast in the belief that recipes, especially those passed down through generations, can build connections and a sense of community. They want Many Recipes, Many Stories to “preserve, sustain and celebrate our community’s rich history and unique diversity.”

HOME COOKING: Mary Anne Mohanraj is a member of the library board and a cookbook author.

What’s the OPRF kitchen to do in a pandemic?

Finding new ways to feed elementary and high school students

By MELISSA ELSMO Oak Park Eats Editor

Micheline Piekarski, director of food and nutrition services at Oak Park and River Forest High School isn’t a newcomer to the complexities of feeding our community’s children. With more than 40 years of industry experience she is adaptable and quick thinking in the face of change and challenge. Now, the uncertainty of feeding students during a pandemic has Piekarski reimagining what school lunches will look like as cafeterias remain empty this fall.

“I have never experienced anything like this before,” said Piekarski. “This is new to everyone and it’s the unknown that makes it all so hard.”

The summer food service program subsidized by the USDA and other federal programs, grew out of sudden need when schools were suddenly shuttered in spring. The program runs out of the OPRF high school kitchen and provided students in D200 as well as the Districts 90 and 97 public elementary schools with breakfast and lunch five days per week. To date Piekarski and her team have provided more than 175,000 balanced meals containing milk, grains, vegetables, fruits and meat or meat alternatives -- by summer’s end that number will be close to 200,000.

As summer draws to a close, however, Piekarski’s focus has shifted from survival mode to the realities of the coming school year. In addition to overseeing D200 food service programs, OPRF serves as the vendor for D97 and D90 meal programs throughout the school year. As a result, Piekarski and her staff have been preparing for varied scenarios -- creating systems suitable for in-person, hybrid, and fully remote learning models.

When D200 moved to a fully remote learning model, Piekarski turned to a pre-ordering system designed to maximize choice and minimize inconvenience for families. Like the summer program, participating students will receive five breakfasts and five lunches packaged for pickup once per week.

“All of our meals meet national nutrition standards for school lunches,” said Piekarski. “It may look like your child is eating a pizza or a blueberry muffin, but they are really eating nutritious low-sodium and low-fat food made from whole grains.”

Building on the summer program, Piekarski is committed to “upping variety” and offering choices to keep high school students interested in their daily meals during the school year. Proposed menu options for the pre-order model include 18 breakfast and 18 lunch options as well as a dozen side dish options.

For breakfast, hungry learners can select from an array of cereals and muffins, while ‘build your own’ sandwich, salad, pizza, or yogurt parfait options will keep lunches varied and customizable throughout the week. Side dish

options include applesauce, hash browns and roasted garbanzo beans as well as fresh fruits and vegetables. Specialty items including Asian chicken, pasta with marinara sauce and the OPRFHS rib sandwich will be available to D200 students as well.

All weekly meal packs come with detailed nutritional information. Cooking instructions are included with meals as some items come frozen and need to be reheated. In the future Piekarski hopes to add rotating weekly specials and ala carte menu options for students who prefer ordering more sporadically.

The D200 kitchens will continue to serve as vendors to D97 and D90 for the 2020-21 school year, but lunch plans for the elementary districts are still in flux. Piekarski indicated she is awaiting communication from the both districts about their plans for fall meal service.

“I feel like remote learning makes nutrition even more important,” said Piekarski. “Children who are learning at a computer all day need healthy food. Feeding them a nutritious breakfast and lunch is essential. We are here to do that.”

Job loss and reduced income resulting from the pandemic may qualify even more school aged children for free or reduced-price meals this year. Families meeting income eligibility guidelines are encouraged to fill out a National School Lunch Program application to receive free or reduced lunch pricing. Any student in the district can take advantage of the school lunch program — full price for five breakfasts and 5 lunches is $30 per week.

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Do safety protocols not pertain to travel teams?

bout a week ago, I was browsing through Facebook and saw a former neighbor of mine post a video of his son mashing a double into the rightcenterfield gap. At first, I was proud.

I have been following his development as a baseball player since he was half the size he is now (I can report he is no longer the same pull hitter he was two years ago).

But then I watched the video again.

Along the fence behind the batter’s box was my neighbor’s travel team standing shoulder to shoulder. No masks were worn.

The home plate umpire was positioned behind the catcher prior to the pitch being thrown despite other leagues taking the precaution to move such umpire behind the pitcher to abide by social distancing protocols.

I wish this was the first instance I have seen travel teams take Illinois’ restoration plan as a mere suggestion rather than a strict guideline to stunt the spread of COVID-19.

Yes, Illinois has had relative success in seeking to control COVID-19 cases and deaths, but this has not been the case for Illinois athletic programs. After seeing coronavirus’ impact on high schools like Lake Zurich, which had 36 students-athletes test positive for COVID-19 after opening practice up, the IHSA quickly backed out of its Phase 4 Return to Play guidelines that were

working out indoors without a too lenient to begin with. mask. The gyms in those videos Based on conversations I have are populated with coaches and had with Midwest high school other players who are not incoaches, I have been told travel terested in following protocols teams from Iowa, Indiana, IlSports Editor that benefit those who are more linois and Wisconsin are going vulnerable to coronavirus. in and out of each others’ states At a certain level, I get why to participate in tournaments. some of these kids are anxious to get back Before the IHSA deferred to the Illinois out on the floor. AAU and other travel Department of Public Health to determine sports organizations provide a platform for what high school programs can do during athletes to turn one high end scholarship the pandemic, teams were allowed to hold into several. For lower level prospects, sumpractice in and outdoors. There are players mer tournaments and showcases can be the who participated in these out of state tournaments who came back and practiced with difference between avoiding accumulating massive debt from student loans and using their high school teams. their talents to get free access to higher This is not exclusive to baseball. education. Families who put deposits down If you hop on high school basketball on their children’s travel teams before the Twitter, you will find videos of prospects

JAMES KAY

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT?: Youth baseball at Keystone Park during the pandemic.

pandemic also don’t want to feel like they burned money in a time where financial security is not a given.

With that said, there needs to be a reality check here.

There is still plenty we don’t know about coronavirus, including its long-term effects on our society. Younger people and their invincibility complexes can carry COVID-19 and not suffer the ramifications of those in their practice environments that are at a greater risk. Hell, even if coaches, players and spectators are fine with contracting coronavirus that doesn’t mean they can’t indirectly pass it on to those who are following the CDC’s recommendations outside of practice facilities.

Even as someone whose job security is dependent on there being prep sports in the near future, I can’t imagine a world where travel teams are continuing their pre-pandemic circuits around the Midwest without there being ramifications for high school sports. There are already talks about postponing the sports season until January (though there are many options the IHSA is contemplating) while travel sports haven’t skipped a beat since April.

Whatever happens in the coming weeks (or, more realistically, months), travel teams’ blasé approach to this situation is disheartening at best and a life-threatening safety hazard at worst.

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

Oak Park records new COVID-19 death

Now 431 positive COVID-19 cases in Oak Park

An Oak Park woman in her 60s died of COVID-19 in the past week according to Mike Charley, Oak Park’s public health director.

In addition 35 additional Oak Park residents tested positive for the virus in the past week.

As cases have ticked up in Oak Park recently, Charley has increased his COVID-19 updates to three times weekly.

With the fatality last week, there are now 27 total COVID-19 deaths in Oak Park since March 18. Adding in the 35 new positives, Charley reported that there have now been 431 total COVID-19 cases reported in Oak Park. According to Charley, the 35 Oak Parkers who have contracted coronavirus range in age from under 20 to people in their 80s.

Based on the most recent info provided on the village’s website, long-term care facilities in Oak Park have seen little change over this past week. Berkeley Nursing & Rehabilitation Center had one additional resident test positive for COVID-19.

Since March 18, two residents and four staff members tested positive for COVID-19 at Belmont Village to go along with two resident fatalities. Berkeley Nursing & Rehabilitation Center has had four residents and one staff member test positive for the virus while three residents have died. Brookdale Oak Park has had seven residents and eight staff members test positive for COVID-19 while one resident has died. Oak Park Arms has had six residents and three staff cases along with one resident fatality. Oasis has had 23 residents and six staff members test positive for COVID-19. 11 residents at Oasis have also died due to COVID-related complications.

The village said it cannot release further information regarding any of the cases due to privacy laws.

Based on information that was provided

by Natalia Derevyanny, who is the director of communications at the Cook County Bureau of Administration, Cook County has had 4,856 COVID-19 infection deaths. Since last week, Cook County 106 residents have died due to COVID-19 related issues.

James Kay

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

Congratulations on 40 years, Wednesday Journal, where community journalism builds community!

Ray Johnson, Former Village of Oak Park Trustee

Oak Park gets new CBD store Minority-owned shop sells hemp-derived products for people and pets

Enthusiasts and curious shoppers alike have a new place to procure CBD products in Oak Park. Your CBD Store, 139 S. Oak Park Ave., is a minority-owned shop, opened by four friends, which sells a variety of high-quality products all containing Cannabidiol, more commonly referred to as CBD. “We’re excited to be in Oak Park and excited to be open,” said co-owner Michele D. Skryd.

Not to be confused with a cannabis dispensary, Your CBD Store carries topical and edible CBD products. CBD is a compound extracted from hemp that has widely touted relaxation benefits. Fans of CBD use products containing the compound to relieve such conditions as pain, insomnia and anxiety.

“It contributes to feelings of well-being, feelings of calm,” said Skryd.

Family pets can also partake in the calming effects as Your CBD Store carries CBD products for cats and dogs, in addition to its array of products made for human use. According to Skryd, CBD produces similar effects on animals as it does on people.

“It calms them and reduces their stress

and anxiety,” said Skryd.

Although certain cannabis strains contain it, CBD itself is non-intoxicating and does not produce a “high” in those who use it. All of the products the store carries are made in the United States and do not require a prescription.

CBD can also be used as an additive to alcoholic beverages, a growing trend in the United States. Skryd has been researching CBD-infused cocktails, researching how the natural flavors of CBD oil complement certain types of alcohol.

“The more earthy flavors go with gin and the sweeter flavors go with vodka,” said Skryd.

COVID-19 permitting, the store may host seminars teaching people how to mix alcohol and CBD oils to add a new twist to happy-hour concoctions.

For those looking to learn more about CBD in general, the store’s leadership intends to host intimate events.

“We’re going to probably, slowly do different introductions and overviews to CBD and CBD topics and how you can use them,” Skryd said.

There is no limit to the creative ways CBD can be used, according to Skryd.

“You can cook with it; you can put it in your cocktails, or you can just drop it on your body. It’s endless.”

Stacey Sheridan

P.A.X.A. founders, David & Tania Haigh, are proud to be part of the Oak Park community.

Cheers to celebrating 40 years, Wednesday Journal!

Our Mission at P.A.X.A. (Parents Against Child Sex Abuse) is to help parents save their children from sexual abuse through Prevention, Uncovering And Healing.

Learn more at www.paxa.online

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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C R I M E

Man shot twice on Madison Street

A man sustained non-life-threatening injuries after being shot twice at 6:45 a.m. on July 25 in the first block of Madison Street.

According to police reports, the gunman was driving a black Honda with tinted windows.

The driver reportedly fired two rounds out of the front passenger side window, striking the victim in his torso and in his leg. The shooter then fled the scene eastbound on Madison Street.

Police described the shooter as being Black, 30 to 35 years old with a short beard and wearing a white T-shirt.

The shooting is under investigation and police have yet to determine whether it was a targeted incident.

Armed robbery ■ Two people reported being robbed while out walking in the 300 block of South Austin Boulevard in Oak Park on July 21 just before 2 a.m.

■ The victims told police they were approached by two men. One displayed a handgun and took both of the victims’ cell phones, car keys and house keys, as well as debit and credit cards ■ Two men, one with a gun, reportedly

approached a man near his vehicle on July 22 between 3 p.m. and 5:22 p.m. in the 1000 block of South Grove Avenue and took the victim’s phone, money and multiple Amazon packages from the trunk of the vehicle.

The two offenders fled separately in a white Audi and a tan Infiniti going northbound on Grove Avenue.

■

Vehicular hijacking Two offenders reportedly robbed a man of his vehicle at gunpoint in the 400 block of Madison Street on July 24 at about 5:35 a.m.

The victim told police that he was sitting in his vehicle, when the offenders approached.

One pointed a BB gun at the victim and ordered him to get out, while the other struck the victim, who exited the vehicle.

The two offenders fled in the victim’s vehicle and were last seen traveling eastbound on Madison Street The estimated loss is $3,200.

Burglary ■ A man was caught on video surveillance breaking into a vehicle and removing two bottles of men’s cologne, a pair of gold

earrings and an empty gun safe from the vehicle’s trunk at 4 a.m. on July 3 in the first block of Garfield Street. The estimated loss is $855.

■ Someone entered an unlocked vehicle parked in the first block of LeMoyne Parkway during the early morning hours of July 18 and removed a wallet, a MacBook Pro laptop and laptop bag. The estimated loss is $3,360.

■ Someone entered an unlocked vehicle parked in the 1200 block of North Elmwood Avenue during the overnight hours of July 17-18 and removed a garage door opener. The offender then opened the garage and ransacked another unlocked vehicle parked in the garage.

■ Someone entered a residential garage through an unlocked service door during the early morning hours of July 18 in the 100 block of South Humphrey Avenue and took a black-gray women’s bicycle. The estimated loss is $350.

■ A resident of the 200 block of North Oak Park Avenue reported on July 18 that someone cut the lock to a storage unit inside the building and removed a Christmas tree, wall art, picture frames and a medical book. The estimated loss is $500.

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Criminal damage to property

■ Someone cracked a 5-by-3-foot bullet proof glass pane inside the BP gas station at 201 Madison St., between 10 p.m. on July 15 and 7 a.m. on July 16. The estimated damage is $3,900.

■ Someone used an empty vodka bottle to break the rear window of a vehicle parked in the first block of Adams Street between 4 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. on July 18.

■ Someone damaged a double-pane 3-by5-foot plate glass window on the north side of the UPS Store, 7061 North Ave., between 8:23 p.m. on July 21 and 8:15 a.m. on July 22.

Estimated damage is $500.

These items, obtained from the Oak Park Police Department, came from reports July 17-27 and represent a portion of the incidents to which police responded. Anyone named in these reports has only been charged with a crime and cases have not yet been adjudicated. We report the race of a suspect only when a serious crime has been committed, the suspect is still at large, and police have provided us with a detailed physical description of the suspect as they seek the public’s help in making an arrest.

Compiled by Stacey Sheridan

Lordy, Lordy, Look Who’s 40!

Age is just a number, right?

Congratulations from the Celebrating Seniors Coalition. We are grateful for your support and partnership since 2011!

CelebratingSeniors.net

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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Love, and respect, at first bite These restaurants define our community in these hard days My love affair with restaurants began in earnest when I moved to Chicago nearly 25 years ago. I hailed from the Wisconsin suburbs where casseroles, fish frys and grilled sausages were common fare. While I still hold a special place in my heart for a Midwestern supper club relish tray, I was utterly transformed by city cuisine.

After mere months in the city, I was savoring haute cuisine and blue-plate specials with equal delight. I started saving money for indulgent meals in the same way most people save up for a well-deserved vacation. I could slurp a corner store horchata, a boba tea in Chinatown or preprohibition style cocktail served up by a hipster mixologist with equal exuberance. Today, I love watching the evolution of a world-class chef just as much as I adore discovering local artisans.

After moving to Oak Park 20 years ago I managed to make a career out of both cooking and writing about things other people cook for me. And cooks have deep respect and appreciation for other cooks. If you love food, you know the value of restaurants -- In Oak Park we have our own quirky array of establishments and food artisans who craft just about anything you may be craving.

Thanks to Oak Park Eats, I have had the oppor-

tunity to become especially close with our local food scene and the people behind the restaurants we adore.

We’ve covered a long-established diner known for being especially kind to local high school students and followed a booming bagel business from the first bake forward. I followed reader tips to discover a woman who churns out unforgettable Malawian samosas in her Berwyn kitchen and a mega talented bread baker who pays the taxes on his bungalow by selling sourdough subscriptions.

In our local restaurants we’ve eaten memorable tacos, croissants, empanadas, cupcakes, soup dumplings, smoked brisket and a deceptively complex roasted cauliflower and farro dish studded with carrots, almonds, and a smattering of hibiscus-arbol reduction crafted by Chef Armando Gonzalez of Amerikas—among many more.

Over the years and with each bite it has become increasingly clear that local restaurants and food artisans, especially fiercely independent ones, help to define our community’s personality. The chefs, cooks, servers and managers behind our local eateries are relentlessly nimble and brimming with both grit and determination. Even during these very uncertain times restaurants have remained generous in spirit, collaborative and deeply committed to doing what they love --bringing varied fare to our Oak Park and River Forest community.

As readers and eaters we need to remain steadfast in our commitment to support the passionate people behind our local restaurants — the character of our community depends on it.

A TOAST: Melissa Elsmo and her daughter Emma sip a Bees Knees at Quincy Street Distillery in Riverside.

Sawa’s Old Warsaw

Sawa’s Old Warsaw Come Celebrate early from Authentic Polish-American Food 7 a.m.Restaurant to 10:30 a.m.

• Lounge • Banquet Rooms 9200 W. Cermak Rd, Broadview Call Ahead 708-343-9040

DAY S ’ E N I NT A L EFridays VOpen B U F F E Tfor Curbside Pick-up & Saturdays ST A F K A E B R Create your Own Platter!

 Texas Style French Toast

 ApplePolish wood Bacon Smoked Sausage (2”) - $6.25  Scrambled Eggs

 Potato Pancakes Fresh Polish Sausage (2”) - $6.25  Kiszka (Polish Sausage)  Sliced Ham Broasted Chicken (2 pieces) - $7.50  Pork Sausage Links  Apple Crepes Meatballs Dill Sauce  Apricotin Crepes Blueberry Crepes (6) - $8.25  Cheese Crepes  Fresh Fruit Stuffed Cabbage (3) - $8.25  Raisin Bread  English Muffins Pork Chop Stead (3) $8.25

Green Beans Corn Carrots Mixed Vegetables Sauerkraut

Bloody Mary or Mimosa only $6

For only $9 per person!

reservations recommended seatings 5pm thru 8:30pm

Swiss Steak - $8.75

11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. $9 per person

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Dine-in (inside & Outside)

All that plus Apple Juice, Orange Juice, Milk or Coffee...

Pork Goulash - $8.75

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Broasted Shrimp (8) $12.00

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Roast Duck 9200 W. Cermak Road • Broadview, IL www.SawasOldWarsaw.com (1/4 portion) $12.00 Smoked BBQ Ribs (1/3 Slab) - $12.00

Mashed Broasted Boiled Potato Dumplings Potato Pancakes

814 North Boulevard • 708-848-3434 www.cucinaoakpark.com

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Treat Yourself to a Gourmet Meal with Woody’s Take Home!

