Yes, election season is once again upon us. As is the case in most election cycles in our Illinois counties, part of the election process includes judicial candidates standing for nomination. The formal election of judges, including for seat retention, is part of the general election in November. In cases Continue Reading
Oak Park – January 13 Town Hall – Reimagining Public Safety
THIS IS A REPOST/RESEND WITH INFORMATION ON HOW TO RSVP FOR THE TOWN HALL Your RSVP is a registration for the event. Click on this link to RSVP.___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Sadly, our society’s obsession with guns, a national health issue, results daily in many deaths from easy access to killing machines. In Continue Reading
Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid – Digital Pioneers
Frank Gehry died on December 5, 2025 in Santa Monica, CA. Obituaries for him number in the dozens. I’ve read a representative sample of them. Very few of them mention Gehry’s very important contribution to architectural technology. Those that do mention it do so only in passing. Edward Keegan, in Continue Reading
The Brooks Brothers – No, Not The Suit Guys
In 2010 I trained as a docent at the then Chicago Architecture Foundation, now the Chicago Architecture Center. During the training we learned of the importance of East Coast money, influence and people to the building of Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871. Among the East Coast influencers were Continue Reading
A Tour in the Hellscape of Chicago
I led a Burning Buildings tour today in the hellscape of Chicago. We had difficulty at the beginning because of a supply chain issue. We had plenty of Kevlar suits in which to dress guests, but we were short on headgear. Instead of gas masks, some guests had to wear Continue Reading
Video Mysteries: An Addiction – Part I
The British Mysteries – The Body-littered Countryside British mysteries. For years we’ve watched Saturday and Sunday evening airings of various crime and detective franchises. They range from Father Brown to Grantchester to Unforgotten. Most of them are murder mysteries and procedurals. Many of them take place in small English villages Continue Reading
You Voted on the Basis of the Price of Eggs? You Were Conned. And You Know It.
It’s both sad and infuriating that such a large segment of our population is just fine with the way the current administration is administrating. Is this approval the result of so badly wanting something to be done about perceived over-government that the illegal, inhumane and ignorant means of changing it, Continue Reading
This Could Trigger You. Get Over It.
When I taught at the college level I enjoyed provoking students, even making them mad. Challenging their assertions and beliefs brightened my day. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. My apologies (not really). My intention in working on a Ph.D. (which, for complicated reasons, I didn’t complete) was Continue Reading
The Charm of the Grift: River City and Prof. Harold Hill
“The Music Man.” It opened on Broadway in 1957 and closed three years later after 1,375 performances. It won 5 Tony awards, including Best Musical, beating out “West Side Story” and “Most Happy Fella.” Its original cast album “won the first Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album and spent Continue Reading
Reverse Racism? Really?
Reverse Racism. What a concept. It’s become a standard trope on the right. Were I to have coined such a phrase, it would have been “obverse racism,” since the idea of “reverse racism” resides in the idea that everything is a coin flip and has a single opposite. It derives Continue Reading