Lucia Vasquez-Gonzalez thought she was doing the right thing when she went to court in March.
Vasquez-Gonzalez migrated to the U.S. in search of a better life but did not have legal permission to live here. In January, she was charged with one count of misdemeanor domestic battery in a confrontation with her roommate, according to court records, but she appeared before a judge hoping to take care of the matter responsibly — despite the risk posed by continuing immigration activity around Cook County courthouses.
After leaving court, though, Vasquez-Gonzalez said she was stopped by immigration agents a couple of blocks from the building and pulled out of her car.
“I was in complete shock because I didn’t know what was happening,” Vasquez-Gonzalez told the Tribune in Spanish. “I was like, ‘Why are they arresting me if I didn’t do anything bad?’ … And then they said, ‘No, it is because you missed the first rule of immigration, which was don’t get into any problems.’
“I said: ‘But this is the problem that I am fixing.’ ”
In December, Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law a ban on federal agents making certain arrests near courthouses and easing a path for individuals to sue if they think their rights were violated during civil immigration arrests.
The Court Access, Safety and Participation Act, which is being challenged by the Trump administration, followed an order issued by Cook County’s chief judge at the time, Tim Evans, similarly barring civil immigration enforcement around county courthouses.
Despite the measures, though, the presence of immigration agents around Cook County courthouses is stubbornly persistent, according to a Tribune review of a tracker maintained by the Cook County public defender’s office.
Since the beginning of the year, immigration agents have been in or around county courthouses at least 50 times through June 9 — a rate of more than twice per week.
“What they are doing is interfering with the operation of state courts,” said Jonathan Manes, senior counsel for the MacArthur Justice Center’s Illinois office. “They are making it very difficult for people to access justice here in Illinois.”
In a statement to the Tribune, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said immigration enforcement near courthouses is “common sense.”
“It conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be,” the statement said. “It is also safer for our officers and the community.”
In Cook County, agents have sometimes made arrests or entered the buildings, while other times just been spotted nearby. But their mere presence has a chilling effect on the county’s court system, stakeholders say. It has united factions of the criminal justice system that are often in opposition, as they condemn the behavior of federal agents and argue it makes people less safe when victims and defendants are afraid to participate in the court process.
It puts people like Vasquez-Gonzalez in an impossible position, they say, as undocumented immigrants must choose between complying with their mandate to come to court, or risk being detained. Court records show that Vasquez-Gonzalez’s misdemeanor charge was dropped after she was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“I cry about this, and feel so upset because I think ‘how many people are there robbing, killing, doing bad things?’” she said, speaking by phone from Venezuela, where she had been deported. “And I was only there as a single mother who was searching for a future for my daughter.”
‘Made their jobs impossible’
Staff members for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office’s victim services bureau were recently working with a mother and her children facing one of the most difficult types of cases the office prosecutes.
The victim specialists — who work with crime survivors as well as the prosecutors handling their cases —were preparing a sexual assault case involving minor victims. The children’s mother, though, was afraid to bring them to court to meet to prepare testimony because of the chance of encountering immigration agents, said Kayla Johnson, chief of the victim services bureau.
In that case, the victim specialists arranged to do some of the prep virtually so the family could avoid the risk of court. But while practical in that instance, it’s not an ideal solution, Johnson said.
“People who have obviously experienced that level of trauma really benefit from the support of in person engagement and building rapport … so that is something we are navigating alongside people,” Johnson said.
Setting up virtual sessions to replace in-person contact with victims is a method the bureau has increasingly had to rely on due to immigration presence around court, as court workers across the system say they’ve had to modify operations in a number of ways to keep things functional.
“The response when these arrests picked up under the first Trump administration was so broad and brought together aspects of the justice system who are usually not in agreement with each other,” said Douglas Keith, deputy director in the Brennan Center for Justice’s judiciary program, which has tracked how similar courthouse-focused immigration enforcement unfolded in New York during President Donald Trump’s first term. “This was public defenders, hand in hand with prosecutors and judges, talking about how this has made their jobs impossible and their communities less safe.”
In response, lawmakers in New York passed the Protect Our Courts Act in 2020.
According to the tracker kept by the public defender’s office, immigration agents were sometimes seen outside courthouses or in the vicinity, but they entered court buildings at least 27 times since the beginning of the year.
In the same time frame, agents have been reported in or near the domestic violence courthouse at 555 W. Harrison St. at least 22 times. Immigration enforcement around that building has raised particular concern because people seek help there in the form of orders of protection or other services.
The log was compiled based on reports from the county’s building services department as well as the office’s clients, community responders and other sources. Officials described it as a likely undercount based on incidents they feel they have confidently verified.
In at least some cases, the presence of immigration agents has led to tumultuous clashes in or near the court buildings. In November, agents made an arrest outside the Leighton Criminal Court Building on the Southwest Side, knocking over a fence and leaving a trail of blood on the sidewalk.
“There are actual incidents of violence in courthouse hallways that make courthouses appear unsafe with ICE officers chasing down their targets in hallways,” Keith said.
Courthouse security
In June at a branch courthouse in Bridgeview, a chaotic scene unfolded, caught on video and widely circulated online.
Immigration agents were inside the suburban court building, struggling with a man on the ground while onlookers yelled, asking if they had a warrant.