$5 Turkey burgers on Tuesdays (all locations)

$1 fried chicken legs at DKT on Fridays

 Contactless Pickup  New Menus each week  Support a local nonprofit… and give yourself a night off from cooking!

The Nineteenth Century Charitable Association offers meals for pickup that are prepared by our Executive Chef Woody Mondays from 11am-12:30pm.

Each week you can select from a delicious soup, pasta, entrée and dessert.

Take home, warm up and enjoy!

Visit our website every week for next Monday’s menu. Orders are due the Thursday before pickup. For full details, please visit our homepage at:

www.nineteenthcentury.org

RELAX & ENJOY Warm and inviting with a stylish, elegant, and romantic setting

WE ARE HERE FOR YOU!

The Little Gem Cafe at 189 N. Marion St. Oak Park, IL 60301

(708) 613-5491

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donnygs.com

S P O N S O R E D

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C O N T E N T

Taste and Tunes in Elmwood Park Music and meals replace a “traditional Taste” in 2020.

Pay attention restaurant-lovers! Elmwood Park, a go-to destination for locals looking for a memorable meal, is hosting Taste and Tunes August 6-9.

Corporate Events Private Parties Holiday Parties Birthday Parties Christenings Showers Rehearsal Dinners Funeral Luncheons Offsite Catering

For more than 30 years the arrival of August has brought The Taste of Elmwood Park to the food-centric village. The large and lively festival, however, had to be heavily modified in response to statewide COVID-19 event restrictions.

“We still plan to showcase Elmwood Park’s phenomenal restaurant scene,” said Village President Angelo “Skip” Saviano. “While we will have to wait till 2021 for a traditional Taste, we’re going to work within the Governor’s Food Writer rules to highlight our restaurants and provide our residents with the opportunity to celebrate the great culinary options here.”

MELISSA ELSMO

ARMANDS PIZZA: Slices will be available for just $4.00 from August 6-9 as part of Taste and Tunes.

Village officials are persevering and are focused on making the most of summer events despite obvious challenges. To replace The Taste of Elmwood Park, leaders have introduced Taste and Tunes to bring attention to local restaurants by offering entertainment from 6-8pm in the public dining area on Restaurant Row located at North Avenue and 74th Court.

Varied acts include pop, rock, country music as well as timeless standards. Menu options are just as plentiful in Elmwood Park.

Armand’s Pizza, at 7650 W. North Ave., is offering pizza slices, artichoke casserole, fiesta corn and cannoli bowls for just $4.00 each, while Spizzico Pizza and Pasta, at 7446 W. North Ave., is offering stuffed cheese or sausage pizza slices for just $5.00.

If you have a taste for beef between a bun, Burger Moovment, at 7512 W. North Ave., is offering an American diner burger special for $5.50 (limit 3 per order/no substitutions) from August 6-9. Burger Moovement’s diner

7308 W. North Ave. Elmwood Park, IL 60707

Call 708-456-3644 to book your event!

BURGER: Burger Moovment is offering a special discount on their American diner burger meal for Taste and Tunes.

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C O N T E N T

SAMMY: The Grab and Go breakfast sandwich from Eggsperience is among the discounted items offered during Elmwood Park’s Taste and Tunes event. burger is a made with a single patty, American cheese, grilled onions, and pickles on a simple white bun. The meal is completed with fries, and a small fountain drink.

New Star, at 7444 W. North Ave., is offer a 15 percent discount on all dine-in dinner menu items during Taste and Tunes. This offer cannot be combined with coupons but guarantees you will be able to get your hands on a vast array of dishes like one of New Star’s signature egg rolls. The perfectly fried eggrolls, come two to a portion and feature a bounty of BBQ pork, shrimp, vegetables in a pleasing peanut sauce.

“They are the best around because we use best quality meat, vegetables and peanut butter,” said owner Jinny Zhao.

Eggsperience, at 16 Conti Parkway, is offering “grab-and-go” breakfast sandwiches and a cup of coffee for just $7.99 in the morning but has created additional lunch specials for the festive week in the village. The breakfast café is offering their Eggsperience egg-topped burger or a chicken and avocado sandwich and a drink for just $9.99.

Residents should check the Village of Elmwood Park’s website and Facebook page for updates on additional specials. Despite

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

WE KNOW EGGSACTLY WHAT YOU WANT All egg dishes are made with free range, USDA organic, non GMO fresh eggs from our local Farmers!

NEW STAR EGG ROLL: North Avenue mainstay, New Star, is offering a 15 percent discount on all dine in dinner menu items. the modifications to the festival, dining at a discount tastes delicious--see you for Taste and Tunes in Elmwood Park August 6-9!

OUTDOOR DINING TABLES are seen set up on North Avenue on Saturday, July 25, 2020, for Elmwood Park outdoor eating.

ALEX ROGALS/Staff Photographer

16 Conti Pkwy • Elmwood Park • 708.395.5007

25

you love.

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1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

GOOD is a haircut you love.

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OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

Better Lake Street

REWARD PROGRAM Save your receipts through September 15!

Receipts accepted from the following businesses: Save your receipts when you support local businesses, and earn $25 in Reward Certificates when you spend $20 or more at five participating Downtown Oak Park, Hemingway District or Pleasant District businesses with a grand total of $200 or more. Receipts from online shopping and delivery purchases will also be accepted!

Reward certificates must be used September 1 through October 15, 2020 at participating businesses.

DOWNTOWN OAK PARK

16 Suitcases Anna’s Threading Anthony Peter Hair Salon AT&T Wireless Beer Shop Bloch Oak Park The Book Table Boss Burrito CarefulPeach Boutique Center Stage Salon Chipotle Cold Stone Creamery Cooper’s Hawk Cozy Corner Crafters and Weavers Crystal Cleaners Currito Delia’s Kitchen EcoKarat Jewelry Edible Arrangements Fannie May Firecakes Fitness Formula Club Fitzgerald’s Fine Stationery Fix That 4 You Fleet Feet Sports Flourish Lounge For Eyes GNC Live Well Gap / Gap Kids The Gold Hatpin/J ewelry Studio The Groomery Hecho en Oak Park James Anthony Salon Jayne Boutique Jerusalem Cafe

Kalamata Kitchen Katy’s Dumpling House Khyber Pass Lake Street Kitchen + Bar Lake Theatre La Notte Ristorante Italiano Léa French Street Food The Little Gem Restaurant + Bar Lou Malnati’s Luo’s Peking House Midwest Microblading Munch Nando’s Peri Peri Oak Park Barbers (Joseph Dell) Old Navy Paper Source Personalization House Pink Nail Studio Poke Burrito Polished Nails and Day Spa Potbelly Sandwich Shop Pumpkin Moon Puree’s Pizza & Pasta Q-BBQ Rosin Eyecare Salon JAS Scratch ‘n Sniff Slice Factory Spenga Sport Clips Haircuts Sprint Sugar Fixé Pâtisserie Sugarcup Trading Sushi House T-Mobile

Target Ten Thousand Villages TGI Friday’s Trader Joe’s Tre Sorelle Ristorante Wells St. Popcorn Wheel & Sprocket Westgate Barbers Wise Cup HEMINGWAY DISTRICT

Amerikas Avenue Nail Shop Balance Fitness Studio Bricks Cafe Mulata Citrine Coastal Society Courageous Cafe Cucina Paradiso Electronic Hub Eyeglass Shop Fairgrounds Coffee Filoni Gala-Tec Garland Flowers Gem Geppetto’s Toy Box GP Terev Pottery Grape Leaves Hemingway’s Bistro Hemingway Birthplace Museum Hit It Fitness Il Vicolo Trattoria Jimmy John’s The Irish Shop Lindy Cleaners Lively Athletics

Manouche Maya del Sol Miele New Pot Oak Park Brewing Oak Park Records Oberweis Dairy Ice Cream Olive & Well Only She PapaSpiros Rustico Sagano Sushi Saigon Pho Scratch on Lake SelleriaVeneta Spa Nails Spilt Milk Starbucks Coffee (Lake & Euclid) Tony’s Shoe Clinic Trends UPS Store PLEASANT DISTRICT

Anfora Wine Merchants Barclay’s American Grille La Bella Pasteria Cajun Broil & Bar Carnivore Inc. The Daily Method Oak Park Jewelers Poor Phil’s Bar & Grill Salon 212 & Day Spa Serenitea Tea Cafe & Boutique Wild Onion Tied House

Details at: downtownoakpark.net/better-lake-street

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

JUST LISTED

407 KENILWORTH, OAK PARK

$2,000,000 :: 6 BED :: 4.5+ BATH Fabulous renovated Victorian with coach house & pool.

MOVE-IN READY

Baird & Warner congratulates the Wednesday Journal on

900 FRANKLIN, RIVER FOREST

$749,000 :: 4 BED :: 3.5 BATH Brick Colonial home. New kitchen & baths.

KATHY & TONY IWERSEN

40 YEARS of Local Independent Journalism!

708.772.8040 708.772.8041 tonyiwersen@atproperties.com BAIRD & WARNER OAK PARK/RIVER FOREST 1037 Chicago Ave. Oak Park, IL 60302 | 708.697.5900 | oakpark.bairdwarner.com

Happy 40th Anniversary

Wednesday Journal!

We have been a proud supporter and advertiser since the very beginning!

Great is Great is Great the is getting getting thethe getting Great is haircut you haircut you getting the haircut you love-for less. love-for less. haircut you love-for less. love-for less.

• Oak Park • Oak Park • Oak Park 707 W Lake St • (Free Parking Ave Garage 720 North Blvd) •Ave Oak Park720 707 W St • (Free Parking Garage 720 North 707 W Lake StLake • (Free Parking Ave Garage NorthBlvd) Blvd) 708-628-3675 708-628-3675 707 W Lake St • 708-628-3675 (Free Parking Ave Garage 720 North Blvd) M-F 9-7 Sat Sun 10-4 M-F 9-7• •708-628-3675 Sat 9-5 9-5 ••Sun 10-4 Now Open

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

29

Homes

NEED TO REACH US?

oakpark.com/real-estate email: buphues@wjinc.com

Quintessential Oak Park Architecture, history and a front porch

By LACEY SIKORA

A

Contributing Reporter

rchitect E.E. Roberts was born in Boston, but he left his mark on the Midwest after moving to Chicago in 1888, where he worked for a time as a site superintendent for the construction of what is now the Pullman neighborhood of Chicago.

He moved to Oak Park in 1893 and established his architecture practice around the same time his contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright was active in the village. He designed more than 200 houses in Oak Park, and while he moved his office to Chicago in 1912, he and his wife lived in Oak Park until his death in 1943.

One of Robert’s Oak Park designs, 401 N. Cuyler Ave., recently hit the market, and the home is representative of his style as well as the architecture that makes Oak Park a suburb unlike any other.

Known as the Mrs. M.A. Guy House, 401 N. Cuyler Ave. is definitely a bungalow, but it also shows signs of several other architectural styles.

The house was constructed by local contractor M.A. Guy, as his personal residence. Guy, along with his partner McClintock, built many of the area’s prominent homes for architects such as Roberts and Tallmadge and Watson.

Baird and Warner realtor Mary Carlin, who is listing the house for $749,000, says of the home, “It is a bungalow, and it has some Prairie See ROBERTS on page 32

Courtesy VHT Studios

CLASSIC: E.E. Roberts designed the home at 401 N. Cuyler Ave. for the man who served as the general contractor for many of his projects. The home retains many of the original Prairie-style details.

30

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

This Weekend

Open Sunday, Aug 2, 11:30-1:30

1044 Ontario #2, Oak Park GREAT VALUE! 2 Bedroom, 1 Bath condo in mid-century modern courtyard building. Wonderful location across from Austin Gardens just steps away from Downtown Oak Park. Open floor plan, covered parking, Motivated Seller!….....................................$165,000

SINGLE FAMILY HOMES

ADDRESS

OFFICE

LISTING PRICE

TIME

1417 Kenilworth Ave, Berwyn . . . . . . . . . . . . Baird & Warner Oak Park/River Forest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$285,000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1-4 837 S. Harvey Ave, Oak Park. . . . . . . . . . . . Gagliardo Realty Associates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $417,900 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1-3 1201 N. Ridgeland Ave, Oak Park . . . . . . . . . Baird & Warner Oak Park/River Forest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$565,000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1-3 401 N. Cuyler Ave, Oak Park . . . . . . . . . . . . . Baird & Warner Oak Park/River Forest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$749,000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1-3 1416 Jackson Ave, River Forest . . . . . . . . . . Gagliardo Realty Associates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$879,000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12-2

Contact Joanne Rosenbush

Work From Home!

CONDOS

708 205-4053 (direct) joanne@classicproperties.us

ADDRESS

OFFICE

LISTING PRICE

TIME

337 S. Maple Ave. UNIT 32, Oak Park . . . . Baird & Warner Oak Park/River Forest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $149,900 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12:30-2 1044 Ontario St. UNIT 2D, Oak Park. . . . . . Classic Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $165,000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11:30-1:30

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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31

WE’RE BY YOUR SIDE 822 Jackson Ave River Forest | $999,000 Sheila Price

703 N East Ave Oak Park | $998,900 Patricia McGowan

1132 Rossell Ave Oak Park | $915,000 Sandra Dita Lopez

401 N Cuyler Ave Oak Park | $749,000 Mary Carlin

738 N Marion St Oak Park | $679,000 Catherine Simon-Vobornik

1133 Chicago Ave. Unit 3E Oak Park | $669,000 Keller Group Chicago

1201 N Ridgeland Ave Oak Park | $565,000 Sandra Dita Lopez

527 S Ridgeland Ave Oak Park | $550,000 Peggy Letchos

1230 Linden Ave Oak Park | $525,000 Swati Saxena

17 Forest Ave River Forest | $494,900 Patricia McGowan

2044 N 77th Ct Elmwood Park | $424,500 Ed Bellock

1228 Scoville Ave Berwynn | $410,000 Eddie Tovar

522 Grove Ln Forest Park | $349,900 Swati Saxena

300 N Oak Park Ave. Unit 1 Oak Park | $314,900 Roberta Ruiz

1040 Beloit Ave Forest Park | $309,900 Aaron Vanderbilt

1118 Washington Blvd, #1A Oak Park |$285,000 Hughes Home Team

7228 Washington St, Unit B Forest Park | $284,000 Maya Puentes

164 N Humphrey Ave, #3S Oak Park | $259,000 Catherine Simon-Vobornik

7753 Van Buren St, #205 Forest Park | $220,000 Steve Green

337 S Maple Ave, #32 Oak Park | $149,900 Bobbi Eastman

Baird & Warner Oak Park/River Forest | 1037 Chicago Ave. Oak Park, IL 60302 | 708.697.5900 | oakpark.bairdwarner.com Source: BrokerMetrics® LLC, 1/1/2019 - 12/ 31/2019Detached and Attached only. Chicagoland PMSA

32

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

ROBERTS

Oak Parker’s dream home from page 29 Style influences, but it also has some Tudor Revival details like the banding on the front. It’s a cool combination of features.”

She says Roberts was an architect who can’t be pigeonholed into one style.

“We always think of our architects as doing only one thing, but they were really just products of their times,” Carlin said.

“Here in Oak Park, we see a lot of homes that Frank Lloyd Wright remodeled, but this one was designed by Roberts from the very beginning.”

The house dates to 1910 and retains a number of original features that speak to the home’s history. The brick work on the front porch is laid in an intricate pattern, detailed with abalone tiles. The brick and tile motifs are repeated in both the exterior of the home and in the living room’s original fireplace surround.

The living room has a coffered ceiling with wood trim, and the dining room also has a coffered ceiling and an original built-in serving buffet.

Carlin said that when her clients purchased the home about 15 years ago, the home was in need of restoration. But, luckily, the previous owners had not removed the original features.

She recalls that two sisters lived in the home previously and mostly kept to the first floor. That might have saved one of the home’s most unique features. A second-floor playroom featuring an original hand-painted mural similar to the one adorning the playroom in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio.

“My clients kept it as a game room, but this space could easily be converted to a second-floor master suite,” Carlin said.

Currently, the master bedroom is on the first floor of the home and, along with a family room and side rear porch, provides a lot of options to spread out. The clients renovated the kitchen area, keeping the original butler’s pantry. The new kitchen features Amish oak cabinets.

“They kept the original butler’s pantry and the closet pantry,” Carlin said. “They didn’t blow out walls. The kitchen really fits the house.”

Bungalows live large according to Carlin.

“Like a lot of old houses, this has a great first floor flow and good entertaining spaces,” she said. “They’ve had parties here with 100 people, but it also works really well when it’s just two people at home.”

At roughly 3,000 square feet, there is plenty of room above ground, and Carlin notes the unfinished basement provides a world of possibilities for new living space with no need for an addition.

The pandemic summer has highlighted Oak Park’s appeal for buyers coming from the city, according to Carlin. Instead of waiting until their kids hit school age, many young families have moved up their home-buying timeline.

“If we’re going to be home, and we’re going to be home a lot longer, a condo can feel claustrophobic,” Carlin said. “Who wants to be stuck in a small space with toddlers?”

She also stresses that Oak Park’s location close to the city and with walkable neighborhoods is always a selling point.

“People coming to Oak Park are mostly coming from the city,” Carlin said. “It’s so important to them to be able to walk places. Here, you can walk to the schools, the farmers market and the Green Line.”

The village’s charming neighborhoods with historic homes also are appealing to buyers, according to the realtor.

“This part of Oak Park is just great because you’ve got every house style you can imagine,” Carlin said. “On top of that, this is just one of those houses that is universally beloved. When we were taking pictures for the listing, people walked by and said, ‘I love this house so much.’ They can’t help but comment.

It’s got such a friendly appearance with that great porch on the front.”

Courtesy VHT Studios

ORIGINAL TOUCHES: Intricate Prairie-style brickwork seen on the home’s facade is repeated on the fireplace surround in the home’s living room (top). The room also features the style’s trademark long bands of oak trim. The second-floor playroom (above), meanwhile, retains an original hand-painted mural, somewhat reminiscent of the one in the playroom of Frank Lloyd Wright’s home in Oak Park.

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

33

Generations of Excellence since 1958

708.771.8040 • 7375 W. North Ave., River Forest DonnaAvenue Barnhisel 7375 West North Dan Bogojevich MANAGING Anne Brennan River Forest, Illinois 60305 BROKER/OWNERS Karen Byrne Calkins 708.771.8040 Kevin Tom Carraher Andy Gagliardo

Tom Poulos

1147 JACKSON • RIVER FOREST

Pat Cesario Joe Cibula

Don Citrano Alisa Coghill Kay Costello Maria Cullerton Julie Downey Kurt Fielder Yvonne Fiszer-Steele Ramona Fox

Laura Gancer Lisa Grimes Dan Halperin Sharon Halperin Greg Jaroszewski Vee Jaroszewski Noa Klima Jack Lattner

1416 JACKSON • RIVER FOREST OPEN SUNDAY 122

NE W LISTI NG!

Iris McCormick Vince McFadden Elizabeth Moroney Colleen Navigato John Pappas Rosa Pitassi Sue Ponzio-Pappas Jenny Ruland

Laurel Saltzman Laurie Shapiro Tom Sullivan Debbie Watts George Wohlford Nancy Wohlford Randy Ernst • 773-290-0307

837 S HARVEY • OAK PARK OPEN SUNDAY 13

830 CLINTON PL • RIVER FOREST

PRI CE RED U C E D!

N E W L ISTIN G!

GRAND SPRAWLING HOME with an abundance of interior and exterior living areas. 5 BRs, upstairs laundry, 3 full & 1 half BAs, 3 fireplaces, full basement with recreation room. Grand two story family room incorporated into an open plan kitchen. Hardwood floors throughout main level. ............................................$845,000

ELEGANT HOME located on a picturesque River Forest block!

This stately 5 BR, 3 full/2 half bath home includes four floors of living with two finished family rooms, a large study and three fireplaces. Large sun-drenched rooms with elegant cove molding and windows. In-ground outdoor pool. ...........................$879,000

BEAUTIFULLY UPDATED 3 BR American Four Square located in the heart of the Arts District in Historic OP! Vintage features include arched entryways, hardwood flooring, art glass windows, sunroom, kit/breakfast rm combo, mud room, refinished backyard deck, fenced yard and two-car garage. .............................$417,900

BEAUTIFUL BURMA with all the space you need and more!

Gracious foyer, separate dining room and living room both with French doors and hardwood floors, sun room, large window lined kitchen, back deck and big yard. 4 large bedrooms, 2 full & 1 half bath, and bonus office space. ............................................$629,000

520 N OAK PARK AVE • OAK PARK

7613 VINE • RIVER FOREST

547 WILLIAM • RIVER FOREST

1210 N ELMWOOD • OAK PARK

N EW LI S T I N G!

N EW LI S T I N G!

LOVELY BUNGALOW offers wonderful space for family and entertaining. Original details blend seamlessly with all the current updates. Four BRs and 3 updated full baths on each level. Kitchen opens to family room. Full finished bsmt offers rec room, laundry area, bar & wine storage. ................................................... $579,000

BRING YOUR IDEAS to this lovely 4 bedroom, 2 bath home.

Features include an enclosed front porch, hardwood floors, fireplace, office nook, and two decks. The finished basement boasts a family room, exercise room, laundry room and plenty of storage.

Large backyard! ...................................................................$530,000

THREE STORY GRAND VICTORIAN on 100 x 218 lot in the heart of the Frank Lloyd Wright district. This estate features 6 Bedrooms, 2 Full baths, 3 fireplaces, many historic details including double front entry doors sourced from the Historic Pullman Estates section of Chicago. ...........................................................................$650,000

BEAUTIFUL SIDE ENTRANCE COLONIAL with 4 BRs, 2 full & 1 half baths features a spacious center family room, cooks’ kitchen with mud room, gas fireplace, built-in shelving & art glass windows. Beautiful woodwork & hardwood floors throughout.

Finished LL. Front & back heated walkway.......................$639,000

1710 N 79TH AVE • ELMWOOD PARK

1403 FRANKLIN • RIVER FOREST

1301 PARK • RIVER FOREST

1131 FRANKLIN • RIVER FOREST

NE W LIS TING!

N EW LI S T I N G!

N EW LI S T IN G!

N E W L ISTIN G!

TRADITIONAL BRICK COLONIAL located in EP’s River Forest Manor neighborhood. 3 BR’s and 1-1/2 baths with extra space on both levels. Expansive first floor family room, wood burning fireplace and beautiful curving stairway to second floor. This is a must see to appreciate! ......................................................$398,000

STUNNING FRENCH NORMANDY house that has been remodeled and refinished from top to bottom. New wiring, plumbing, hvac, all floors, generator, roof work, and more. Just drop in your furniture and enjoy, from the fantastic front entrance all the way to the basement. ..............................................................$1,398,000

FRENCH COUNTRY ESTATE built for flexible living. Fully renovated and expanded to preserve the feel and charm of a 1946 home, with all the conveniences of modern amenities and finishes.

Sits on a private, double lot. Large pool, 5 BRs w/BAs, 2nd Fl laundry, private office, finished basement......................$1,749,950

LOVELY BRICK HOME offers wonderful space with beautiful views of the spectacular lot! Original details with two story foyer and hardwood floors throughout. This elegant home is beautifully constructed and large enough to accommodate family and friends for years to come.............................................................. $1,299,000

For more listings & photos go to GagliardoRealty.com

34

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

Congratulations Wednesday Journal on your 40 year Anniversary!

My real estate career is about to celebrate an anniversary as well.

I am in the middle of my 30th year selling real estate!

I

Tom Carraher, circa 1991.

t’s been an honor and a privilege to help the families of our communities for the last thirty years. Buying a home is often one of the most important financial decisions a family can make. There are so many reasons families make a move, from trading up or trading down, relocation, family changes, employment opportunities just to name a few. To have a family choose me to assist them with this incredibly important decision over 500 times in my career is something I have never taken for granted.

I won the home location lottery! This is our family home at 322 Wesley, built by my grandfather. Four generations of our family have lived and still live there. I didn’t stray too far from the nest...I live right across the street!

I want to say thanks to everyone that has chosen me over the years. Thank you to the lenders, attorney’s, inspectors and title agents. I’d also like to acknowledge my fellow colleagues. This is a competitive business but here in our market we have strived to maintain integrity and professionalism. Thanks to my fellow agents who honored me with the Realtor of the Year award for 2020. It meant a great deal to me.

The picture on my business card has certainly changed over the years. What will never change is my commitment to

putting the needs of my clients first and foremost. Twenty years ago my slogan was “Success is a Walk in the Park”. Then with age and wisdom I adjusted to “ Realistic Expectations…Proven Results”. While life in 2020 certainly hasn’t been a walk in the park, we will get through all of this. I feel like this market and this community has its best days ahead.

I look forward to continuing to be your trusted real estate advisor for years to come!

- Tom Carraher

My local roots go back to my grandfather, Charles Henry Schumann, who built over 200 homes including several of the Dutch Colonial Homes throughout Oak Park in the 1920s.

Annual Stocking For a Soldier event for our troops overseas. We have sent over 1000 stockings overseas throughout the years! My clients are the best!

I’m blessed with two terrific and talented daughters! OPRF prepared them well for future success. My oldest, Alison, is a nurse and Megan will soon be a special ed teacher!

Proud recipient of the 2020 Realtor of the Year Award from the Oak Park Area Association of Realtors If you are interested in buying or selling your home, please call Tom at 708-822-0540

Realistic Expectations...Proven Results 7375 West North Avenue

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

A Great Community Needs a Great Newspaper!

Congratulations Wednesday Journal on turning 40!

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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Here’s to a new beginning after 40 years!

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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Our readers have their say

Hurricane cookies, giant goldfish, saving democracy, bathing a cadaver and, still mad about our coverage of lights at OPRF Grateful to still have a truly local weekly newspaper! Read it since day one! Editors and reporters that know what to cover on the varied aspects of life in our diverse community.

Congratulations.

Suzanne Vestuto

I lived in Oak Park for 22 years but moved to Westchester a few years ago for a ranch house and lower taxes. But there is NO newspaper.

So I have become one of your biggest advocates. I tell all my old Oak Park friends they don’t know how good they have it to have intelligent local reporting. I get my Westchester news from atrocious Facebook groups, full of half-baked opinions and innuendo. It is maddening.

You are a gift to the community, and long may you do good reporting.

Diane Scott,

You are needed.

Paulette Cary

I love the Wednesday Journal. Many talk about newspapers as having the pulse of a community. I think the Wednesday Journal is much more than that. I think it is the heart of our community. I hope it will be around for another 40 years.

Terri Brukhartz I still have the front cover of a Wednesday Journal issue with my 5 or 6-year-old daughter looking at some fun holiday construction on the Lake Street “Mall” during that period when it was bricked over for pedestrian use only.

She was amazed by a voice that came out of a large 8-10 ft. “snowman” asking her what she wanted for Christmas. The voice was a man with a mike sitting inside a window in the Marshall Field building. She is now 42 with her own delightful three-year-old daughter.

Lil Hohmann

Photo by Frank Konrath

Ken Trainor “A change of heart” and “We can do better than better” highlight the WJ issues of June 24 and July 8, 2020.

Throughout these 40 years, Ken Trainor’s essays have supplied inspiring answers to the “What can we make of this?” questions the day’s large and small issues provoke.

Places for quiet reflection, such as the serene Austin Gardens, are described in his columns, and places for decisive action, such as support for beneficial organizations and village institutions, are described in his columns. He shares with us, and his young grandsons, discoveries of the world as it should be.

Betty T. Moore

Congratulations to Wednesday Journal on its 40th anniversary of serving as an essential part of our community by sharing the information that makes our area so distinctive.

Dominican University has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the Journal, partnering on the Wednesday Journal Conversations series and hosting the annual Night of Champions high school sports program. It was a true honor to be selected to join so many influential people in our community as one of the Journal’s Villagers of the Year.

Here’s to another 40 years!

Donna Carroll

President Dominican University

In 1983, I moved with my husband and 2-month-old son to Oak Park. I was delighted to learn about a Leaps and Bounds exercise class for new moms and babies in a local church basement and immediately signed up. Not long afterwards, Susan Anderson, a TV journalist in Chicago, came to report on this unique learning opportunity.

I grabbed my Nikon camera and took it along with me to class that day. I took photos of Susan and her crew interviewing our teacher and fellow mom/students. On the way home, I stopped at the Wednesday Journal office and was introduced to Valerie Mindel, the feature editor at the time.

I told her about the class interviews and the photos I had taken.

I had spent years at Sears, Roebuck in public relations, but knew nothing about community journalism. Valerie kindly told me that by the time I submitted the story and got her photographs, the story would be old for publication.

That was not such good news, but what she said to me next was music to my ears. She said she’d love to talk to me about writing for the paper if I was willing to take $25 per story. For that opportunity to get to know my new commuunity, I would have happily done assignments for free. Soon n after that, I started getting assignments for the Wednesday y Journal -- and later, for Chicago Parent.

Through that opportunity, I met many newsmakers and d fellow Oak Park citizens -- it was a great introduction to Oak k Park, an opportunity that I cherish to this day. To Dan Haley y and his staff, I wish you a happy 40th anniversary and hopee there are many more successful years of sharing local stoories ahead.

Debby Preiserr

Congrats to Dan [and Mary, Ben and Mariah] for nurturing Wednesday Journal – and by extension the communities it serves – for all these years.

Jill & David Stewart

Fond former neighbors

Thanks WJ for showcasing our ginormous 15-year-old goldfish on the cover of your lovely paper! It was a tiny Ascension Mission Day fish and grew into a monster.

Thanks for the memories!

Matt/Anita Trainor

We need Wednesday Journal to ensure that important local news is available and to be able to express our viewpoints to those who might really benefit from the dialogue.

The Wednesday Journal represents independent journalism that keeps our village informed, inspired and accountable.

Congratulations on 40 years!

Mary Darnall

November 1998 “The Domestic Registry referendum passes, 51-49 percent, the first time a pro-gay measure has won a ballot initiative in the U.S., leading to one of our more memorable front-page headlines: “Big Gay Day.”

Jim Kelly

BEST. Headline. Ever.

“BIG GAY DAY!”

Ray Johnson

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1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

Dan Haley has written many memorable columns, bringing emotions from laughter to tears. I wish that I had saved the ones about his wife (an older woman!); his sister who found work as a candy striper exciting (did she get to bathe a cadaver?); the receipt of a letter addressed to “The Local Paper, Oak Park IL” (no address, delivered to the Wednesday Journal, NOT the Oak Leaves) and the challenges of arranging the rooftop Christmas decorations (that required a bag of cat litter?)

I would truly enjoy reading these again.

You know, a book of Dan’s favorite columns would be a great fundraiser.

Happy 40th!

Marlene R Scott

I won’t forget the personal attacks on the people who opposed lights in the OPRF football stadium.

It is one thing to editorialize in favor of a position: that is what newspapers do.

It is quite another -- and quite unprofessional in my opinion -- to inculcate your “news” reporting with your personal opinions AND to attack people who had valid positions and opinions in opposition to your own and call them names.

And this happened repeatedly during your “campaign” to have lights installed at the stadium.

It was also against all sorts of journalistic “best practices” to not reveal your personal conflicts, and lobby on behalf of your own family (Ken’s son played football for OPRF) without revealing this conflict.

There is no substitute for local journalism, so important to our democracy. Thank you to all the employees of the past 40 years providing these essential services.

I went door to door to sell subscriptions, and then delivered papers the first year of the Journal! My first “job”!

Peggy Collings

Why I truly believe that local journalism news matters, because it is “boots to the ground” and informative language to build our community, and to show pride. It is also the heart of democracy and being the voice for the people.

Wednesday Journal has been around in the villages of Oak Park and River Forest, and it represents the state of mind of the residents and citizens. Congratulations to 40 years of being the voice for Oak Park and River Forest!

Jeremy Horn

Wednesday Journal is a real gem in our community. Happy Anniversary!

Jay Kozie

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

Joan Winstein

Lou Anne Johannesson

Congratulations!

Wonderful work -- We Really Appreciate You! Thank you.

The Little Gem Cafe

Judith Lalor

My kids delivered it with a wagon. My 10-year old son started his own “paper” on the block based on WJ. Then WJ wrote about him! Finally Dan Haley hired me to write for WJ and I learned the essence of good community journalism. It’s no fluke WJ wins all those prizes from Illinois Press Association. Congrats on surviving (and thriving) for four decades.

Fort Collins CO

Jean Lotus

HOW QUAINT: A Wednesday Journal carrier, and he looks a lot like a Delaney, hands out copies of an EXTRA edition at the Green Line el. Before digital publishing, we did EXTRA’s when big news broke.

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1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM Congratulations on your anniversary and longevity. WJ is a friend I look forward to seeing every Wednesday. I know so many people on the staff, the stories are so often about people or places I know and the many letters I’ve had printed have given me an opportunity to express myself and even have a small influence on some events. When Festival Theatre was in financial peril in 2002 you worked with me and helped to save it.

Thank you.

Joyce Porter

My neighbor Frank Walsh was “The Spectator” for you for a long time. My favorite column was from 7/6/83 where he talked about our block parties on the 200 block of Clinton. They were quite an event. I think the village really supported these events to develop the plans for diversity and we sure got to know our neighbors.

I have an original copy if there is none in your archives. It seems current in many ways.

Thank you for so many years.

Pam Walsh

Happy Anniversary. You guys rock boats!

When I moved to Oak Park in 1982, the Journal quickly became indispensable in figuring out how the village worked, who the political players were, who was mad at whom, who was having affairs with whom.

Its plainspoken and clear reporting, its robust letters pages and its committed columnists served as invaluable guides, helping my wife and me become part of this community.

And I’d say that even if it hadn’t recruited me as a columnist in the ’90s and my son — about whom I’d written some of those columns -- as a reporter and editor in the 21st Century.

Thank you, Wednesday Journal, for so many of the good things in my family’s life.

Sarah Cooke

N. Gadomski

Somewhere around 1988 my nephew Stephen (Steve) Kleps had his pic in the Journal for winning the most freckles contest at Irish Fest. Steve, now 40 lives in River Forest. None of his 4 kids comes close to having a 1/20 of his freckles Of course, I like the story and pic of me and Tim about same sex marriage.

Happy Anniversary

Tom Gull

So glad you have been one of the many ties that bind us together for almost as long as we have lived in Oak Park.

Thankful for Independent media to share our stories.

Henry Kranz

Charlie Meyerson

One of my fondest memories of enjoying the Wednesday Journal was during Hurricane Katrina when my kids who were at the time, nine and five, made “monster hurricane cookies” and sold them donating the money to hurricane relief ! I sent in a photo. You printed it and captioned it!

We were all so happy!

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

Community journalism is so important.

I’ve enjoyed writing for the WJ for 30 years. I’m proud of the quality of the WJ. Let’s all help to keep the WJ vibrant.

Gina Orlando

I remember those early WJ Board days energized by a passionate team of Oak Parkers committed to local journalism and led by super talented journalists. What an amazing experience! Thank you!

Sharon Phillips

THE SPECTATOR: Francis J. Walsh was our lead feature columnist for many years.

Are you looking for the best music and language teachers?

Music and Language Arts in Forest Park • Spanish and Portuguese Classes • Piano, Guitar and Voice Lessons • Family Band Practice • Cultural experience through cooking and projects • Classes for children and adults of all ages At A.L.M.A. we attract people who love to play, sing, create and learn at their own pace and in their own way.

Please visit our website at alma-cf.org email: cfi.alma@gmail.com phone: (708) 769-4853

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1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

A VERY VIRTUAL FALL

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

From its first issues, Wednesday Journal has been a great community partner for so many community organizations and agencies. You have supported me through my time at the Food Pantry, Home Companion Service, Community of Congregations, Friends of the Library Book Fair, and now as an active media partner with Celebrating Seniors.

Yes, I have been honored by you for various things through the years but your help with our community volunteer recruitments and fund-raising efforts, have been the best. Thanks to Dan, Ken, Marc, Jill, Lourdes, Andy and many staff both current and past.

Pat Koko

The Shrubtown cartoons are helping me get through this. Keep ‘em coming. Also buy the peaches at the Farmers’ Market. They will help you get through this.

Joseph Graber

PLEASE SAVE THESE DATES TO SUPPORT HOUSING FORWARD’S UPCOMING SPECIAL EVENTS! We are planning a virtual season of events.

This is new and exciting for all of us. We hope you’ll join us and continue to support our mission–virtually!

Trivia Night

7pm on Thursday, August 20, 2020

Progressive Dinner September 2-30, 2020

Order from partnering restaurants who will donate a portion of sales each week.

Congratulations to Dan Haley for founding the Wednesday Journal in 1980 and growing it for 40 years. My wife Katherine and I were proud to be among the initial investors, and I was proud to be on the beginning staff. Even our children, Warren and Sue, were delivery kids.