Moments later, outside the building, a person in a Cook County sheriff’s office uniform is seen greeting an immigration agent while they placed the detained man into a vehicle. That day, agents took two adults and a child into custody when the adults appeared in court on misdemeanor retail theft cases.
The dramatic video spurred condemnation of the agents’ actions, as well as letters from state and local lawmakers to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, whose office provides courthouse security, seeking answers and referencing the state law barring warrantless immigration arrests.
“In spite of these laws, video evidence depicts multiple CCSO officers in uniform standing by and watching ICE agents flout our laws,” the letter from state lawmakers said.
But in response, Dart, in a letter obtained by the Tribune through a public records request, said his office “shares your concern” about the conduct of federal agents, but contended that parts of the letter, signed by 15 lawmakers including Rep. Kelly Cassidy and Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, “require factual correction.”
In the “fast moving and evolving situation,” deputies manning a security entrance sought to maintain the security screening area during an “active and chaotic” situation and stop members of the public from entering through an exit lane, Dart said in the letter. Deputies had no advance notice of any law enforcement action when agents chased a man who ran inside the screening area.
“Maintaining the integrity of the screening area during a rapidly evolving incident is required to ensure the safety of all people in the building,” Dart said in the letter.
The letter also notes that the Court Access, Safety and Participation Act offers civil remedies but does not empower local law enforcement to arrest federal agents who violate the law.
Deputies have received training, the letter said, and the office of professional review is investigating the conduct of deputies during the Bridgeview incident.
Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Cassidy said that “Illinois, Cook County, and the City of Chicago have all taken steps to address the harms caused by ICE enforcement activities at our courthouses because access to the justice system impacts the safety of everyone in our community.”
A spokesman for Dart referred to the office’s written responses to lawmakers.
The Bridgeview arrests led immigration advocates to call on Dart’s office as well as Chief Judge Charles Beach to do more to prevent the enforcement activity, while Dart’s letter argued that there are limits to what they can do in response to the federal government’s actions.
Though noting the law and court order can be difficult to enforce when agents follow people from court, some have questioned why law enforcement agents have been able to access the interior of buildings so often, and whether options for remote court could be expanded. In a statement to the Tribune, Cassidy said the sheriff’s office should “provide actionable policy steps and enforcement mechanisms to ensure these harms are addressed so that people feel safe utilizing our court system.”
Beach’s office, in response to a request for comment, pointed to information it has released about virtual court options.
“It’s a difficult situation. I understand what I think to be at least some of Sheriff Dart’s stated concerns,” said Daniel Schneider, of counsel at Legal Action Chicago. “At this point I think … the chief judge and the sheriff both have an obligation to ensure that the spirit and letter of state laws are followed.”
‘We don’t have anything’
Meanwhile, fear in the county’s immigrant communities is constant.
Organized Communities Against Deportation, an immigrant rights group, has received hotline calls and requests for support from families who need court services or must attend court dates, said Antonio Gutierrez, strategic coordinator for the group.
“We’ve been documenting as much as we can,” Gutierrez said. “Letting them know of their rights and the necessity of still showing up for hearing. Letting them know the possibility of doing a virtual hearing.”
Still, remote court isn’t a perfect solution, experts say. Not all courtrooms offer it, and most judges would not consider it for major hearings where someone’s life may be impacted significantly, like a sentencing or trial.
Even as officials try to call for better local solutions, county stakeholders called on the Trump administration to stop enforcement around courthouses in alignment with longstanding practice meant to protect court operations.
“It’s up to ICE to stop the practice of targeting people,” Manes said.
Now, Vasquez-Gonzalez no longer faces any active criminal charges in Cook County, but she has been deported to Venezuela, where she said she and her daughter are struggling to make ends meet. She wishes she could return so her daughter could receive a better education.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Vasquez-Gonzalez accepted voluntary departure and was removed from the country.
“She was given full due process,” the agency said in a statement.
Now, Vasquez-Gonzalez and her daughter are trying their best to start over.
“We don’t have any clothes. We have to bathe and wash our undergarments at the same time,” she said. “We don’t have anything.”
Over the squelching and sloshing of waders and the eggy smell of shallow wetland waters, Matt Allender bent down and caught something in his hand. He raised it triumphantly.
“Found a turtle!”
It’s a snapping one, and it does just that; it snaps at him, unhappy about being grabbed.
It was in 2015 — when all the equipment he had fit in a tackle box and the only help he had was a part-time vet student — that Allender, now the director of conservation biology at Brookfield Zoo, began heading out to Lake County every year to tend to turtles in the wild. They would do some blood work and test for a few diseases.
In the years since, as science has uncovered more threats, viruses and bacteria affecting turtles, these field visits have become longer and more complex.
This June, Allender was joined by more than 20 people, mostly veterinarians, in a yearly “Blanding’s Bowl” — a friendly competition that splits scientists from multiple institutions, including the Cook and Lake County forest preserves, into several teams to tend to native species such as the painted turtle, the common snapping turtle and the event namesake, the state-endangered Blanding’s turtle, of which fewer than 500 are left in Illinois.
“So now it’s quite the operation,” Allender said. “We’re doing something special, and people want to be a part of that.”
The groups found a total of 50 different Blanding’s turtles over four days.“For an endangered turtle, that’s pretty remarkable,” said Gary Glowacki, manager of conservation ecology at the Lake County Forest Preserves District.