But the important thing is that Dan and his staff have sustained a local newspaper that has become a community institution. We can all be proud.

Bob Trezevant

Details coming soon!

Associate Board Event October 2020

Check our website for more informaton.

Wednesday Journal is the thread that stitches together the larger quilt from the diverse patches generated by the daily life in Oak Park, Austin and River Forest. Through the dedicated work of its journalists and staff it is the vital source of information about events that shape these communities. And it provides the forum for the citizenry to contrast their views and opinions. We are lucky to have a local newspaper and we need to make sure we help it keep going for another 40 years. Happy Birthday Wednesday Journal!

Milos Zefran and Barbara Di Eugenio

Mark your calendars! To learn more about each event, contact Trisha Marchand at tmarchand@housingforward.org 708.338.1724 ext 230 or visit We trulyte ia c www.housingforward.org/events re p ap your ! support

I have read the Wednesday Journal since day one and still look forward to reading it. I could not name a finer community newspaper. That’s all the WJ tries to be .… and it has succeeded.

The Journal staff encourages dialogue with the community and invites us to share joys, sorrows, pain, anger, and praise. No topic is off limits for the Journal. Editorials and columns make us think and often provoke a response. Community activists find their voices through the pages of the Journal. Wednesday Journal is personal.

Happy 40th Anniversary…and thank you!

Janine Katonah

Wednesday Journal is not your typical hometown paper, although it covers the usual stuff.

More importantly, it reports the news, interprets the news, and drives the news. Not everyone likes that all the time, including me. But I treasure it.

This town is not the same without it.

Mary Kay O’Grady

Aging Disgracefully columnist P. S. None of the columnists are paid.

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

Fair Housing Education & Counseling Apartment Referrals Financial Management Services Rental Education & Counseling

Home Buyer Education & Counseling Foreclosure Prevention & Loan Modifications Industry Professional Partner Referrals COVID-19 Support If you don’t see what you are looking for,

give us a call, we will help you out!

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

Oak Park Temple B’nai Abraham Zion Wishes the Wednesday Journal a MAZEL TOV on 40 years of Strengthening Community through Journalism

May You Go from Strength to Strength

Join us for Shabbats, The Days of Awe, and Modern Jewish Education Online options available

More information at: OakParkTemple.org

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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Marching in as Arts editor

Where’d you come from?

How our staff came together

From freelance to full-time I first started working as a freelance photographer at the Journal for my predecessor, William Camargo, back in spring 2017. Shortly after freelancing, Camargo reached out to me about his position opening up and I quickly jumped on it.

I was very eager to be back in a newsroom full time.

I had been living in Oak Park for a little over a year after moving from New Mexico from a previous daily newspaper photojournalist position. I’ve now been working for Wednesday Journal/Growing Community Media for 3 years.

Alex Rogals

(they/them/theirs)

Find more staff stories in Viewpoints all through August.

It was in the Veterans Room at the Main Library in Oak Park when I met Ken Trainor the first time. There was an Independent Writers of Chicago (IWOC) meeting in the fall of 2016 about getting work published.

After years of being a full-time stay-at-home mom and eager school volunteer while advocating/juggling a family with needs beyond the norm, I wanted to explore getting back into writing professionally.

After all, I said I could always go back to writing.

When the meeting ended, I thought, rather spontaneously (and out of character for me), I better pitch something to Ken before he gets out the door. So, being among the cheering section and many volunteer parents that make the Oak Park and River Forest High School Marching Huskies more than marching and music, I approached Ken and told him I’d like to write about the award-winning season and the magic that the OPRF Marching Band was creating on the field with their New Orleans inspired show.

He said yes. And then Ken asked me to write about arts. This is right up my alley through study, practice and engagement. So, I began finding and pursuing ideas and writing about the arts in Oak Park and River Forest.

My guiding principal in doing this has been to bring some positive stories to our pages and also to shine a light on those that are doing intriguing things in the arts, es-

pecially students, that would not otherwise receive exposure in the media.

It was the arts that brought me to Wednesday Journal and it is the arts that keep me here (even though it is not always positive news in the time of COVID-19). I’ll always have my mellophone playing, marching band son to thank for giving me something to write about and get my foot in the door.

Michelle Dybal

Michelle Dybal and her son Miles.

Coming in September!

Arts Language Music Academy Experience A.L.M.A. Preschool for children aged 3-6 Everyone is born with an innate ability to create.

By blending the best of Montessori, Reggio-Emilia and play based philosophies, our environment encourages creativity, collaboration, compassion, and community.

Our innovative approach nourishes the child’s emotional, social, cognitive, and creative growth.

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Take a tour of A.L.M.A. Preschool.

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

Congratulations

Wednesday Journal on 40 years!

State Representative Camille Y. Lilly, 78th District 6937 W. North Ave, Oak Park 773-473-7300

State Representative

Camille Y. Lilly

Senate President

Don Harmon

Senate President Don Harmon, 39th District 6941-B. W. North Ave, Oak Park 708-848-2002 www.donharmon.org

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

THANKS Y ’ALL To the Friends of FITZGERALDSThank you. Sincerely. Having acquired the iconic music venue FITZGERALDS in March, I’ve unwittingly chosen an historically challenging time to take on club ownership. However, I remain energized and optimistic. I owe this positive outlook to the incredible community that surrounds FITZGERALDS. You have stayed connected and supported the club in so many ways.

You have purchased merchandise such as our “I stayed home from FITZGERALDS Nightclub and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” t-shirt at www.fitzgeraldsmerchbooth.com, you’ve picked up gift cards, some of you have even booked private events for 2021 and made generous deposits. You’ve come out in support of our #StayAtHomeConcert (now #CommunityTruckConcert) series where we tow great musicians around town in the back of a pick up truck, bringing socially distant live music to our neighbors. Some of you have even booked our truck concert for private events like block parties and birthday surprises. You bought tickets for our Drive-In Concert at Reuse Depot with Waco Brothers & School of Rock Oak Park. We’ve seen many of you on our spacious outdoor patio trying out new cocktails like our Frozen Irish Coffee. We’re now hosting outdoor live music with no cover Tuesday thru Sunday, some of you have even used our new online reservation system to book tables for the patio. All this is a whole lotta love and we appreciate it very much.

While there is no doubt that the future of the live music business is uncertain, we at FITZGERALDS have the invaluable privilege of knowing y’all and for that reason, we’re going to make it.

Tremendously Grateful, Will Duncan & Team FITZGERALDS PLEASE VISIT WWW.FITZGERALDSNIGHTCLUB.COM FOR MORE INFORMATION

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1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

oak park & river forest mental health boards are here to help!

We provide access to resources and services to for the Oak Park and River Forest Communities Students can text anonymously to: 844-670-5838 District 90 Text: Safe District 97 Text: Hope District 200 Text: Care

Download our new COVID-19 resource guide at: bit.ly/oprfguide

Visit The HUB for a complete list of resources

Sponsors:

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS FRIDAY 5 P.M. Call Viewpoints editor Ken Trainor at 613-3310 ktrainor@wjinc.com

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

VIEWPOINTS

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Ali ElSaffar on TIFs and tax bills p. 52

What side will you be on?

You can kill the dreamer, but you can’t kill the dream.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

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f I say, “Save the Whales,” it doesn’t mean I don’t care about how tunas are hunted. No one would retort, “All Ocean Life Matters.” Of course it’s about the ecosystem. However, the slogan “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) has proven to be a source of irritation for a lot of white and Black Americans.

In the minds of many, this defiant slogan is the ultimate example of playing the so-called “race card.”

Ironically, these same detractors see the promotion of “white power” and waving paraphernalia celebrating a defeated Confederacy as being patriotic. By the way, I have not heard anyone accuse those advocating “white power” of playing the race card.

BLM has spawned a multiracial, multicultural and multigenerational populist movement. BLM seeks to be an antiracist movement that says, “Can you hear us now?” They realize that for America to live up to its aspirational vision of “Justice for All,” we must protect the most vulnerable in our society. What’s unique about the BLM movement is that it has deviated from this timetested formula of finding a national spokesperson or leader.

They are local, leaderless and pesky. However, local protests under the aegis of Black Lives Matter are subject to being infiltrated by apolitical hoodlums and political provocateurs. Additionally, the platform that the founders of the BLM movement have endorsed is controversial, even among Black Americans.

Still, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

The pervasive nature of systemic racism has resulted in whites being either conscious or unconscious perpetuators of an unfair and discriminatory way of life for Black Americans. Conscious racism is unabashed and virulent in its opposition to social justice for Blacks and other marginalized groups. No one in America can deny that Black lives are in jeopardy. Not only are rogue police to be feared, but also lack of medical care, substandard housing, and ghettos teeming with Black gangs operating as neighborhood terrorists all function to undermine Black lives.

Let’s get real. BLM applies not only to whites who murder Blacks, but also Blacks who murder each other. When the larger society does not value Black lives, the inner-city thugs think they have a “get out of jail free” card. We need to work together to stop these killings. Blacks must break the code of silence about Black on Black crime. White Americans must actively become antiracist.

As a white American, declaring oneself antiracist is more than a notion. Such a declaration is a radical and risky act.

Whites taking an antiracist position will often alienate themselves from family, lose friends and incur the wrath of the conscious racists.

This historical moment is a roll call for those who really believe in America as the “home of the free and the land of the brave.” When future generations look back on these times, what side will you be on?

KWAME SALTER

ALEX ROGALS/Staff Photographer

FOLLOW THE LEADERS? Kids march in a parade to Longfellow Elementary School for their first day on Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2018, on Jackson Boulevard.

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How we can stop failing our kids

t is time to acknowledge the painful truth: The community of Oak Park, the Chicago Metro region, Illinois, and the U.S. have failed our children.

During the height of the pandemic in the Chicago Metro area, Oak Park was averaging about 12-14 new cases per day per 100,000 residents. After getting it under control, the month of June was much, much better with only 2-4 new cases per day per 100,000. After Illinois went to Revitalization (Phase 4) on June 26, Oak Park has crept back up and for the last week has been averaging about nine new cases per day per 100,000.

To put that number in context, Illinois is currently about 10 and the U.S. average is about 20. However, Germany is at 0.5 new cases per day per 100,000; less than 1/15 the rate of Oak Park.

The more than doubling of the new infection rate leaves Oak Park no good options for starting the 2020-2021 school year. I have come to understand that the least bad course of action is to open the school year with instruction happening nearly 100 percent remotely. Due to the upward trend, there is unacceptable risk of having to move again from in-person to remote, resulting in devastating disruption to instruction and huge emotional toll on the students and staff.

I’m almost in disbelief that our community, metro region, state, and country, unlike most European countries, were unable to get the community infection rates down low enough and sustain them at low levels, such that having in-person schooling now seems unacceptably risky. However, disbelief and dis-

appointment should not lead us to ignore the advice of health and education experts and exacerbate an already tragic situation by allowing hundreds and thousands per building for in-person schooling, which will contribute to the community spread.

It is important to emphasize the “nearly” in nearly 100 percent remote learning. For a relatively small number of students per school for whom 100 percent remote learning is a particularly unacceptable option, it is not contradictory nor inappropriate (and arguably is more equitable) to have some in-person instruction for those students for some days for some hours and still be far less risky than hundreds or thousands in a building for seven hours.

It is also important to understand that daily life for students with nearly 100 percent remote instruction in fall 2020 should not and will not look like the daily life for students during stay-at-home orders in spring 2020. Acknowledging that hundreds or thousands of students and staff inside a building for seven straight hours is unacceptably risky does not and should not lead to the conclusion that all students should be staying at home all day every day and not interacting in person with any other students.

Now is the time for the entire Oak Park community to think creatively and organize in order to leverage resources to provide opportunities that mitigate the heartbreaking situation in which our thousands of children and their families now find themselves.

Bob Spatz, an Oak Park resident, was a longtime District 97 school board member and board president.

BOB SPATZ

One View

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

O U R

V I E W S

A disconnect on race

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1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

he days keep passing and Oak Park’s opportunity to lead on issues of race and policing keep receding amid a mass resignation from the Community Relations Commission and more non-productive talk at the village board table.

Those two issues are not unrelated.

An inability to lead on this issue is the low point in the tenure of Anan Abu-Taleb’s seven successful years as mayor.

He seems tone deaf to both the urgency and the nuance of this debate.

After the village government stumbled about over multiple years trying to address issues of racial equity — acknowledging its own shortfalls, adding expertise in creating a lens of equity in decision-making, tackling training of the board, administration and rank and file to open its eyes wider — it failed to achieve anything like consensus when it finally acted to hire an equity training firm.

It left an already frustrated Community Relations Commission on the outside of decision-making, inevitably faced a divided village board of seven people who never had an ability or willingness to talk openly and empathetically with each other about hard issues, and, not surprisingly, went looking for equity expertise after every other town in America was casting about for the same help.

An hour’s discussion at a board meeting a week ago was illustrative of just how lost this board is on this issue. Absent leadership from the mayor, absent trust and goodwill among trustees, the discussion caromed about, even with seeming allies missing opportunities to connect.

The clearest message we might have heard is that there is general agreement that Oak Park should look at how citizen oversight of police works in this town. We’d extend that to say it raises important questions about the transparency of the disciplinary processes on the force. And there may be general agreement that, unlike many police departments in America, use-of-force policy and actions are not an underlying concern in Oak Park. That is huge.

We’d boil it down this way — and we’d acknowledge that contentious meetings by Zoom are always going to add confusion. The board discussion to this point has been unhelpful and lacking clarity. This board does not actually know what its goals are for moving forward on improved policing. This board does not agree on what outside resources it should bring to the table or what it would be asking a third party to do. If staff understands what it is being tasked to do, it is clairvoyant.

There seem to be two public meetings next week. Topic and format still being developed except we’re told it isn’t designed as a conversation and it isn’t the time to directly ask questions of the police department. OK. Why? But OK. There are two village board meetings set aside in August to discuss policing. Unclear what those agendas look like.

We’d go back to where we started several weeks ago, if it is not too late to go back there. Oak Park has a strong police chief in LaDon Reynolds. He is thoughtful and knowledgeable about policing. He is proud of Oak Park’s department but not blind to its faults. He has a listening ear. He is highly respected among peers. He has the life experience of a Black man.

We could do worse than setting aside two hours just talking and listening. The police chief should be there. Maybe a facilitator. Honest criticism. A place where hurt and fear can be expressed. A place where a cop’s worries could also be shared.

A format that is open to data already collected by activists where the goal is not to refute it but to understand it.

The village board would be welcome to attend but would not have a speaking role.

Listening. That’s where this divided board should start.

W

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We made it to 40!

e don’t have a vaccine yet for COVID-19, but we do have an antidote. Community, collaboration, cooperation, confinement. Regrettably, “we’re all in this together,” the popular slogan right out of the gate turned out not to be true nationwide, which is why we’re still mired in the pandemic. Not enough community-mindedness. All we had to do was embrace confinement, wear face masks in public, practice physical distancing, wash our hands a lot. Americans couldn’t do it.

Not all together. Some “knew” better, didn’t care, didn’t trust the authorities. Americans still believe more in individual rights than in community.

We don’t have a vaccine yet for the virus known as racism, but we do have an antidote. Community again, but community taken to another level. What Martin Luther King Jr. called “the beloved community.”

Creating the beloved community, person by person, leaving no one behind, is the only way to eradicate racism. Oak Park has a good base but we still have a long way to go.

“Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives,” said King, who spoke about it often: “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle is over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor.”

“The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But the way of nonviolence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”

“Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight fire with fire’ method is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. … Yes, love — understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies — is the solution to the race problem.”

“It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.”

Oak Park has built community in a number of ways: the Fair Housing Ordinance in 1968, resisting white flight, a public commitment to maintaining stable diversity, celebrating that diversity, block parties, the Community Relations Commission and Department, the Housing Center, the Residence Corporation, the Equity Assurance Program, the Village Diversity Statement, and more. Laying the groundwork.

Our challenge is to build the beloved community on top of it. White Oak Parkers must acknowledge the systemic racism we all grew up with and the racism that lies within each of us. We must surrender our attachment to white supremacy and white privilege and get over our white fragility and become part of a community that, as Dr. King said, requires “a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”

Not easy at all. But for the first time in my life, it feels doable. It won’t happen, though, without community, collaboration, cooperation.

Which brings us to the 40th anniversary of Wednesday Journal. I’ve been here 30 of those years, long enough to know that this newspaper has played a small but significant role in the process, and has a role to

play still, reflected in the company’s new name, “Growing Community Media.”

Double meaning there. We aspire to grow “community media” for sure, but we also see ourselves as media with a mission: to “grow community.”

You need a newspaper with a clue in order to “grow community.” Wednesday Journal has a clue, but we also have to provide some of the glue. A newspaper is doing its job when it allows readers to experience the town they live in as a dynamic, vibrant, interconnected social system, aka “community.”

The community would exist without a newspaper, but you would only know one small part of it. Your part. And the community would feel fairly static. Community wouldn’t grow without media around to reflect it back to readers.

So first, Wednesday Journal has to stay alive. And we’ve done that for 40 years, no small feat, especially in the last decade.

In February of 2014, in a column titled, “Will WJ make it to 40?” here’s what I wrote:

KEN

TRAINOR

Like every other newspaper, this company has been struggling — ever since the Great Recession of 2009.

The recovery has been painfully slow, and there’s no boom waiting around the corner. Advertising and subscriptions alone won’t keep this newspaper afloat forever. The internet won’t ride to the rescue either.

The free market alone cannot save us. To make this enterprise sustainable, readers must view Wednesday Journal as an indispensable community asset and be willing to support that asset with donations.

Yes, it takes a village. If not Oak Park, then where?

Well, River Forest, too, we hope.

There’s a reason the good folks of a little burg in northern Wisconsin are able to support a championship-caliber NFL franchise, and it’s not free-market economics. It’s the collective that makes the difference for the Green Bay Packers.

Like NPR and PBS, sooner than later we will have to become donor-supported. And that won’t happen unless we hit the sweet spot for the majority of readers who pick up our product.

This newspaper is only as good as it is because the creative, talented people of Oak Park and River Forest feel enough ownership to contribute to its excellence.

We need to take that a step further. Maybe several steps.

We need a new model for community journalism, one that demands a lot more of the community. The old model is insufficient to the stormy present, as Lincoln said once upon a crisis. We must think anew and act anew. We need a combination of free-market forces and collective investment.

Without community support, will we be around to celebrate Wednesday Journal’s 40th anniversary in 2020?

Your guess is as good as mine.

I didn’t originate these ideas. They were kicked around the office for some time. Dan Haley made it happen, and he did it in the nick of time — just before the coronavirus arrived — or we might not be having this conversation.