The scientists strategically set more than 100 traps across wetland and prairie habitats in the county, and inside placed sardines, cat food or store-bought salmon to lure the turtles. (One biologist believes the tinned fish make the best bait when coated in sriracha.) They then returned to the site every morning for three days to check up on their patients and release them.
And the fanfare was visible among the scientists, some of whom wore turtle earrings and custom-made T-shirts. But the primary focus of the bowl is to offer healthcare to turtles in the wild, Allender said. “We’re their doctors. Nobody else is doing this.”
“The fact that we’re able to, in three and a half days, assess the health of one of the state’s most endangered turtles is pretty amazing,” he said in a follow-up call with the Tribune. “We won’t have a lot of those test results for several months, but the effort in order to get (them) is really unparalleled anywhere else in the country.”
Glowacki said the same.
“There’s not many people that are experts in the health and wellness of wild turtles, and they’re right in our backyard,” he said.
After the scientists found stable footing on a sand pit, a painted turtle and a snapping turtle, recovered from traps, became their first patients of the day. Getting word from a nearby team, they then prepared for the arrival of a Blanding’s turtle — the real star of the week.
First, the turtle was set on its back to be weighed. At 117 grams, it was lighter than a cup of all-purpose flour. Promptly dubbed Shrek by the scientists who found it, it was then handed off to Allender, who gently poked its beak with a Q-tip to start taking swab samples. The reptile opened up.
“Thank you,” he said. “What a good turtle.”
Eliza Baker, a resident veterinarian at a collaborative wildlife health management program between the University of Illinois, Brookfield Zoo and the Forest Preserves of Cook County, ran Allender through a checklist as he inspected the turtle more closely.
“Mouth?” Baker said.
“Pink and moist,” he replied. No plaques or lesions.
“Nostrils?”
“Symmetrical.” No upper respiratory infection.
Both are signs of a healthy specimen.
A few moments earlier, Baker had tended to the painted turtle, weighing and measuring it, swabbing and drawing blood.
“You can see something was trying to chew on him in the past,” she said. “They’re just such hardy animals. I mean, this is true of all our wildlife, but the things that they are able to live through, you can see the evidence of predation attempts and, like, old injuries.”
She pointed at some dents on his shell and underside, possibly teeth and claw marks from a predator. Regardless, he looked like a “pretty happy, healthy little turtle.”
Lake County, a “crown jewel” for Blanding’s turtles in Illinois, is home to an assurance population, Allender explains — the state’s largest and likeliest to survive over the next 50 to 100 years. And it’s a busy year at the site, with the Super El Niño extending the water’s reach and allowing the different turtle species to spread out.
Turtles are among the most endangered vertebrates on the planet; almost half of all 357 species are considered threatened. Compare that to 11,000 snake and lizard species. “It’s not a very big group,” Allender said.
Other threats to native turtles in Illinois include the loss and fragmentation of habitats like wetlands — of which Illinois has lost as much as 90% to development — as well as changes in habitat hydrology from dams and agricultural tile drainage and poaching for the exotic pet trade.
“That makes these populations, where Blanding’s have persisted, critically important,” Allender said. But it also means concentrations of individuals are vulnerable to localized catastrophic events such as floods, fires, disease and injury.
Glowacki said when he started studying wild Blanding’s turtles more than a decade ago, this population was identified as the “biggest and best” of its kind in Lake County.
Back then, however, the turtles had a 95% chance of becoming extirpated within 50 years. First, there weren’t enough young turtles to replace adults as raccoons preyed on eggs; most nests were being raided within the first 24 hours. And adults were not surviving at a high enough rate.
At the site, Allender pointed out cracked eggshells around shallow holes in the sand. “They’re all over,” he noted.
“About one in 100 to 200 eggs laid will make it to adulthood,” Allender later said. “If a Blanding’s turtle lays 20 eggs in a year, it might take her five years to produce one offspring that would make it to adulthood, to supplant the population.”
And so the Lake County Forest Preserves set out to improve survivorship for both older turtles and their offspring.
“And that’s kind of where (Allender) and his team have really come in,” Glowacki said. “That health component: What can we do to make sure these adults are surviving …? Is it a health issue, or is it simply things like road mortality is too high?”
That population was stabilized and is even on a growth trajectory now, he added.
“Our initial goal was to have a viable, self-sustaining population,” Glowacki said. “So we’ve been able to get to that viable population, but now we want to get to that self-sustaining, where we’re a little bit (more) … hands-off.”
For a while, efforts to head start populations — that is, raising young, vulnerable turtles in captivity and then releasing them into the wild when they’re better suited to survive — in other Lake County sites were paused when Emydomyces testavorans, a rare fungal disease, was discovered in three Blanding’s turtles on private property in the county.
“We’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for Emydomyces, where our treatments are effective,” Glowacki said, setting the county up to resume releasing young turtles next year to continue establishing new, self-sustaining populations.
The success rate of the treatment, developed by the University of Illinois Wildlife Epidemiology Lab and Brookfield Zoo, is between 30% to 40%, Allender said, “which for a fungus in a slow-growing animal … is better than I thought.”
Running into the group of scientists, a Lake County resident enjoying the pleasant, sunny June afternoon asked Allender what would happen after numbers and data from tests are crunched.
“Save turtles. Save the world,” he said.
“That’s a heavy lift,” the man replied.
“No kidding,” Allender chuckled.
The longer answer: “I’m really attached to local wildlife,” he told the Tribune. And, for his children and younger generations, he said, “I want to find a way (the turtles) can live in an urban and suburban environment without the need for constant protection.”
Glowacki highlighted Blanding’s turtles as a unique part of the area’s natural heritage and history.
“I can’t think of another animal that’s more symbolic of the habitat we find in Lake County, the Chicago region, these coastal landscapes and … marsh habitats, prairies and savannas,” he said. “And you quickly learn that, by protecting and conserving Blanding’s turtles, you’re really protecting a whole suite of other species.”
adperez@chicago tribune.com
As Manny Diaz testified in a fluorescent-lit basement hearing room, he returned time and again to a single response: “I do not recall.”
Pushing to kick a progressive independent Latina off this autumn’s 4th Congressional District election ballot late last month, he said he couldn’t recall if he had ever before challenged a candidate’s signatures. He said he didn’t know if he had ever worked outside regular business hours in his busy job as a political staffer.
Most strikingly, Diaz paused when asked whom he worked for, responding only when the attorney representing him in the hearing gave him the go-ahead.
The answer — and the man now intimately tied to the strong-arm effort to clear the opposition to his preferred candidate off the ballot — was U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García.
The exchange highlighted the charge by García opponents that the outgoing congressman from the Southwest Side is incinerating his long progressive track record by resorting to the kinds of obstructionist Chicago Democratic machine election tactics his outsider movement has railed against for decades.
In his relentless attempts to clear the way for his chosen successor — his former chief of staff, Patty García — to coast to an easy win this November, García is no better, they say, than the political insiders who have long leveraged their deep pockets and control of the election rules to keep themselves in power in the face of challenges from grassroots political organizations in and around Chicago.
“This will certainly taint his legacy as someone who leaves out the back door, suppressing the voice of the people, anointing a successor,” said one of the two progressive Latino independent candidates García’s organization is trying to boot from the ballot, firebrand Southwest Side Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th. “You don’t fight authoritarianism with these kinds of authoritarian or unilateral decisions.”
Late last month, Diaz, a senior staffer for the four-term congressman, zeroed in on ending the candidacy of independent Mayra Macías. He testified under oath at the Illinois State Board of Elections hearing as a notary who gathered evidence, on behalf of several objectors, that could invalidate hundreds signatures for Macías.
At least two of the people who objected to Macías’ and Sigcho-Lopez’s signatures also gathered petition signatures for Patty Garcia, yet another sign of apparent coordination by the candidate and the congressman.
Macías and Sigcho-Lopez face a flood of challenges against the signatures they collected to be listed on the ballot. Both submitted the maximum amount, over 17,000 names, but the Board of Elections could rule this month against them and effectively end their uphill-battle campaigns.
To get on the general election ballot as an independent, a candidate must secure 10,816 valid signatures from registered voters. The García-linked objectors are seeking to push Macías and Sigcho-Lopez below that threshold by asserting thousands of their signatures are no good for one reason or another.
The signature challenge is a time-honored way for well-heeled Chicago campaigns to try to remove opponents who might not have the organizational depth to get enough names or the money to mount a time-consuming defense against the claims.
As his political organization again moves to knock out candidates, the man who was a top mayoral candidate in 2015 and 2023 appears to be doubling down. In doing so, Garcia is trouncing his long-held progressive ideals, Macías and Sigcho-Lopez say.
“If we are saying that we want people to engage in the democratic process, we want democracy to thrive, why are we not trusting our voters?” said Macías, a former Planned Parenthood Action Fund member.
Macías filed a complaint July 3 with the House Ethics Committee and the Office of Congressional Conduct alleging the congressman, Patty García, Diaz and other staffers violated ethics rules by working on Patty García’s campaign during taxpayer-funded work hours.
Rebuffing the criticism, allies of Rep. García and Patty García say they are proven progressives.
“But they’re progressives in Chicago,” said state Rep. Edgar Gonzalez, who worked under Patty García in Rep. García’s office. “And Chicago’s a very different ballgame than anywhere else in the country. We play with the rules that are set.”
Gonzalez praised Patty García as “extremely organized,” “extremely intelligent” and deserving of the seat. Chicago politics is a “hardball sport” where candidates do what they can to win, he argued.
“Complaining and whining about the rules is kind of dumb,” he said. “Don’t hate the player, hate the game. … Everybody knew what they were signing up for.”
The general election ballot fight is only the latest chapter in a monthslong controversy that began when the congressman cleared the way for his chief of staff to secure the Democratic nomination by announcing in November he would not seek a fifth term just hours before a deadline for candidates to run in the primary election.
Only Patty García, of no relation, had the heads-up that the incumbent — her boss — would bow out, and only she submitted the hundreds of signatures needed to enter the race.
The move drew criticism for taking choice away from voters. The progressive congressman representing the heavily Latino Southwest Side district was even censured by his U.S. House of Representatives colleagues in a 236-183 vote led by Republicans.
David Orr, the former Cook County clerk and aldermen whose ties to García stretch back to their shared support for Mayor Harold Washington in the 1980s, said he was disappointed by the way the congressman exited office.