We made it to 40! Readers are contributing their creativity and their treasure.

Will Wednesday Journal be around to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2030? Only if we build the beloved community.

Can we build a beloved community?

Not without a community-supported newspaper.

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

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W E D N E S D A Y

V I E W P O I N T S

Why it matters to remove Confederate statues

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

owner and defender of the institution of began reading John Hubbuch’s July 22 slavery. Slavery was the legal regime of column in agreement with his openrape, torture, genital mutilation, family ing thought that the coming election separation, and the robbery of the fruits for President “should be a layup” for of one’s labor based solely on one’s skin Joe Biden. As I read further, however, I color. For this reason, the symbols of the became alarmed as Mr. Hubbuch expressed Confederacy and the idealization of its the idea that Biden does not need to be leaders in the form of statues in prominent baited into side issues like Civil War monupublic places is an abomination that should no longer ments … “pretty much anything AOC is for.” What a racist, sexist, ageist remark. We already had a candidate be tolerated in our country if we are to truly make Black Lives Matter. that ran a campaign like that in 2016. She lost.

Mr. Hubbuch, you say few people feel passionately But then Hubbuch compounds his error. He says about these statues. If that were true, why have they most Americans do not know or care who Jefferson continued to remain in the centers Davis was, what century the Civil of cities throughout the South up to War was fought, and that relatively the present day? Why weren’t they few people care about these statues torn down when the Civil Rights except for those on the far left.

Movement ended legal segregation Wow, what incredible ignorance: and denial of the right to vote? Why of history, geography, culture and is it only now that the Confederate politics. flag is being banned from NASCAR Most white Southerners know or the state flag of Mississippi? who Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis The reason is that only now, and the other Confederate traiafter the death by torture of tors were. They were taught in George Floyd, have the scales elementary school onwards that fallen from the eyes of many these men were “heroes” for fightwhite people. Floyd’s death has ing to defend the Southern way riveted their gaze to the reality of of life from the “War of Northern white supremacy’s existence in Aggression.” That’s how the Civil the minds of white police officers War was characterized in Southern and American society in general. segregated white classrooms.

White supremacy and its many Black people, North and South, symbols perpetuate the oppresknow who these traitors were and Robert Edward Lee Sculpture in sion and dehumanization of what they stood for: the preservaBlack people. These symbols, the tion and expansion of slavery.

Charlottesville,Va. Confederate flag and Confederate Simply stated, beginning in the traitor politicians and warriors 1890s, these Confederate genermust be treated as the abominations they truly are, als and politicians were resurrected and placed on not dismissed as some left-wing obsession. pedestals throughout the South to re-establish white supremacy as the predominant ideology of the states Donald Trump wants to continue to wave the Conof the former Confederacy and in the United States federate flag, protect the statues of Confederate traigenerally. White supremacy became a convenient tors and torturers, and leave U.S. Army forts named argument to justify the subjugation of black people in for traitors and losers. the South and non-white peoples globally during the Please don’t join him in these pursuits. Trump uses age of Imperialism. white supremacist ideas to attempt to rally his base Robert E. Lee was not a hero or faithful soldier and divide natural political allies. Don’t help him. of his homeland. He was first and foremost, a slave Joe Kransdorf is an Oak Park resident.

JOURNAL of Oak Park and River Forest

JOE

Editor and Publisher Dan Haley

KRANSDORF One View

How about a free trial on composting?

I see a petition is circulating to make compost containers an opt-out system instead of an opt-in system. Maybe the idea is that the average Oak Parker is considered too stupid to be able to figure out how to opt in to composting or too lazy to actually make the call. Or maybe the idea is that the average Oak Parker is too distracted to notice the charge or too lazy to opt out.

If the objective is to increase composting, the focus should be on motivating people to want to compost, not on nanny-stating them and insulting their intelligence.

I’m not interested because it costs $45.90 per quarter and it’s not worth $45.90 per quarter to me. No doubt opt-out will result in some people paying for it but not using it, which will enrich Waste Management but do nothing to advance composting.

So do what every consumer business does to get you

hooked on their product or service. Give me a free trial and let me decide for myself if I’m actually going to use it and if it’s worth the price to me. Maybe I’ll decide I like it. Maybe I’ll decide to compost but not through the Waste Management mechanism. That’s a win for composting even if not for village or Waste Management finances.

Meanwhile, tell me what percentage of Oak Park homes currently pay for composting and what percentage of homes that sign up for it cancel after a year or less.

That will give you an unbiased picture of the value Oak Parkers actually place on village-enabled composting.

And if you don’t know the answers to those questions, do your homework before circulating petitions.

Bob Stigger Oak Park

Senior Editor Bob Uphues Staff Reporters Michael Romain, Stacey Sheridan, Maria Maxham Viewpoints Editor Ken Trainor Sports/Staff reporter James Kay Columnists Marc Blesoff, Jack Crowe, Doug Deuchler, John Hubbuch, May Kay O’Grady, Kwame Salter, John Stanger, Stan West, Linda Francis Staff Photographer Alex Rogals Design/Production Manager Andrew Mead Designers Mark Moroney, Javier Govea Business Manager Joyce Minich Advertising Designers Debbie Becker, Mark Moroney Marketing Representatives Marc Stopeck, Lourdes Nicholls Advertising Sales Marc Stopeck Sales & Development Mary Ellen Nelligan Circulation Manager Jill Wagner Front Desk Carolyn Henning, Maria Murzyn Chairman Emeritus Robert K. Downs

About Viewpoints Our mission is to lead educated conversation about the people, government, schools, businesses and culture of Oak Park and River Forest. As we share the consensus of Wednesday Journal’s editorial board on local matters, we hope our voice will help focus your thinking and, when need be, fire you to action.

In a healthy conversation about community concerns, your voice is also vital. We welcome your views, on any topic of community interest, as essays and as letters to the editor. Noted here are our stipulations for filing.

Please understand our verification process and circumstances that would lead us not to print a letter or essay. We will call to check that what we received with your signature is something you sent. If we can’t make that verification, we will not print what was sent. When, in addition to opinion, a letter or essay includes information presented as fact, we will check the reference. If we cannot confirm a detail, we may not print the letter or essay.

If you have questions, email Viewpoints editor Ken Trainor at ktrainor@wjinc.com.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

‘ONE VIEW’ ESSAY

■ 250-word limit

■ 500-word limit

■ Must include first and last names,

■ One-sentence footnote about yourself,

municipality in which you live, phone number (for verification only)

your connection to the topic ■ Signature details as at left

Email Ken Trainor at ktrainor@wjinc.com or mail to Wednesday Journal, Viewpoints, 141 S. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park, IL 60302 708 613 3300

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V I E W P O I N T S

T

Expiring TIFs and other questions about tax bills

by the TIFs, and used it for difhe second installment ferent purposes. property tax bills mailed Had the districts chosen not to in late June include two accept the TIF funds, Oak Park’s unusual features. First, overall level of taxation would the bills indicate they are have fallen. These local governdue on Aug. 3 but do not charge ments, however, concluded that late penalties until Oct. 2. This accepting the TIF money would extra, penalty-free time for allow them to improve their serpaying taxes is Cook County’s vices without imposing big tax response to the financial hardincreases on local taxpayers. ships caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Did all local taxing disThe second unusual feature tricts receive the maximum of this year’s bills relates to a amount permitted from the mismatch between increases in Oak Park tax bills and increases in local Township Assessor TIFs? No. Oak Park village governgovernment revenue. Taxes for ment and Oak Park Township most Oak Park property owners both increased their tax levies this year, increased by 4% this year. But local propbut deliberately asked for less than the erty tax revenues increased by 11%.

Why did revenue increases outstrip tax full amount available from the TIF expiration. They made this decision because increases by so much? they recognized that the large tax increasThe reason relates to the fact that this es Oak Park residents have experienced year’s tax bills are the first to be issued in recent years have created hardships for after the expiration of Oak Park’s two Tax many local residents. These districts saw Increment Finance (TIF) districts. the TIF expiration as an opportunity to Oak Park’s TIF districts were designed maintain services while providing relief to promote economic development on to taxpayers.

Madison Street and in downtown Oak Park.

During the life of these TIFs, revenue from How was the high school able to ingrowth in the value of TIF district propercrease its tax levy by 18%? ties went into a special fund controlled by If the high school exercised its rights village government. under state law in the same way as the park When the TIFs expired, state law gave district, library and elementary schools, its local schools and other taxing districts the levy would have increased by about 8.5% right to tap into the $14.5 million that went this year. But the school, which reduced its into local TIF funds last year. State law also tax levy under a special program last year, allowed schools and most other local taxing was permitted to offset that tax reduction districts to increase their tax levies by an this year. additional 1.9% this year, matching the Under a new state aid program taking applicable level of inflation. Using these effect last year, qualifying school districts provisions of state law, three local taxing in high-tax communities could receive new districts — District 97, the park district and state aid if they reduced their property the library — were able to increase their tax levies. Under this program, Oak Park tax levies by about 10% this year. and River Forest High School reduced its Although each district’s revenue inproperty tax levy by $4.5 million last year, creased by about 10%, most taxpayers paid and in return received $3.8 million in extra an average of just 3.7% more to the three state aid. districts. This was possible because the This year, the school expects to receive districts did not add to the tax burden by another $3.8 million in state aid but is not accepting the TIF money. Instead, they required to offset the aid with property tax reallocated tax money previously collected

ALI ELSAFFAR

reductions. Instead, the school restored its levy to the level in effect before last year’s $4.5 million reduction, as it was concerned that the extra state aid might not be available next year. The result was an 18% increase in the school’s overall levy, and a 13% increase in taxes paid to the school by most Oak Park property owners.

Can I do anything to reduce my current tax bill?

If you are eligible for a homeowner, senior citizen or other exemption but did not receive one, the Township Assessor’s Office can assist you in obtaining a revised bill for a smaller amount. If you have received all exemptions for which you are eligible, however, you likely will not be able to do anything about your current bill.

What can be done about dangerous funerals?

Recently my husband and I (both in our 70s) had to stop our car in the crosswalk for a lengthy funeral procession while making a west turn on Chicago and Oak Park avenues.

The cars in the funeral were headed west.

We guessed it was a gang funeral of some sort since drivers opened their windows yelling gross expletives in anger at us. Another passenger opened his door, yelled an expletive, and spat in our direction. Others were sitting on their window sills or stand-

ing through their sun roofs yelling as their cars swerved around us.

After a while an Oak Park police car followed what we thought was the end of the procession. But no, more cars followed and we were stuck.

We were genuinely frightened since we were blocked by other cars in the crosswalk and couldn’t move. Had someone jumped out, we literally had no room to move.

I remember reading about rules in place

Can I do anything to reduce future tax bills?

Earlier this year, the Cook County Assessor’s Office sent out reassessment notices to all Oak Park property owners, which will impact property taxes paid next year. Taxpayers had the right to appeal the values in the reassessment notices, and many did.

Unfortunately, the pandemic has caused significant delays in the processing of these appeals.

When the results from Oak Park appeals filed with the County Assessor’s Office are issued, taxpayers will have another opportunity to file an appeal with the Cook County Board of Review. When appeal dates are announced, residents may call Oak Park Township for help in preparing an appeal.

Stand up to authoritarianism

about funerals driving through Oak Park on their way to the cemetery. Whatever came of that discussion? This week a large number of people were shot at a different funeral in Chicago. What can be done about this serious situation?

It seems unimaginable that we have to deal with this in our neighborhoods and that cemeteries might not be safe places.

Trump is threatening to send troops to cities around the U.S. as modern-day storm troopers/slave patrols that will brutally attack citizens. Trump is a Putin lackey who wants to be a dictator like Putin. We must stand up against this authoritarianism.

Oak Park

Oak Park

Maryanne Rusinak

Tom Ard

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

PFLAG congratulates the Wednesday Journal on your 40th anniversary!

Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender Serving the Oak Park area for 15 years We meet on the 4th Sunday First United Church of Oak Park 848 Lake Street, Oak Park (at Kenilworth) 3 pm - 5 pm This is a place of confidentiality.

708.386.1738 www.pflag.org

pflagoakpark@pflagillinois.org

We now meet via ZOOM - email us to join!

Support .... Education....Advocacy

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V I E W P O I N T S

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Slacktivism and social media

s the act of posting Black Lives Matter content on social media just a lazy form of activism? During the 1960s, in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement, activism was defined as “the policy or practice of doing things with decision and energy.” Does it really take decision and energy to post something and then carry on with the rest of your day? I don’t know.

My experience with online activism has been fairly turbulent.

During the Australian bush fires in February, countless people were posting links to fundraisers on their Instagram stories that were later found to be just a hoax. I’ve seen so many instances on social media where people don’t fact-check a charity or newsfeed and they end up spreading misinformation. This ultimately clogs the overall force of the movement, and instead of focusing on what needs to change, we get distracted by the fact that we were lied to by a fake account.

Social media has greatly changed how we view activism. Putting something on your Instagram story is nice. It informs people and is a step in the right direction. However, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t believe it’s capable of reversing years of systemic oppression on its own.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many activists on social media who have used their platform to genuinely do good. The #MeToo movement made great strides because of its ability to connect with victims’ stories all over the world. Greta Thunberg will soon become a household name for the younger generations after she used social media to generate the Fridays for Future movement.

Now we are faced with the Black Lives Matter movement which is finally gaining the traction it rightfully deserves. However, half the time it feels like people aren’t posting to be helpful but are coming from a place of self-righteousness.

So a girl posts a bikini pic at her lake

house on Instagram. Is it insensitive to the movement? Yes. But how do we know that she isn’t donating, signing petitions, or reading articles just because she isn’t necessarily posting about it?

I think it’s important to understand that when you put others down for not posting anything BLM-related, it really just pressures them into posting out of a place of performativity, a need to defend oneself, without the intention of actually doing good.

Side note: Why aren’t men being held to the same standard as women right now? My female peers have been called out for not posting about BLM, yet I can’t count the amount of pictures that my male peers have posted over the past three weeks alone of themselves fishing or drinking with their friends. And yet, I’ve observed little to no criticism directed toward them. Not only are fishing pictures super-unflattering, but I also think it’s interesting how (based on what I’ve seen) men aren’t being held to the same level of accountability as women.

I know so many white people who have turned this movement into an opportunity to stand on a soap box to preach to the rest of us about what we should/shouldn’t post on social media, even though we have no idea whether or not they themselves are fulfilling their activist duties. While posting a smoothie bowl on Instagram might be a micro-aggression, I doubt the person who posted it actually had racist intentions. This is where education is necessary.

However, there is a difference between educating someone and putting them down.

We need to work together to make social media a positive place again. We are holding people accountable for the wrong reasons.

White people need to learn how to be better allies to the movement by putting their soapbox aside and using social media to amplify black voices.

It’s time that African Americans have the spotlight for once.

MARGARET KORINEK One View

wabi sabi F I L M F E S T I V A L

Congratulations to all the staff over those years, and the staff doing a great job in these pandemic times!

Congratulations to the guy who started it off and has been there for all those 40 years - Dan Haley.

Our local communities would not be the same without the WJ. Lets all support this important neighbor for the next 40 years!

For more information or to contact A Tribe Called Aging go to www.atribecalledaging.com

What does the Journal mean to Oak Park?

■ The forum for public debate provided by Wednesday Journal has been both open and constant and a necessary component of Oak Park open government.

■ The Journal has never wavered in fulfilling its obligations to the community and to its profession as a living, breathing member of the Fifth Estate.

■ They have provided a voice when one was needed. They have not been afraid to challenge our local institutions when necessary and seek accountability from them.

■ They have provided this village with an invaluable and reliable 40-year historical

record of our ongoing struggle, as a community, to live up to the good government and open community ideals we are constantly aspiring to achieve.

■ Their compass has been consistently forthright and true, whether they are drilling down on an issue or providing a broader perspective on something that forces us to think.

■ In all of these things, Wednesday Journal has been an indispensable cornerstone for this village.

Ray Heise

Retired Oak Park village attorney

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

S H R U B T O W N

by Marc Stopeck

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

Boutique Salon Serving the Oak Park Community and surrounding communities

Following all CDC protocols & guidelines

Outdoor patio/waiting area

Hiring Beauty Professionals

Mario Negron | Salon owner | Master Stylist | 818 Harrison St, Oak Park 708.948.7747 | www.m2hairsalon.com

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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Gunderson proposal should be rejected

am writing to express my concern about the proposed development of 435 Madison Street, a parcel located directly adjacent to the Gunderson Historic District.

As a resident of the district, I (like most of my neighbors) would welcome a highquality, appropriate, and context-sensitive development of 435 Madison, but I do not believe that the proposal at hand is any of these things.

The Oak Park Plan Commission voted unanimously against this project. Despite this resounding rejection, the developers have elected to present it to the village board with minor changes that do not address the Plan Commission’s grave concerns. To date, the board has never overturned a unanimous decision of the Plan Commission, and I sincerely hope they will continue to respect the guidance of their panel of experts.

In their “Finding of Fact” document, presented to the board on May 28, the Plan Commission said the development was “inappropriately massive, dense, tall …

and too close to the residential properties to the south and east,” and that the “residential neighborhood to the south and the east would be negatively impacted by such a dense and tall building on too close of a proximity.”

The developer’s minor revisions are simply not enough: 1) The building is still too tall: The developer has made no changes to the proposed height — at 5 stories and 63 feet tall, instead of the permitted 50 feet, this building would be taller than any existing building on Madison.

2) It is still too dense: 42 units instead of the permitted 24.

3) It is still too close to its neighbors: The five-story building will loom over the neighboring single-family historic Gunderson homes. It is a mere 15 feet from the nearest home to the south, and only the narrow 8-foot alley will separate it from the neighboring properties to the east.

This proposed development is clearly at odds with the goals expressed in the village’s strategic plan, Envision Oak Park: A Comprehensive Plan for the Oak Park Community (2014). This plan emphasizes the importance of “Oak Park’s heritage and its historically and architecturally significant neighborhoods … including three nationally recognized historic districts.” It calls for “context-sensitive development” that is “complementary to the scale and character of surrounding residential neighborhoods.”

The Plan Commission rightly determined that this proposed development, which will compromise the character of the Gunderson Historic District, is not the sort of contextsensitive development that is permitted

by Oak Park’s Zoning Ordinance (created in 2017, the ordinance is up to date and development-friendly) and envisioned in Oak Park’s comprehensive plan, nor is it the type of development that Oak Park deserves.