“That really could or should have been better,” he said of García’s decision to only alert his chief of staff that he would not run again.
But Orr was unbothered by the petition signature challenges.
“I see that as a different situation. It’s the law, and you have a right to challenge,” he said. “I just don’t know how far you get ignoring the law.”
Orr said he believes the law should be changed. But García has nonetheless proved himself as a key part of Chicago’s progressive movement, he added.
“Most of the major issues that we consider progressive, he’s been there,” he said. “And not just on a vote, but working behind the scenes on many things, working with some of his colleagues, working to build coalitions where you need to.”
In the eyes of Juan Rangel, CEO of the Urban Center and long a political enemy of García’s, the congressman’s tactics looked familiar.
Petition challenging is a “classic move employed mostly by machine politicians,” Rangel said.
He would know. Rangel’s own organization has played a key role in broadly challenging the validity of signatures collected to allow Chicago Teachers Union-affiliated candidates onto the ballot in recent weeks, he said.
That signatures were challenged is not surprising, he said. The surprising thing is who the challenges seemed to come from, Rangel said: “A self-pronounced reformer, anti-machine (who) always saw himself as the outsider fighting the good fight.”
“There’s nothing illegal in terms of the maneuver,” he said. “But I’ve never grandstanded and stood on a moral high ground above everybody else as Chuy likes to do.”
It’s a late effort to hold onto power for “the old guard of the progressive left,” Rangel said. “The politics of the progressive movement kind of left Chuy. … He’s just not progressive enough.”
In the days after he announced he wouldn’t run again, García told reporters he made the last-second decision because of health and family pressures.
His cardiologist advised him to find less stressful work. His wife, Evelyn, faced complications from multiple sclerosis and told him she needed him in Chicago. And he was just completing the adoption of a grandchild after his daughter, Rosa, passed away in 2023.
“Congressman García made a deeply personal decision based on his health, his wife’s worsening condition and his responsibility to the grandchildren he is raising after the death of his daughter,” García congressional spokesperson Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli said in a statement shortly after García dropped out of the race in November.
“He followed every rule and every filing requirement laid out by the State of Illinois,” Rodriguez-Ciampoli said. “At a moment like this, he hopes his colleagues, especially those who speak about family values, can show the same compassion and respect that any family would want during a health crisis.”
García has not publicly defended his connections to the signature challenging effort. He and his office did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Neither did Patty García or her campaign.
A third independent congressional candidate vying for a ballot spot, Lyons Mayor Chris Getty, has not faced any challenges to his petition signatures.
Asked after the late June hearing why he was trying to bounce Macías from the ballot, Diaz told a Tribune reporter he didn’t need to answer. Diaz then turned his back, rolled his eyes and walked out of the underground elections office.
Macías maintained after the hearing that her team will be able to secure enough legal evidence to prove she qualified for the ballot if given only a few more days to collect affidavits.
During another hearing Monday, Sigcho-Lopez, a democratic socialist, took a different approach. His attorney, Andrew Finko, did not attempt to prove he had enough signatures. Instead, he took aim at the “very sad” system.
It would be “a travesty of democracy” if the support from 18,000 petition signers were negated because there was too little time months later to gather evidence supporting each signature, he said. “I need to keep raising it, keep bringing it up, because at some point, someone will start listening.”
Over the squelching and sloshing of waders and the eggy smell of shallow wetland waters, Matt Allender bent down and caught something in his hand. He raised it triumphantly.
“Found a turtle!”
It’s a snapping one, and it does just that; it snaps at him, unhappy about being grabbed.
It was in 2015 — when all the equipment he had fit in a tackle box and the only help he had was a part-time vet student — that Allender, now the director of conservation biology at Brookfield Zoo, began heading out to Lake County every year to tend to turtles in the wild. They would do some blood work and test for a few diseases.
In the years since, as science has uncovered more threats, viruses and bacteria affecting turtles, these field visits have become longer and more complex.
This June, Allender was joined by more than 20 people, mostly veterinarians, in a yearly “Blanding’s Bowl” — a friendly competition that splits scientists from multiple institutions, including the Cook and Lake County forest preserves, into several teams to tend to native species such as the painted turtle, the common snapping turtle and the event namesake, the state-endangered Blanding’s turtle, of which fewer than 500 are left in Illinois.
“So now it’s quite the operation,” Allender said. “We’re doing something special, and people want to be a part of that.”
The groups found a total of 50 different Blanding’s turtles over four days.“For an endangered turtle, that’s pretty remarkable,” said Gary Glowacki, manager of conservation ecology at the Lake County Forest Preserves District.
The scientists strategically set more than 100 traps across wetland and prairie habitats in the county, and inside placed sardines, cat food or store-bought salmon to lure the turtles. (One biologist believes the tinned fish make the best bait when coated in sriracha.) They then returned to the site every morning for three days to check up on their patients and release them.
And the fanfare was visible among the scientists, some of whom wore turtle earrings and custom-made T-shirts. But the primary focus of the bowl is to offer healthcare to turtles in the wild, Allender said. “We’re their doctors. Nobody else is doing this.”
“The fact that we’re able to, in three and a half days, assess the health of one of the state’s most endangered turtles is pretty amazing,” he said in a follow-up call with the Tribune. “We won’t have a lot of those test results for several months, but the effort in order to get (them) is really unparalleled anywhere else in the country.”
Glowacki said the same.
“There’s not many people that are experts in the health and wellness of wild turtles, and they’re right in our backyard,” he said.
After the scientists found stable footing on a sand pit, a painted turtle and a snapping turtle, recovered from traps, became their first patients of the day. Getting word from a nearby team, they then prepared for the arrival of a Blanding’s turtle — the real star of the week.
First, the turtle was set on its back to be weighed. At 117 grams, it was lighter than a cup of all-purpose flour. Promptly dubbed Shrek by the scientists who found it, it was then handed off to Allender, who gently poked its beak with a Q-tip to start taking swab samples. The reptile opened up.
“Thank you,” he said. “What a good turtle.”
Eliza Baker, a resident veterinarian at a collaborative wildlife health management program between the University of Illinois, Brookfield Zoo and the Forest Preserves of Cook County, ran Allender through a checklist as he inspected the turtle more closely.
“Mouth?” Baker said.
“Pink and moist,” he replied. No plaques or lesions.
“Nostrils?”
“Symmetrical.” No upper respiratory infection.
Both are signs of a healthy specimen.
A few moments earlier, Baker had tended to the painted turtle, weighing and measuring it, swabbing and drawing blood.
“You can see something was trying to chew on him in the past,” she said. “They’re just such hardy animals. I mean, this is true of all our wildlife, but the things that they are able to live through, you can see the evidence of predation attempts and, like, old injuries.”
She pointed at some dents on his shell and underside, possibly teeth and claw marks from a predator. Regardless, he looked like a “pretty happy, healthy little turtle.”
Lake County, a “crown jewel” for Blanding’s turtles in Illinois, is home to an assurance population, Allender explains — the state’s largest and likeliest to survive over the next 50 to 100 years. And it’s a busy year at the site, with the Super El Niño extending the water’s reach and allowing the different turtle species to spread out.
Turtles are among the most endangered vertebrates on the planet; almost half of all 357 species are considered threatened. Compare that to 11,000 snake and lizard species. “It’s not a very big group,” Allender said.
Other threats to native turtles in Illinois include the loss and fragmentation of habitats like wetlands — of which Illinois has lost as much as 90% to development — as well as changes in habitat hydrology from dams and agricultural tile drainage and poaching for the exotic pet trade.
“That makes these populations, where Blanding’s have persisted, critically important,” Allender said. But it also means concentrations of individuals are vulnerable to localized catastrophic events such as floods, fires, disease and injury.
Glowacki said when he started studying wild Blanding’s turtles more than a decade ago, this population was identified as the “biggest and best” of its kind in Lake County.
Back then, however, the turtles had a 95% chance of becoming extirpated within 50 years. First, there weren’t enough young turtles to replace adults as raccoons preyed on eggs; most nests were being raided within the first 24 hours. And adults were not surviving at a high enough rate.
At the site, Allender pointed out cracked eggshells around shallow holes in the sand. “They’re all over,” he noted.
“About one in 100 to 200 eggs laid will make it to adulthood,” Allender later said. “If a Blanding’s turtle lays 20 eggs in a year, it might take her five years to produce one offspring that would make it to adulthood, to supplant the population.”
And so the Lake County Forest Preserves set out to improve survivorship for both older turtles and their offspring.
“And that’s kind of where (Allender) and his team have really come in,” Glowacki said. “That health component: What can we do to make sure these adults are surviving …? Is it a health issue, or is it simply things like road mortality is too high?”
That population was stabilized and is even on a growth trajectory now, he added.
“Our initial goal was to have a viable, self-sustaining population,” Glowacki said. “So we’ve been able to get to that viable population, but now we want to get to that self-sustaining, where we’re a little bit (more) … hands-off.”
For a while, efforts to head start populations — that is, raising young, vulnerable turtles in captivity and then releasing them into the wild when they’re better suited to survive — in other Lake County sites were paused when Emydomyces testavorans, a rare fungal disease, was discovered in three Blanding’s turtles on private property in the county.
“We’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for Emydomyces, where our treatments are effective,” Glowacki said, setting the county up to resume releasing young turtles next year to continue establishing new, self-sustaining populations.
The success rate of the treatment, developed by the University of Illinois Wildlife Epidemiology Lab and Brookfield Zoo, is between 30% to 40%, Allender said, “which for a fungus in a slow-growing animal … is better than I thought.”
Running into the group of scientists, a Lake County resident enjoying the pleasant, sunny June afternoon asked Allender what would happen after numbers and data from tests are crunched.
“Save turtles. Save the world,” he said.
“That’s a heavy lift,” the man replied.
“No kidding,” Allender chuckled.
The longer answer: “I’m really attached to local wildlife,” he told the Tribune. And, for his children and younger generations, he said, “I want to find a way (the turtles) can live in an urban and suburban environment without the need for constant protection.”
Glowacki highlighted Blanding’s turtles as a unique part of the area’s natural heritage and history.
“I can’t think of another animal that’s more symbolic of the habitat we find in Lake County, the Chicago region, these coastal landscapes and … marsh habitats, prairies and savannas,” he said. “And you quickly learn that, by protecting and conserving Blanding’s turtles, you’re really protecting a whole suite of other species.”
adperez@chicago tribune.com
ON JULY 12 ...