Why do the developers refuse to make the

ELIZABETH LOENTZ One View

Homeland insecurity

Re: “Homeland Security making plans to deploy some 150 agents in Chicago this week” (Chicago Tribune, July 20): The very name “Homeland Security” has always invoked visions of Nazi storm troopers. This image will be reinforced if you watch videos recorded recently in Portland, Oregon. Heavily armed men who do not speak and refuse to identify themselves grab people off city streets and spirit them away in unmarked black vans. They do not explain who they are, what infraction was committed, or what justification they have for kidnapping citizens.

They shot one peaceful protestor in the face, shattering his skull. Neither the mayor of Portland nor the governor of Oregon asked for this invasion of federal troops.

These secret commandos were reportedly re-assigned from ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, or even DEA. The mayor of Portland asked them to leave and said they are exacerbating the violence in a difficult situation. Some

Portland citizens are additionally concerned that this “official” kidnapping paves the way for vigilantes, such as the “Proud Boys” in Portland, to branch out into their own anonymous kidnapping. In the new Trump anarchy, anyone can kidnap anyone else while protected by the presumption they are federal troops.

Now Trump wants to send his personal secret armed forces to Chicago. This is clearly a political stunt, intended to excite his base and insult the country’s leading Democrats. However, it is far more sinister than that because the invasion of American cities and states by uninvited federal troops has never occurred in this country.

But it did occur in Nazi Germany, and it happens in other dictatorships.

In his desperation, the most despised president in U.S. history has adopted a truly horrendous path.

changes suggested by both the Plan Commission and concerned neighbors? They say they cannot reduce the height, number of units, or building footprint, because this “reduces the operational income for the development” rendering it “not economically feasible.”

The Plan Commission made the right decision. It is not their job to bend Oak Park’s zoning ordinance to maximize a developer’s profits. It is their job to uphold our rules and standards to ensure that the unique character of our community will be preserved for its current and future residents. They can and do approve variances to the ordinance if there are significant compensating benefits for the community, but in this case, they determined that the compensating benefits were not sufficient for the significant variances the developer is seeking. I sincerely hope that our village trustees and president also make the right decision: to reject this proposal.

Elizabeth Loentz is a resident of Oak Park.

Oak Park in July Oak Park is flower city They make the village look so pretty Plants in the ground, pots full off so many kinds of blossoms beautiful tiful Stop for a minute Appreciate it!

Joanne Selden Oak Park

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1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

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n behalf of the North Avenue Neighbors Association, The North Avenue District, and all the many residents and business owners who have posted their best regards on social media, we thank Officer Anthony Coleman for his longtime service to Zone One and the entire Village of Oak Park.

Officer Coleman’s service as resident beat officer in Zone One has brought the diverse northeast Oak Park community together and provided us with the opportunity to voice concerns and receive accurate information on issues of crime and safety in our area.

He will be greatly missed We wish Officer Coleman and his family the very best in his well-deserved retirement years. He will always be welcome at our block parties and other events.

In your own words, Officer Coleman, “Stay alert and stay safe.”

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

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V I E W P O I N T S

The speech Trump could have given

M

y fellow Americans: As April 2020 draws to a close, it has been a month since nearly every school in the country closed its doors and sent students home for the remainder of the school year.

Students have been hurt by this action.

They have fallen behind in their studies and many have suffered emotional trauma.

Still, the actions were necessary in order to protect the health of students, faculty and staff.

This cannot continue into the next school year. If losing two months of in-person education is detrimental to students, think about what losing an entire school year would mean. Not opening schools this fall is simply not acceptable to me and it should not be acceptable to any American, regardless of party affiliation. We must all commit to do what is necessary to ensure that schools reopen in the fall.

But we can’t reopen schools if it is not safe to do so. Subjecting students and teachers to a disease that we do not yet fully understand, but that has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, is also not acceptable. So we have four months to do the things that need to be done to reopen schools safely.

First and foremost, we have to mitigate the outbreak of COVID-19 now, before it becomes unmanageable and overruns our health-care system’s ability to treat patients. In the coming days, the world’s leading experts on immunology from the CDC and the NIH will develop guidelines that are likely to include social distancing, the wearing of masks, temporary closures of certain businesses, and even stay-at-home orders.

Where it is possible to mandate these guidelines at the federal level, I will do so.

Where it is not possible to do something at the federal level, I will encourage the

governors to institute mandates at the state level. These guidelines will be developed by health professionals, who will be insulated from politics as they chart the appropriate course of action.

A task force will determine how to assess whether it is safe to open schools this fall. We recognize that the health risk of reopening a school is not going to be zero. The health risk has never been zero, even before the current pandemic. There has always been a risk that kids would contract a disease in school, or even be hit by a car on their way there.

But we have mitigated those risks, by requiring vaccines, by prohibiting unwell students from attending school, by hiring crossing guards, and by enacting school zone speed limits. We will do the same now to ensure that we reduce the risk of transmitting COVID-19 to the lowest practical level.

The coming months are going to be difficult. Life will not be the same. But the only way back to in-person education, or any other semblance of normalcy in our lives, is through the collective action of the American people. As doctors search for a vaccine and effective treatments, we all must do our part to limit the transmission of this disease. The restrictions we will face, while inconvenient, are nothing compared to the effects of an unchecked virus circulating among us.

So please, do your part — for your sake and the sake of your children — and follow all the guidelines provided by federal, state and local officials. If you do not, I fear that by the end of July, we will be mourning the loss of as many as 150,000 Americans, and we will conclude that there is no safe path to in-person instruction in 2020-21.

Thank you. And God bless the United States of America.

Leonard Soffer is a resident of River Forest.

LEONARD SOFFER One View

Basketball, anyone?

As Oak Park continues to wrestle with what our community should look like (especially in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement), we should reconsider our tennis courts. Yes, tennis is a COVID-friendly activity. However, its structural prevalence in parks is potentially problematic.

When I moved to Oak Park in high school, I was perplexed by the abundance of tennis courts and paucity of basketball hoops.

The few hoops that existed generally had the rims locked to discourage play. From the information I’ve gathered, tennis courts abound because tennis is a nice, safe, upper-

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middle-class pastime. Basketball is a much more accessible sport, and, as a result, is played by a larger variety of people. Basketball hoops are limited because the community does not want a certain demographic congregating in the parks, potentially making noise and causing trouble.

All members of our community should be encouraged to enjoy our parks. We should take a closer look at how we’ve designed our public spaces to work toward better achieving this goal.

Chena Underhill

Oak Park

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V I E W P O I N T S

Helping kids muddle through

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n the mid-’60s, renowned political scientist Charles Lindblom aptly described the process of mutual adjustment that can occur in partisan politics when, often without daily directions from top leaders, decisions get made and policies get implemented. In other words, politicians spend a lot of time “muddling through.”

We hadn’t read Lindblom, but in our Berwyn bungalow on Clarence Avenue, in our tiny polity, we six Kordesh kids operated similarly. Generally without specific parental orders, we worked out on a day-to-day, or week-to-week, basis who might get what room to sleep in, who at any particular moment would access the one bathroom in the house, who chose what would be playing on TV, which of us siblings would walk the dog and when, and a myriad of other decisions.

Sure, Mom and Dad were attentive to us and generally in charge. We had to get their OKs to reallocate bedroom assignments, for example. To get through the day, we worked within their set of general rules, framed for us by our Deep State: the Roman Catholic Church. We muddled through, but within limits.

In our one-and-a-half story brick home, kids and parents would be constantly moving around and past one another, into and out of the “parlor,” the dining room, kitch-

D

en, the intersecting hallways, the back porch, as well through the three doors that led out to the neighborhood. Amazingly, we would never collide!

We had our methods of communicating with, and spying on, one another without getting in each other’s way. The kitchen was a major hub of activity. One sister would hide in my parents’ bedroom closet and listen through an air vent on the floor to what was being said at the table. A floor vent in the converted bedroom upstairs allowed a kid to lie prone and talk to whoever below might be using the sink, stove or refrigerator.

True, as the oldest kid and boy, followed by four sisters, I took for granted certain privileges. I always had my own bedroom, although to secure it I situated myself in spaces not exactly built for sleeping soundly, including the enclosed but not insulated back porch, and the unfinished basement.

Some of the perks I enjoyed still aggravate my sisters. They remind me even today about how I used to eat most of the broiled chicken wings that Mom would fix for dinner. They still can’t believe Mom let me get away with it!

It was not unusual in our neighborhood for the bungalows, built generally with

the same floor plans, to house six or more people. The family next door to us had four kids. A house further down the block held five children (and the two parents). Twenty-four children lived on our side of the block.

Not only were the homes designed alike, the muddling through within them worked similarly, granting variations for parental style and temperament.

Moms and dads set the general rules. Kids often worked out when they’d go out to play (if school wasn’t in session), which friends to have over, when to hold baseball or football games or jump rope in the alley.

Sometimes, the mutual adjustment got heated. Fights would erupt. There were a couple of bullies. When they saw bullying occur, dads or moms would step in. The fact that we all went to the same school and church — St. Mary of Celle — imposed a certain, quietly reverberating moral order whose origins we generally didn’t talk about much. But we knew there were limits. And we knew they would be enforced.

Flash forward to the early 2000s. Maureen and I are raising our four kids in a five-bedroom, three-story Victorian in Oak Park. Each of the three boys and the girl

RICH

KORDESH One View

have their own rooms. There are three bathrooms. I work in my own office, as does Maureen in hers. There is still plenty of mutual adjustment, but more space and time for individual plans. The muddling through occurs in a different context than I had experienced in the 1960s.

A different moral order has emerged, attentive to racial, cultural and gender equality. Computers and cellphones connect kids and adults to the rest of the planet. They network with each other online. Technological savvy, contracts with responsible service providers, and good communication lines are needed by parents to keep up with what the young ones do.

Muddling through works for kids when their families and communities provide the moral frames within which to practice it. Surely, there are in Berwyn and Oak Park today more programmed activities for kids than there used to be. Family sizes are smaller. There are more and different sources of guidance available for each of the two communities’ youngsters than we had. But whether they grow up in bungalows or Victorians, kids need freedom, and they need limits and trust in their legitimacy.

Rich Kordesh is a former Berwyn and Oak Park resident who currently lives in Chicago.

Educational equity is more important than ever

ear Dr. Carol Kelley and members of the District 97 Board of Education: I am the mother of two District 97 students, one of whom has an IEP. In the special board meeting on July 23, Dr. Kelley repeatedly insisted we parents were not “teaching” our students during remote learning but merely “supervising” them. I am giving her the benefit of the doubt that she meant to defend D97 teachers’ hard work. However, it was still hard to hear.

That’s because my son needs a one-on-one instructional aide to access the curriculum.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic last spring, I served as his one-on-one aide, modifying his work, giving mini-lessons, reading alternate pages aloud, creating word banks, handling meltdowns, implementing sensory breaks, sometimes logging him onto multiple Zoom meetings a day, and — because his communication ability, particularly through video, is limited — sitting with him through all of those Zoom meetings to help him engage.

I am also a high school teacher and have a daughter, who while not as in need as my son, requires 1-2 hours of direct instruction and executive-functioning guidance each school day in order to access the curriculum.

I was teaching both my 120 high school students and my children from 5 a.m. to some-

times 7 or 8 p.m. each evening in the spring.

I was not supervising. I was teaching.

My children had incredible classroom teachers who were doing all they could, but the nature of my children’s learning needs are such that they need work modified on the fly, they need prompts, they need visual supports, they need in-person instruction. I am giving it. And I will continue to do so, and should, as our community’s health right now outweighs my children’s learning needs.

However, at the very least, our superintendent could have the courage, empathy, and understanding to acknowledge this is happening in many homes, not just those of the 900 or so students with IEPs. Students who need the most support and resources when we are in school still need it and parents, many working full time and some with multiple children with special needs, are doing that work right now.

Please see us and acknowledge the hard work we are doing. Please actually call a thing a thing. While I agree with the decision to go fully remote for the first trimester in the interest of safety, I beg you to not only acknowledge our struggle, but to take concrete

steps to make remote learning more effective for our students.

I have outlined a few here and was part of the committee that made a series of recommendations to Dr. Kelley and the board on how to best implement remote learning for children with IEPs. Related service providers must administer therapies through a video conferencing platform with an understanding that some families may refuse. Many students did not receive the therapies in their IEPs (speech, physical and occupational therapy, and social work) in the spring, but instead got a weekly mass email with suggested activities (for their parents to implement.) Some did receive therapies. It was completely at the whim of the provider your student had.

Students with a on-on-one teaching aide as an accommodation in their IEP should have homebound services from their aide to facilitate their instruction. I understand there are legal hurdles to this, but having been a past homebound teacher myself, I also know they are not unprecedented and that we are living in an unprecedented time.

We must overcome these hurdles and do the best by our students. We need a district-

ERIKA ECKART One View

wide modified math curriculum at each grade level, a version with visual supports, links to materials, reduced problems. During spring remote learning, I was offended when I learned modified materials were being sent to every student in gifted and talented (GTD) math, when many special education students were not getting muchneeded modified materials. That is patently offensive to our equity mission.

Please give these and the suggestions outlined in the Special Education Parent and Faculty Committee Guidance full consideration. Remote learning planning in the spring seemed based on the needs of students without special needs. I implore you to consider our students’ needs more fully in the next round of planning.

However, as Dr. Kelley could not answer a board member’s question about how a remote option looks for students with IEPs, I am anxious our students’ needs may be glossed over again.

As we mark the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the inequities that necessitated its passage are as present as ever during this pandemic in unequal access to education.

Erika Eckart is an Oak Park resident and a District 97 parent.

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1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

attend graduate school. For three years, she taught in an elementary school district in the southern suburbs.

One day a neighbor on the staff of a Chicago-based civil rights organization reported that they were assisting an AfricanSurrounded by family members, includ- American couple which was having trouble ing her 11-month-old great-grandchild, finding housing in an all-white western subMarjorie Jean Gockel died on July 17, 2020. urb called “Oak Park.” They were obviously Thus ended a life dedicated to community the victims of discrimination. Would Marge betterment which many have described as and her husband serve as testers, posing as prospective buyers? Thus they were intro“iconic.” duced to the village, and moved Born in 1933 in Detroit to Ruth to Oak Park in 1969. and Harry Wyche, at a young age Soon after arriving, Marge noshe and her family moved to Laticed that the community lacked peer, Michigan. After graduating a farmers market. Something from the University of Michihad to be done. With co-conspiragan’s School of Education, the tor Carla Lind, they decided that newly-minted instructor drove a new market should be modeled all the way to San Diego to teach after ones in Ann Arbor, Michijunior high school in a rapidlygan and Madison, Wisconsin. Afexpanding school district there. ter more than a year of research Marge soon made many friends. With three other young and organizing, they proposed MARGE GOCKEL women from the Midwest, she that one be established. The vilrented a conveniently located lage board was reluctant — it oceanfront apartment. Another major de- might attract rats and other vermin, the mographic in San Diego then comprised village would have to clean up after messy young, male, single naval officers. Not sur- farmers, and there would be traffic snarls. prisingly, “mixers” were held on Sunday af- Eventually the village formed an official ternoons at an officers club. farmers market commission, and appointed By happenstance, one of these mixers was Marge its chair. It opened in 1976, and beattended by her future husband, whose dis- came a major feature of Oak Park life and a charge from the Navy and return to the Mid- gift to its residents. west were imminent. Soon they were marNext, the League of Women Voters. One ried in her home town in 1957 and settled of its major projects was monitoring the acin Chicago’s South Side so that Galen could tions of local government. It was Marge’s

Marge Gockel, 86

Co-founder, OP Farmers Market

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job to recruit, train, and supervise memberobservers, each of whom would attend meetings of one of the seven units of local government and report back to the League. For her service, the League of Women Voters named her the recipient of its Hazel Hanson Award.

Next, Frank Lloyd Wright. The acquisition and extensive renovation of the Wright Home & Studio was a major community effort for many years. Marge volunteered as a docent and served for a time on the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust Board of Directors. For her years of volunteer service, she received the FLW Preservation Trust’s 2005 Volunteer of the Year Award.

Professionally, Marge was employed for almost 20 years, primarily at the University of Illinois Chicago. She rose to the position of assistant director, then acting director, of its Office of School and Community Relations, whose mission was the recruitment of students to the university. She was also an officer of the Illinois Association of College Admissions Counselors.

And she was a scholar. In 1988 she completed course work for the M.A. degree from the university. For her thesis she invented the concept of “metrophobia” which measured the extent to which prospective college students are reluctant to attend colleges located in large cities.

Marge is survived by her children, Andrew and Rebecca; her husband of 63 years, Galen; eight grandchildren, and two greatgrandchildren, with another one on the way!

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Mary Lee Janis, 81 Early investor in Wednesday Journal

Longtime Oak Park resident, Mary Lee Janis, 81, died peacefully on July 18, 2020. She graduated from Trinity High School and later earned a bachelor’s degree in History from Dominican University.

She and her husband, Patrick Janis, moved to Oak Park in 1966. They raised four children as well as many foster children. She worked as a bookkeeper for the family’s business (the United States Tennis Gut Association) and as an assistant for an MARY LEE JANIS interior design company.

The couple contributed to many important causes in the community. They were involved in the creation of the Oak Park Housing Center and were investors in the Wednesday Journal.

She had a love for history and culture as seen by her travels around the world. She and her husband traveled across Europe and to Egypt, Turkey, and Vietnam. She was a strong believer in equality, internationalism, and progressivism.

An excellent chef, she loved to share her dishes with family and friends. Her recipes were often inspired by Julia Childs, Jacque Pipen, or Rick Bayless — and she executed

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Fiercely loving and supportive of family and friends, her kindness and generosity live on in all the family and friends whose lives they touched.

Mary Lee was preceded in death by Patrick, her husband of 56 years, and her son, Patrick John. She is survived by her children, Maureen Skelton, Christopher (Victoria) Janis, and Sheila (Juan Buenrostro) Janis; her grandchildren, Tom Skelton, Julian and Pat Janis, and Maya and Elena Buenrostro; her beloved dog Penny, and many friends.

A celebration of her life is planned for a later date when the coronavirus has abated more.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Mary Lee’s name to Housing Forward (formerly PADS homeless shelter program), Grateful House, and the Oak Park-River Forest Food Pantry.

Marjorie Hunt, 94 Painter, singer and poet

Marjorie Elizabeth Hunt (nee Fox), age 94, of Oak Park, died on July 12, 2020. Born on July 12, 1926, she attended the Art Institute of Chicago. Her paintings were exhibited and sold in the gallery. She was a gifted singer, and a published poet, including Poetry Magazine and many other publications. At the age of 50 she took ownership of Plants Alive! in Hyde Park, and toMARJORIE HUNT gether with her partner, Bruce, ran the business for 35 more years, winning numerous awards for original design. She won the grand prize at Navy Pier for an exhibit at the Chicago Garden and Flower Show.