In 100 B.C., Roman dictator Julius Caesar was born.
In 1690 Protestant forces led by William of Orange defeated the Roman Catholic army of James II at the Battle of Boyne in Ireland.
In 1812 U.S. forces led by Gen. William Hull entered Canada during the War of 1812 against Britain. (Hull retreated shortly thereafter to Detroit.)
In 1854 George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera, was born in Waterville, N.Y.
In 1864 scientist and educator George Washington Carver was born near Diamond Grove, Mo.
In 1974 White House aide John Ehrlichman and three others were convicted of conspiring to violate the civil rights of Daniel Ellsberg’s former psychiatrist.
In 1979 “Disco Demolition Night” got out of hand at Comiskey Park, forcing the White Sox to forfeit to the Detroit Tigers.
In 1984 Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale named Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate. (Ferraro thus became the first woman to run for the vice presidency on a major-party ticket.)
In 1991 a Japanese professor who had translated Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” was found stabbed to death, nine days after the novel’s Italian translator was attacked in Milan.
In 1993 a magnitude-7.8 earthquake killed 196 people in northern Japan.
In 1995 President Bill Clinton spelled out school-prayer guidelines, asserting the 1st Amendment already guaranteed adequate freedom of religion.
In 1998 France won its first World Cup, beating Brazil 3-0.
In 2003 the USS Ronald Reagan, the first carrier named for a living president, was commissioned in Norfolk, Va.
In 2012 opposition activists said as many as 200 people were killed in the farming village of Tremseh, Syria. Resident accounts contradict the account offered by Syrian authorities, who said no heavy weapons were used and that almost all the victims were insurgents killed while attacking government forces.
In 2015 Mexico mounted an all-out manhunt for powerful drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who escaped through a mile-long tunnel from a maximum security prison 55 miles west of Mexico City.
In 2017 an investor group led by former Chicago Ald. Edwin Eisendrath and the Chicago Federation of Labor bought the Chicago Sun-Times, keeping the city’s No. 2 paper in business and ending a bid by the Chicago Tribune’s owner to acquire its longtime rival.
By almost any measure — but especially compared with President Donald Trump’s campaign-style National Mall speech and Washington’s massive fireworks show over the Independence Day holiday — Illinois’ celebrations to commemorate the United States’ 250th birthday this year have been decidedly low-key.
Gov. JB Pritzker’s office listed about $376,000 in costs for semiquincentennial-specific state programming, a relatively low price tag amid federal funding cuts and a striking contrast to the all-out, politically charged events in the nation’s capital.
Illinois residents and visitors may see a lasting impression from the celebrations, however, as the bulk of those state dollars, about $300,000 from existing funding, went to grants for 22 public art projects throughout the state, including a mural of singer-songwriter and Maywood native John Prine going up on the exterior of Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music. The other biggest line item: the printing of Illinois “passports” encouraging visitors and residents to see historic and civic sites, for a cost of about $76,000 “from existing operating resources,” according to the governor’s office. The state’s overall spending plan for day-to-day operations during the budget year that began July 1 totals nearly $56 billion.
Other state agencies are incorporating contributions into existing staff time, contracts and other resources, Pritzker spokesperson Andres Correa said.
Through Labor Day, for example, the state archives and state library, which fall under the purview of Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, are putting on a special archival exhibit at the Capitol called “America 250: Land of Lincoln.”
The bulk of the hundreds of events publicized by the Illinois 250 commission were put on by nonprofits and other outside organizations, not the state itself, said Gabrielle Lyon, chair of the Illinois America 250 Commission.
The celebrations faced federal budget cuts heading into this year, and the state’s budget also is tight, she said. The nonprofit Illinois Humanities, which Lyon chairs, lost about $2 million as part of cuts last year from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, a good portion of which would have been used for the anniversary this year, she said.
Even the billionaire governor, asked about the costs at a news conference unveiling the plans back in December, replied, “I honestly wish we were able to spend more because I want the celebration to be as big as possible.”
In fact, federal funding cuts forced communities across the country to scale back plans for the semiquincentennial, The Associated Press reported last year.
“People in Illinois care about their history and their heritage, and they know it’s connected to the American story. The dollars haven’t been in place that we probably — certainly — could have used,” Lyon said, adding, “It’s not lost on me, the irony that the dollars are staying, for the most part, all in Washington, but the people who are really making the meaning of the moment in Illinois, they’re in the townships, they’re in the cities, they’re at the county level.”
The commemorations both in Washington and across the country over the recent holiday weekend came as Trump continued seeking to make his mark on the country’s understanding of its own history.
The Trump administration this month slammed leadership at the Smithsonian Institution museums, particularly the National Museum of American History, as activists that “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic.” He previously targeted programs that promoted “divisive narratives” there and has generally signaled the institution has become too liberal.
Trump also created the public-private partnership “Freedom 250” to run his administration’s events for the anniversary, including the “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall, a move that created tension with the America250 commission Congress established a decade ago.
The state of Illinois opted out of state-funded participation in the Great American State Fair earlier this year, leaving the Peoria Riverfront Museum to send a showcase instead. Pritzker also chose not to send Illinois National Guard troops to Washington for the celebrations this month, breaking with some other Democratic governors, including Minnesota’s Tim Walz and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, and earning praise in a letter signed by a group of 19 former defense and military leaders.