Marjorie was the mother of Phillip Devin Hunt; the grandmother of Amanda Claire Hunt, Evelyn Layla Hunt, Lillian Isabelle Hunt, and the late Thomas Kevin Hunt; companion of William Bruce Kyes; aunt of Janet (Kelena) Roberts and James Minkin; and sister of the late Dorothy Minkin.

Services and interment at Concordia Cemetery in Forest Park are private. She will be laid to rest with her grandson, Thomas.

Arrangements were handled by Drechsler, Brown & Williams Funeral Home.

Jolly Brown, 88 Madly Pop’n proprietor

JOLLY BROWN

Jolly Ralph Brown, 88, formerly of River Forest and Brookfield, died peacefully on July 24, 2020, with his wife and family by his side.

Born on Jan. 7, 1932 in Gadsden, Alabama to the late Edwin and Julia (nee Johnson) Brown, he served in the U.S. Navy during

1980-2020 - CELEBRATING 40 YEARS the Korean War as a radar operator on the U.S.S. Manchester. A 1959 graduate of Auburn University, during football season, he enjoyed nothing more than watching his beloved team beat ’Bama.

In 1984, he and his wife opened Madly Pop’n, a gourmet popcorn gift shop in Oak Park. For the next 25 years, the business became a staple in the Oak Park community. He embraced his wife’s Italian heritage, each year making gallons of homemade wine that were enjoyed around many crowded dinner tables. He became an honorary citizen to Calvene, the small Italian town from which his in-laws emigrated.

Jolly’s favorite pastimes were traveling, internationally and domestically, spending time with family and friends and sitting on the sidelines watching his grandchildren’s sports activities. He will be missed for his gregarious laugh and love of life.

Jolly Brown was the husband of Madeline (nee Brazzale) Brown for 57 years; the father of Rebecca (Ken) Schlorf, Rachel (Mike) Peterson, and Roberta (Philip) Ferrante; grandfather of Will, Dylan, Gabriella, Ryan, Ben, Nick and Dominic; brother of the late Vivian (Joe) Keracher and the late Edwin (Juanita) Brown; and the brother-in-law, uncle, cousin and friend of many.

Due to restrictions of COVID-19, there will be a private, invitation-only Mass at Our Lady of Pompeii in Chicago. A celebration of Jolly’s life will happen at a later date. In the meantime, please share your favorite memories, thoughts, stories, tributes and photos with the family under the tribute wall tab at the top of his page at www.drechslerbrownwilliams.com.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital at https://www.stjude.org.

Arrangements were handled by Drechsler, Brown & Williams Funeral Home.

A memorial service will be held at a later date.

Arrangements were handled by Drechsler, Brown & Williams Funeral Home.

Marvin Schlichting, 92

Math teacher, author, basketball coach Marvin R. Schlichting, 92, of Willow Springs, Forest Park, and River Forest, died on July 19, 2020. Born on Jan. 23, 1928, he received his bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Valparaiso, his master’s from Notre Dame, and his PhD in Mathematics from the University of North Carolina. A lifelong educator, he taught high school and college for many years, authored Mathematics textbooks, and loved coaching high MARVIN SCHLICHTING school basketball.

Marv Schlichting was the husband of the late Jane; the father of Nancy (Robert) Blackwell and Greg (Kirstin) Schlichting; grandfather of Ryan, Evan (Shelbie) and Tara Blackwell, and Mason and Carson Schlichting; great-grandfather of Noah Robert Blackwell; brother of the late Henry, Glenn and Lorraine; and the uncle and greatuncle of many.

Visitation will be held on Wednesday, July 29 from 10 a.m. until time of service, 10:30 a.m., at St. Paul Lutheran Church, 1025 Lake St., Melrose Park, followed by interment at Concordia Cemetery.

Arrangements were handled by Drechsler, Brown & Williams Funeral Home.

Rosemary O’Connor, 90 Thomas Schmidt, 74 Active in the River Forest community

Member of St. Giles Family Mass group

Rosemary K. O’Connor (nee Unger), formerly of River Forest, died on July 24, 2020 at Brookdale in Oak Park. Born in the Richmond Hill area of New York, on Aug. 19, 1929 to the late George and Anna (De Gross) Unger, she spent her childhood years in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, a small town just outside of Philadelphia.

She graduated from the University of Miami in Florida, where ROSEMARY O’CONNOR she met her future husband, Edmund C. O’Connor. They were married on Aug. 4, 1951 at St. Philomena’s Church in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. They moved to River Forest where they raised three children. She was active with the Infant Welfare Society and the Art Association of River Forest. She and Ed were longtime members of the Oak Park Country Club.

Rosemary O’Connor was preceded in death by her daughter, Kathleen, in 1970 and by her husband in 2013. She is survived by her son, Edmund (Lauren Accinelli) O’Connor, and her daughter Lisa O’Connor. She is also survived by her brother George (the late June, MD) Unger, MD and their six children.

Thomas Charles Schmidt, 74, of Oak Park, died peacefully in his home, surrounded by his family, on July 20, 2020, following a twoyear battle with cancer.

Born on Nov. 26, 1945 at Oak Park Hospital, he was the youngest of eight children born to Katherine (Berens) and Bernard Schmidt.

He grew up in Maywood, and completed his education at Sacred Heart Elementary School, Proviso East High School and the

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

63

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

He married Mary Galli-Lennox in 1969, just before serving two years in the U.S. Army. They started married life in Indianapolis and eventually settled in Oak THOMAS SCHMIDT Park where they raised their family.

He worked his entire career as an insurance underwriter for Wausau Insurance, where he made many friends and played many hands of “Uno” during his lunch hour.

An active and cherished member of the St. Giles Family Mass Community since the mid-1970s, he was part of liturgy planning teams, served as a youth catechist, delivered lay reflections on the Gospel, and was instrumental in forming and sustaining a vibrant men’s group. After retiring in 2007, Tom and Mary spent as much time as possible traveling between their family lake house in northern Wisconsin and visiting their children and grandchildren. He spent many hours tinkering with and sailing in his boat.

He was an avid (though not proficient) golfer, and loved listening to music, playing board games, and doing puzzles. He was a model of patience, generosity, and faith, and he loved and laughed well throughout his life.

Tom Schmidt is survived by Mary, his wife of 51 years; his children, Jennifer (Tony Krolak), Ben (Lisa Schlesinger), and Kate (Maui Jones); his grandchildren, Alexi, Sam, Sophia, Zoe, and Cora; 33 nieces and nephews; and four siblings, Marie (the late Bob), Chuck (Mary), Thelma (the late Ike) Wagner, Carole Jean (Dale) Fredericks, and brotherin law Thomas (Elizabeth) Obrochta.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Bernard and Katherine Schmidt, his siblings Edith (Bill) Mills, Lawrence (Raoulyn and Joanie), Ann Obrochta, and his grandchildren, Nathaniel and Ella Ann. Condolences for Tom’s family can be left at www.drechslerbrownwilliams.com and https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/tomschmidt2.

In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation to Beyond Hunger (https://www. gobeyondhunger.org/) or Housing Forward (https://www.housingforward.org/) Arrangements were handled by Drechsler, Brown & Williams Funeral Home.

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REACHES SIX SUBURBAN COMMUNITIES: OAK PARK, RIVER FOREST, FOREST PARK, BROOKFIELD, RIVERSIDE, NORTH RIVERSIDE, AND PARTS OF CHICAGO

WEDNESDAY

CLASSIFIED

65

HOURS: 9:00 A.M.– 5:00 P.M. MON–FRI

Deadline is Monday at 5:00 p.m.

Please Check Your Ad: The publisher will not be responsible for more than one incorrect insertion.

Wednesday Journal Classified must be notified before the second insertion.

The newspaper reserves the right to edit or reject any advertisement.

Place your ad online anytime at: www.OakPark.com/ClassiďŹ ed/

BY PHONE: (708) 613-3333 | BY FAX: (708) 467-9066 | BY E-MAIL: CLASSIFIEDS@OAKPARK.COM | CLASSIFIEDS@RIVERFOREST.COM HELP WANTED

HELP WANTED

YOUTH DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST Hephzibah Children’s Association Requirements include: is a social service agency in Oak • Minimum of 6 semester hours Park, IL providing a variety of proin education, recreation, social grams including Residential Group work, or related college courses Homes, Foster Care programs and • Experience working with children other Family Based services and You will supervise and assist chilDay Care. dren with e-learning programs; We are accepting applications for plan and supervise arts and crafts, Youth Development Specialists in indoor & outdoor play, games, our Day Care program for the 20sports, homework help, lunchtime, 21 school year. You will assist with snack time and more. e-learning, and provide supervision The program will follow the safety and care to 5-11-year-old (Kindergarten-5th grade) children in the guidelines of the IDPH regarding face masks, social distancing and Oak Park community. cleaning & disinfecting.

Full time and part time hours may Contact Amy O’Rourke, be available as follows: Director of Day Care at: Monday-Friday 8:00 am – 3:00 pm aorourke@hephzibahhome.org or Monday-Friday, 2:30 – 6:00 pm.

Equal Opportunity Employer River Forest Public Schools District 90 is seeking an Elementary School Special Education Teacher.

Qualifications: Valid Illinois Professional Education License with Learning Behavior Specialist I Endorsement, a Master’s Degree is preferred and successful teaching experience in special education resource and instructional classrooms is preferred Job Duties: The teacher will be responsible for instructing students with multiple disabilities including: autism, communication disabilities, cognitive and physical disabilities within the least restrictive environment at the elementary level.

Application Procedure: Interested candidates should complete the online application available at district90.org. Please do not send hard copies of supporting documentation, i.e., cover letters, resumes, licensure, etc. to River Forest Schools District 90; instead, upload these materials onto the online job application system for proper processing.

Health and Benefits Legal Consultant (Mercer Health & Benefits LLC Chicago, IL) Review current dvlpmts in legal & technical areas relating to employee benefits, undertake reqd research, & prep complex technical analyses. Reqts: Must have J.D. Deg or foreign equiv +5 ys of exp in the job offd, or as a Legal, Compliance, Risk Mgmt Consultant, Legal Consultant, or a rel position. Must have 5 yrs of legal exp w/: Employee benefits or tax; ACA reqmts; Conducting HIPAA risk assessments; State insurance laws & regs; HR practice, laws, plans, & operations; Advising on employee benefit topics w/ service provider firm, consulting firm, law firm, or gov agency; & Benefits law exp. In the alternative, the employer will accept an LLM in Employee Benefits or a rel field & 2 yrs of exp w/ the above skills. Employer will accept pre- or post-LLM exp. Must hold a current license or certificate to practice law from at least 1 state bar association. Any suitable combo of education, training or exp is acceptable. 10% domestic travel is reqd to various & unanticipated company & client sites. MMC invites applicants to submit resumes online at http://www.mmc.com/careers/mmc. php using Keyword # R_096540-en.

EOE

Advertise in Wednesday Classified.

Call 708/613-3342

River Forest D90 has openings for Temporary Daytime Custodians starting August 25, 2020.

Responsible for cleaning of buildings and grounds, as assigned. A strong work ethic, interpersonal skills and custodial experience is required. Salary commensurate with experience.

For consideration, please send resume to Pam Jenkins, HR Specialist at jenkinsp@ district90.org.

SUBURBAN RENTALS OAK PARK: ROOSEVELT/ OAK PARK AVE. CORRIDOR 2BR 4RMS close to blue line. On site laundry, parking, heat & water incl. $1200/ month 708-383-9223

OFFICE SPACE FOR RENT THERAPY OFFICES FOR RENT Therapy offices for rent in north Oak Park. Rehabbed building. Nicely furnished. Flexible leasing. Free parking. Free wifi; Secure building; Friendly colleagues providing referrals. Shared waiting room; optional Conference. Call or email with questions. Shown on Sundays.

Lee 708.383.0729 drlmadden@ameritech.net

RIVER FOREST–7777 Lake St. *1116 sq. ft. suite *569 sq. ft. with patio RIVER FOREST–7756 Madison St. *926 sq. ft.

OAK PARK–6597 North Ave. *598 sq. ft.

6142-44 Roosevelt Rd. *3 and 5 room suites Strand& & Browne Strand Browne 708-488-0011 708-488-0011

CEMETERY PLOTS 2 WOODLAWN CEMETERY PLOTS (2) Side by side Woodlawn Cemetery plots. Birchwood Section Lot 415 Part 4 Graves 3&4 unit D. $4,000 for both, includes transfer fees. I will meet at Woodlawn for transfer of deeds. Contact: 847-858-7726

ITEMS FOR SALE BEDROOM SUITE Antique circa 1940’s bedroom suite.

Bed, nightstand, and attached mirros on dresser and vanity 630-961-5662

ITEMS FOR SALE BUILT-IN BUFFET Very old built-in buffet, golden brown. Leaded glass doors and sides. $150.00 obo.

708-488-8755 CABINET AND HUTCH Beautiful ranch oak cabinet and hutch, bought at Marshall Field’s. $199.00 708-488-8755 CHINA 8 pc set. Edged w/ pink roses 630-961-5662 COUCH AND CHAIRS 93 inch long couch, teal, grey and black print, with 2 reclining end seats. 2 additional matching reclining chairs.

630-961-5662 DINING ROOM SET Rectangular able w/ 1 leaf, felt table pads, plus 5 upholstered chairs.

630-961-5662 LENOX CHINA 5 piece place settings Lenox china, Tuxedo pattern WATERFORD GLASSES Colleen pattern, 2 water goblets, 2 wine glasses, 5 double old fashioned glasses IRISH CARDIGAN Men’s size large.

708-386-6160 SEWING MACHINE White. Like new, in enclosed wood cabinet.

630-961-5662 SIDE TABLES & LAMPS 2 side tables with attached lamps and storage in base. 2 glass bas lamps w/ gold scrolling. 2 white ceramic base lamps w/ gold ecks. With shades 630-961-5662

SUBURBAN RENTALS

M&M property management, inc.

708-386-7355 • www.mmpropmgt.com 649 Madison Street, Oak Park Contact us for a complete list of available rentals throughout Oak Park and Forest Park.

Apartment listings updated daily at:

ROOMS FOR RENT AUSTIN CLEAN ROOM With fridge, micro.

Nr Oak Park, Super Walmart, Food 4 Less, bus, & Metra. $116/wk and up.

773-637-5957

Find your new apartment this Saturday from 10 am – 4pm at 35 Chicago Avenue.

Or call us toll free at 1-833-440-0665 for an appointment.

GARAGE/YARD SALE

CEMENT Residential Commercial Industrial Licensed Bonded Insured Free Estimates ¡ Veteran Owned

Riverside

GARAGE SALE 3044 HARLEM FRI 7/31 & SAT 8/1 8AM TO 2PM

Womens’ designer clothes (XL, 1X, 2X), some furniture, pictures, storage bins, purses shoes, rocking chairs, lamps, filing cabinet, housewares, knickknacks and much more.

Mask required..

ITEMS TO BE GIVEN AWAY HOSPITAL BED We will deliver.

708-485-0929

WANTED TO BUY WANTED MILITARY ITEMS: Helmets, medals, patches, uniforms, weapons, ags, photos, paperwork, Also toy soldiers – lead, plastic – other misc. toys.

Call Uncle Gary 708-522-3400

AIR CONDITIONING/ HEATING AIR CONDITIONING AND APPLIANCE EXPERT Air Conditioning Automotive A/C Refrigerators Ranges • Ovens Washer • Dryers Hot Water Heaters Rodding Sewers Lic/Bonded 25 yrs experience

FREE SERVICE CALL WITH REPAIR AND SENIOR/VETERAN DISCOUNT.

Drives Walks Patios Stamped Concrete Curbs/Gutters Garage Floors Foundations Parking Lots Water Control

devegaconcrete.com ¡ 708-945-9001

MAGANA

C O N C R E T E C O N S T RU C T I O N “QUALITY IS OUR FOUNDATION� ESTABLISHED IN 1987

COMMERCIAL ˜ INDUSTRIAL ˜ RESIDENTIAL

708.442.7720 '5,9(:$<6 Â&#x2021; )281'$7,216 Â&#x2021; 3$7,26 67(36 Â&#x2021; &85% *877(56 Â&#x2021; 6,'(:$/.6 612: 3/2:,1* Â&#x2021; 67$03(' &2/25(' $**5(*$7( &21&5(7( FREE ESTIMATES LICENSED, BONDED & INSURED

ELECTRICAL Ceiling Fans Installed

A&A ELECTRIC

Let an American Veteran do your work

We install plugs for battery-operated vehicles We fix any electrical problem and do small jobs We install Surge Protectors â&#x20AC;˘ Home Re-wiring â&#x20AC;˘ New Plugs & Switches Added â&#x20AC;˘ New circuit breaker boxes â&#x20AC;˘ Code violations corrected Service upgrades,100-200 amp â&#x20AC;˘ Garage & A/C lines installed Fast Emergency Service | Residential â&#x20AC;˘ Commercial â&#x20AC;˘ Industrial Free Home Evaluations | Lic. â&#x20AC;˘ Bonded â&#x20AC;˘ Ins. â&#x20AC;˘ Low Rates â&#x20AC;˘ Free Est.

708-409-0988 â&#x20AC;˘ 708-738-3848 Sr. Discounts â&#x20AC;˘ 30 Yrs. Exp. Servicing Oak Park â&#x20AC;˘ All surrounding suburbs â&#x20AC;˘ Chicago area

ELECTRICAL

GARAGE DOORS

FOUR SEASONS ELECTRIC

Our 73rd Year

708-785-2619 or 773-585-5000

â&#x2DC;&#x2026;Cool your Homeâ&#x2DC;&#x2026;

FLOORS

Installing Ceiling Fans Rewiring Old Houses Service Upgrades

KLIS FLOORING INC.

New hardwood ďŹ&#x201A;ooring installation & pergo. Sanding, re-finishing, staining. Low prices, insured.

Call: 773-671-4996 www.klisflooring.com

with Ceiling Fans!

Reasonable Pricing & Free Estimates

â&#x20AC;˘ No Job Too Big or Too Small â&#x20AC;˘ Lic * Bonded * Ins * 24 hrs

708-445-0447

Advertise in Wednesday Classified. Call 708/613-3342

Garage Doors &

Smart Door Openers

Sales & Service Free Estimates

(708) 652-9415 www.forestdoor.com

66

Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

HANDYMAN CURT'S HANDYMAN SERVICE Drywall Repair • Painting Fans Installed • Carpentry Trim Gutter Cleaning • Window Repair

FREE ESTIMATES Excellent References No Job Too Small

708-488-9411

Mike’s Home Repair Drywall H Painting H Tile Plumbing H Electric H Floors Windows H Doors H Siding Ask Us What We Don’t Do

PLASTERING McNulty Plastering & Stucco Co.

Small & big work. Free estimates.

Complete Plaster, Stucco & Re-Coating Services

708/386-2951 • ANYTIME Work Guaranteed

Licensed, Bonded, Insured, & EPA Certified Expert craftsmanship for over 50 years

ROOFING

MIDWEST ROOFING

708-296-2060

All types of roofing repairs Commercial - Residential Call for free estimate

HANDYMAN

773-637-0692

Roofing Repairs Concrete Repairs • Drywall All types of handiwork Call For Free Estimates

773-637-0692 Ask for John

HAULING BASEMENT CLEANING

Appliances & Furniture Removal Pickup & Delivery. 708-848-9404

LANDSCAPING NEIGHBORHOOD CLEAN UP

Evergreen trimming & more.

Hand weed removal.

Clean-ups.

Call 24 hrs.

708-447-1762

PAINTING & DECORATING CLASSIC PAINTING Fast & Neat Painting/Taping/Plaster Repair Low Cost

PETS While you’re away, your pets are okay . . . at home

cat calls

Oak Park’s Original Pet Care Service – Since 1986

Daily dog exercising Complete pet care in your home )PVTF TJUUJOH t 1MBOU DBSF Bonded References

524-1030

PUBLIC NOTICES PUBLIC NOTICE Notice is hereby given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: Y20003407 on July 17, 2020 Under the Assumed Business Name of AROB DESIGN with the business located at: 7445 ROOSEVELT RD. APT. 308-B, FOREST PARK, IL 60130.. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/partner(s) is: ASAD ROBINSON 7445 ROOSEVELT RD. APT. 308-B FOREST PARK, IL 60130.

OAKPARK.COM | RIVERFOREST.COM

PUBLIC NOTICES

Published in The Landmark, July 29, 2020

708.749.0011

Published in Forest Park Review July 22, 29, August 5, 2020

PUBLIC NOTICES

PUBLIC NOTICES

PUBLIC NOTICES PROJ. NO. 20030A

ADVERTISEMENT FOR BIDS 001113 - 1 JULY 21, 2020 Sealed bids for Renovations at the Riverside Public Library will be received by the Riverside Public Library located at 1 Burling Road, Riverside, IL 60546 until 10:00 a.m. prevailing time on August 20, 2020.

Lump Sum bid proposals will be received for this project at the scheduled time of receipt of bids and will be publicly opened and read aloud at the above stated time and place.

Each bid must be accompanied by a Bid Guarantee in the form of a Bid Bond, Certified Check or Bank Draft in an amount equal to and not less than ten percent (10%) of the bid and made payable to the Board of Trustees, Riverside Public Library.

No bid shall be withdrawn for a period of sixty (60) days after the bid opening date without the consent of the Owner. Checks or drafts of unsuccessful Bidders will be returned as soon as practical, after opening and checking the bids. Successful Bidder must provide a Performance Bond and a Labor and Material Payment Bond in the full amount of the Contract, acceptable to the Owner.

Bids shall be submitted in an opaque sealed envelope clearly marked as SEALED BID and ad-

dressed to: Janice Foley Library Director Riverside Public Library 1 Burling Road Riverside, IL 60546 The Board of Trustees reserves the right to reject any or all bids or parts thereof, or waive any irregularities or informalities in bidding, that are in the opinion of the Owner, to be in the best interest of the Riverside Public Library.

This Contract is subject to the Illinois Prevailing Wage Act (820 ILCS 130/1 et seq.).

QUALIFICATION: Each Bidder must satisfactorily complete the qualification process described in Section 004395 -General Requirements of the Project Manual, by providing the required Qualification Documents.

The required Qualification Documents must be delivered along with the Bidder’s sealed bid at the same place and time required for the bid.

Contents of each Bidder’s Qualification Documents will be available for public review. The Qualification Documents will be reviewed by the Published in The Landmark, July 29, 2020

PUBLIC NOTICES

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN by the Village President and the Board of Trustees of the Village of Brookfield, Cook County, Illinois, that the sealed bids will be received for the following improvements: VILLAGE OF BROOKFIELD CONGRESS PARK METRA STATION AREA REHAB Said bids will be received up to the the County of Cook in accordance Contractor to train and/hire lower hour of 10:00 a.m. Central Standard with the terms of the aforesaid income residents of the Project Time, on the 12th day of August agreement. Further, in compliance area and to subcontract with local, 2020, at the Village Clerk’s Office, with the Stevens Amendment to the small businesses is required on this in the Village Hall, located at 8820 Department of Defense AppropriProject.

Brookfield Road, Brookfield, Illinois ations Act of 1989, the (estimated/ An explanation of the applicable 60513 and will be publicly opened actual) percentage of the total cost federal requirements previously and read in the Edward Barcal Hall of this Project to be funded with mentioned is provided in the Special in the Municipal Building at that time. federal dollars is forty percent (40%) Provisions of the Bid Specifications. and the exact dollar amount of fedThe bidding forms and documents The successful bidder for the coneral funds which will be set aside are available from the Village webstruction of the improvement will site at www.brookfieldil.gov or from for this project will be based on the be required to file a performance Accurate Repro, Inc., 2368 Cor- contract amount awarded under bond equal to one hundred percent porate Lane, Naperville, IL 60563, this offering.

(100%) of the bid, with sureties to 630-428-4433, www.hitchcock- APPLICABLE FEDERAL be approved by the Mayor and the planroom.com. A non-refundable REQUIREMENTS Board of Trustees, which perforfee equal to Accurate Repro, Inc.’s All laborers and mechanics em- mance bonds shall be conditioned charge for printing the documents ployed by the Contractor or Subupon proper and faithful perforwill be charged for each request- contractor(s) on construction work mance by the Contractor of the work ed bid package. The Bid Package for this Project shall be paid wages specified in accordance with the may also be examined at the Of- at rates not less than those prevail- plans and specifications therefore, fice of the Village Manager, at 8820 ing on similar construction in the according to the time and terms and Brookfield Avenue, Brookfield, Illi- locality as determined by the Secconditions of the contract; and also nois 60513. The engineer has been retary of Labor in accordance with that the bidder and contractor shall authorized to refuse to issue plans, the Davis-Bacon Act, as amended, properly pay all debts incurred by specifications and proposals to any (U.S.C. Sections 76-276a-5), and the Contractor in the execution of person, firm or corporation that he shall receive overtime compensation the work, including those for labor or she considers to be unqualified. in accordance with and subject to and materials furnished.

Proposals must be submitted on the the provisions of the Contract Work The Contractor shall be required forms provided. No proposals will Hours and Safety Standards Act (40 to furnish sufficient insurance or be issued to bidders after 4:30 p.m.

U.S.C. Sections327-333), and the guaranty of indemnity to the Vilon the 3rd day of August 2020. All Contractor and Subcontractor(s) lage of Brookfield, Illinois, and the proposals or bids offered must be shall comply with all regulations County of Cook, Illinois, against accompanied by a bid bond, cash, issued pursuant to these Acts and any and all claims which might or certified check made payable to other applicable Federal laws and arise for damages to persons or the Village in the amount of not less regulations pertaining to labor stan- property due to the negligence of than five percent (5%) of the total dards. The Secretary of Labor has, the Contractor or Subcontractor(s), amount of the proposal as a guaranwith respect to the labor standards or their officers, agents, employees tee that if the proposal is accepted specified in this Section, the authoror servants, during the construction a contract will be entered into and ity and functions set forth in Reorof said improvement and until the the performance of the contract is ganization Plan Number 14 of 1950 said improvement has been finally properly secured.

(5 U.S.C. Section 133z-15) and Secaccepted as complete by the Village No bid shall be withdrawn after the tion 2 of the Act of June 13, 1934, as President and the Board of Trustees opening of the proposals without amended, (40 U.S.C. Section 276c). of the Village of Brookfield, the right the consent of the Village President to reject any and all proposals or and the Board of Trustees of the All contracts and Subrecipients bids is reserved. for the construction or repair shall Village of Brookfield for a period of include a provision for compliance Dated at Brookfield, Illinois this 30 days after the scheduled time of with the Copeland “Anti-Kickback 29th day of July, 2020. closing bids.

Act” (18 U.S.C. Section 874) as supVillage President and Board of The bidder is specifically advised plemented in Department of Labor Trustees that the Village is a Subrecipient of Regulations (29 CFR Part 3). the County of Cook of a grant purVillage of Brookfield Each bidder is required to comply suant to the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, as with Equal Employment Opportunity for the Community Development By: amended, pursuant to an agreement Block Grants, a copy of which is entered into between the County of Village President Cook and the Village. Payments to on file with the Village Clerk and is available for inspection. the contractor will be made by the Attest: Village only after it has received the Compliance with “Section 3”, which Village Clerk. funds to make such payment from calls for affirmative action by the

Lost & Found, Items for Sale, and To Be Given Away ads run free in Wednesday Classified. To place your ad, call 708-613-3342

RIVERSIDE PUBLIC LIBRARY INTERIOR ALTERATIONS

PUBLIC NOTICES

Owner and Architect to determine the lowest responsible Bidder.

Bidding documents are on file and are available on Tuesday, July 28, 2020. Bid documents can be obtained electronically and reproduced at the contractor’s expense from the following: Cross Rhodes Reprographics, 30 Eisenhower Lane North, Lombard, IL 60148; Phone: 630-963-4700 A pre-bid meeting will be held at 10:00 a.m., prevailing time, on August 6, 2020 at the Riverside Public Library located at 1 Burling Road, Riverside, IL 60546. Prospective bidders are encouraged to attend.

After the pre-bid meeting, everyone is invited to visit the site, gather additional information, and ask further questions. Bidders not attending the pre-bid meeting can make a site visit on their own time during the library’s regular hours. Visitors are asked to sign in at the circulation desk. If the bidder requires access to a staff area, the bidder shall contact the Architect prior to the visit, to make arrangements for access.

Board of Trustees Riverside Public Library Riverside, Cook County, Illinois

LEGAL NOTICE SCOTT J. LEVY (32596) Attorney for Petitioner 1525 East 53rd Street, Suite 504 Chicago, Illinois 60615 STATE OF ILLINOIS) COUNTY OF COOK )ss Circuit Court of Cook County, County Department, Domestic Relations Division.

In re the marriage of JUAN RODRIGUEZ, Petitioner and LILIA CASTANEDA BRITO, Respondent, Case No. 2019D-000973.

The requisite affidavit for publication having been filed, notice is hereby given to you, the above named Respondent, that a Petition has been filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, by the Petitioner, for Dissolution of Marriage and for other relief; and that said suit is now pending.

Now, therefore, unless you, the said Respondent, file your response to said Petition or otherwise make your appearance therein, in the Office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, Room 802, Richard J. Daley Center, 50 West Washington Street, in the City of Chicago, Illinois, on or before September 1, 2020, default may be entered against you at any time after that day, and a judgment for Dissolution of Marriage entered in accordance with the prayer of said Petition.

DOROTHY A. BROWN, Clerk.

Published in Wednesday Journal 7/29, 8/5, 8/12/2020

PUBLIC NOTICE Notice is hereby given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: Y20003755 on July23, 2020 Under the Assumed Business Name of LOLA PINK with the business located at:P.O. BOX 3725 OAK PARK, IL 60303. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/partner(s) is: TATYANA QUALLS 1190 SOUTH KENILTHWORTH, OAK PARK, IL 60304 Published in Wednesday Journal July 29, August 5, August 12, 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE OF COURT DATE FOR REQUEST FOR NAME CHANGE STATE OF ILLINOIS, CIRCUIT COURT COOK COUNTY Request of Carlos Eduardo Rojas Case Number 20204002757 There will be a court date on my Request to change my name from: Carlos Eduardo Rojas to the new name of: Alex Rojas.

The court date will be held: on September 8, 2020 at 9:30 AM at District 4 Court, 1500 Maybrook Drive, Maywood, Cook County in Courtroom Number 0111.

Published in Forest Park Review 7/29, 8/5, 8/12/2020

Starting A New Business?

Call the Experts Before You Place Your Legal Ad! Publish Your Assumed Name Legal Notice here!

Call 708/613-3342

PUBLIC NOTICES PUBLIC NOTICE Notice is hereby given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: Y20003782 on July 23, 2020 Under the Assumed Business Name of REITON IT PROS with the business located at: 1178 WENONAH AVE, OAK PARK, IL 60304. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/partner(s) is: MATTHEW NOTIER 1178 WENONAH AVE OAK PARK, IL 60304.

Published in Wednesday Journal 7/29, 8/5, 8/12/2020

PUBLIC NOTICE Notice is hereby given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: Y20003700 on July 21, 2020 Under the Assumed Business Name of KATHLEEN LANE with the business located at:7243 ROOSEVELT RD STE A, FOREST PARK, IL 60130.

The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: KATHLEEN LIEFFERS 7243 ROOSEVELT RD STE A, FOREST PARK, IL 60130 Published in Forest Park Review July 29, August 5, August 12, 2020

REAL ESTATE FOR SALE IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS COUNTY DEPARTMENT CHANCERY DIVISION DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY, AS TRUSTEE FOR FFMLT TRUST 2005-FF11, MORTGAGE PASS-THROUGH CERTIFICATES, SERIES 2005-FF11 Plaintiff, -v.BRIAN HOLLOWAY Defendants 19 CH 00561 125 SOUTH LOMBARD AVENUE OAK PARK, IL 60302 NOTICE OF SALE PUBLIC NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale entered in the above cause on January 23, 2020, an agent for The Judicial Sales Corporation, will at 10:30 AM on August 24, 2020, at The Judicial Sales Corporation, One South Wacker Drive, CHICAGO, IL, 60606, sell at a public sale to the highest bidder, as set forth below, the following described real estate: Commonly known as 125 SOUTH LOMBARD AVENUE, OAK PARK, IL 60302 Property Index No. 16-08-302-0150000 The real estate is improved with a yellow vinyl siding, one story single family home with a detached two car garage.

Sale terms: 25% down of the highest bid by certified funds at the close of the sale payable to The Judicial Sales Corporation. No third party checks will be accepted. The balance, including the Judicial Sale fee for the Abandoned Residential Property Municipality Relief Fund, which is calculated on residential real estate at the rate of $1 for each $1,000 or fraction thereof of the amount paid by the purchaser not to exceed $300, in certified funds/or wire transfer, is due within twenty-four (24) hours. No fee shall be paid by the mortgagee acquiring the residential real estate pursuant to its credit bid at the sale or by any mortgagee, judgment creditor, or other lienor acquiring the residential real estate whose rights in and to the residential real estate arose prior to the sale. The subject property is subject to general real estate taxes, special assessments, or special taxes levied against said real estate and is offered for sale without any representation as to quality or quantity of title and without recourse to Plaintiff and in “AS IS” condition. The sale is further subject to confirmation by the court.

Upon payment in full of the amount bid, the purchaser will receive a Certificate of Sale that will entitle the purchaser to a deed to the real estate after confirmation of the sale.

The property will NOT be open for inspection and plaintiff makes no

REAL ESTATE FOR SALE representation as to the condition of the property. Prospective bidders are admonished to check the court file to verify all information.

If this property is a condominium unit, the purchaser of the unit at the foreclosure sale, other than a mortgagee, shall pay the assessments and the legal fees required by The Condominium Property Act, 765 ILCS 605/9(g)(1) and (g)(4). If this property is a condominium unit which is part of a common interest community, the purchaser of the unit at the foreclosure sale other than a mortgagee shall pay the assessments required by The Condominium Property Act, 765 ILCS 605/18.5(g-1).

IF YOU ARE THE MORTGAGOR (HOMEOWNER), YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN IN POSSESSION FOR 30 DAYS AFTER ENTRY OF AN ORDER OF POSSESSION, IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION 15-1701(C) OF THE ILLINOIS MORTGAGE FORECLOSURE LAW. You will need a photo identification issued by a government agency (driver’s license, passport, etc.) in order to gain entry into our building and the foreclosure sale room in Cook County and the same identification for sales held at other county venues where The Judicial Sales Corporation conducts foreclosure sales.

MCCALLA RAYMER LEIBERT PIERCE, LLC Plaintiff’s Attorneys, One North Dearborn Street, Suite 1200, Chicago, IL, 60602. Tel No. (312) 346-9088.

THE JUDICIAL SALES CORPORATION One South Wacker Drive, 24th Floor, Chicago, IL 60606-4650 (312) 236SALE You can also visit The Judicial Sales Corporation at www.tjsc.com for a 7 day status report of pending sales.

MCCALLA RAYMER LEIBERT PIERCE, LLC One North Dearborn Street, Suite 1200 Chicago IL, 60602 312-346-9088 E-Mail: pleadings@mccalla.com Attorney File No. 268445 Attorney ARDC No. 61256 Attorney Code. 61256 Case Number: 19 CH 00561 TJSC#: 40-595 NOTE: Pursuant to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, you are advised that Plaintiff’s attorney is deemed to be a debt collector attempting to collect a debt and any information obtained will be used for that purpose.

Case # 19 CH 00561 I3152370 IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS COUNTY DEPARTMENT CHANCERY DIVISION AM SOLUTIONS LLC; Plaintiff, vs.

ARIEL CHAPMON; TAJ CHAPMON; UNKNOWN OWNERS AND NONRECORD CLAIMANTS; Defendants, 19 CH 7196 NOTICE OF SALE PUBLIC NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale entered in the above entitled cause Intercounty Judicial Sales Corporation will on Tuesday, September 1, 2020 at the hour of 11 a.m. in their office at 120 West Madison Street, Suite 718A, Chicago, Illinois, sell at public auction to the highest bidder for cash, as set forth below, the following described mortgaged real estate: P.I.N. 15-10-431-012-0000.

Commonly known as 830 South 16th Avenue, Maywood, IL 60153.

The mortgaged real estate is improved with a single family residence. If the subject mortgaged real estate is a unit of a common interest community, the purchaser of the unit other than a mortgagee shall pay the assessments required by subsection (g-1) of Section 18.5 of the Condominium Property Act. Sale terms: 10% down by certified funds, balance, by certified funds, within 24 hours. No refunds. The property will NOT be open for inspection.

For information call Law Clerk at Plaintiff’s Attorney, The Wirbicki Law Group, 33 West Monroe Street, Chicago, Illinois 60603. (312) 3609455. W19-0247 INTERCOUNTY JUDICIAL SALES CORPORATION intercountyjudicialsales.com I3153023

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Wednesday Journal, July 29, 2020

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