In Illinois, museums, historical societies and other organizations including Illinois Humanities know “how important public imagination is to what we invest in for the future,” Lyon said Thursday.
“We have really stepped up into this moment to say, ‘We are going to find a way,’” she said. For the commission overall, “it was never a set of goals around parties or big fireworks shows,” she said.
Indeed, there was no central, state-funded event commemorating the anniversary.
In Chicago, Navy Pier planned an extended fireworks show on Independence Day — an event that ended up so blotted out by clouds that the pier issued a disappointed statement on social media. But as Navy Pier is operated by an independent nonprofit organization, that display was self-funded through normal operating revenues as well as philanthropic and corporate sponsorships, not by the state, said Marilynn Gardner, president and CEO of the popular tourist destination.
Lyon said she’s seen enthusiasm for the civic-minded, diverse celebrations that the commission has promoted. About 100,000 passport brochures were distributed statewide, encouraging people to visit historic landmarks, museums and other civic sites, and about 2,000 individuals requested them in the mail, she said.
Barbara Engelskirchen, chief development officer at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, said the museum chose to participate because initiatives that are good for the state and community are good for the museum, too.
“We want people, whoever they are, wherever they come from, to engage with the art we have here,” she said.
At least four of the public art projects funded through the Illinois 250 grants have already been unveiled, according to the Illinois Arts Council. The projects were intended to reflect Illinois’ history and diverse stories across communities, Executive Director Joshua Davis-Ruperto wrote in an email.
“Public art is accessible, it’s free to experience, and oftentimes becomes a permanent part of a community’s landscape,” Davis-Ruperto wrote. “This small investment offered an opportunity for the state to support local artists, strengthen cultural organizations, and create opportunities for residents to connect through their shared history in meaningful ways. Honestly what better way to celebrate our state and the nation?”
For Lyons, two highlights of the celebrations so far have been viewing a public reading of the Declaration of Independence in Peoria on Wednesday — the 250th anniversary of the founding document’s first public reading — and witnessing people at the Little Village branch of the Chicago Public Library record conversations for Illinois Voices 250, a privately funded initiative to preserve the stories of Illinoisans in the Library of Congress.
The Little Village library event was especially meaningful “given all that community has had to contend with,” in recent months she said, including militarized immigration enforcement during the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz and what she described as exclusion of many groups, including immigrant communities, from the anniversary celebrations at the national level.
“Then to see these grandmothers, people in their 30s and parents and children, just have a conversation about this moment and what’s important to them was unbelievably powerful,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed.
It’s not every day Illinois sees an earthquake like the 2.9 magnitude tremor that struck Lake Michigan on Wednesday afternoon. But quakes in the area are more common than some might think, experts say.
So far this decade, the state has seen 44 earthquakes, according to Robert Bauer, a principal scientist of engineering geology with the Illinois State Geological Survey. Wednesday’s marked just the latest. The mild earthquake was recorded off the shore of the northern suburbs near the Illinois-Wisconsin border. Stretching 3.1 miles deep, the quake took place 13.8 miles northeast of Evanston, per the U.S. Geological Survey.
From year to year, local seismic activity varies greatly, Bauer said. On average, though, the state experiences about 10 earthquakes a year. That’s certainly more infrequent than other areas of the country — with Illinois being in what USGS deems a “stable continental region” — but the occasional quake is far from a rarity. But what caused Wednesday’s quake and others like it? It goes back to the basics of geology.
The Earth has four major layers, and the two outermost make up a thin surface that coats the planet. That surface, though, is in fragments.
The Earth is made up of many pieces. More than that, those pieces — called tectonic plates — are constantly moving. The pieces meet at plate boundaries, where they usually grind up against each other slowly.
Earthquakes, at their most basic level, are a function of friction between those pieces. As for what determines why earthquakes are more frequent in some areas than others, that’s a little more complicated.
Quakes are concentrated at plate boundaries. At boundaries, because the edges of plates are rough, areas can get stuck while the rest of the plate keeps moving, per USGS. An earthquake occurs when an edge is stuck for long enough that the energy that would usually cause the pieces to slide past each other is stored up instead. When that tension snaps, a large amount of energy is released.
But there are also intraplate earthquakes. That’s the case for Illinois, which sits far from the nearest boundary. These tremors are made possible by faults — cracks in the bedrock — deep below the surface, according to Bauer.
Beneath Illinois, there are preexisting faults tied to an earlier geologic era, essentially ancient cracks long buried over time, Bauer explained. Though Illinois isn’t bordered by a boundary, pressure from boundaries to the east and west can stress these faults, inducing earthquakes, Bauer said.
There are two major seismic zones that affect Illinois, according to the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, including the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone and the New Madrid Seismic Zone. The Wabash Valley Seismic Zone is located between southeastern Illinois and southeastern Indiana, whereas the New Madrid Seismic Zone is located in the Central Mississippi Valley, covering a wide swath across several states from Illinois to Arkansas.
The bulk of the state’s earthquakes happen in southern Illinois because those old layers of the Earth are more broken up downstate than they are up north, Bauer said.
Historically, some of the strongest earthquakes the state has seen have come in at just over a 5.0 magnitude, Bauer said. In recent years, Bauer pointed to a 5.2 magnitude earthquake recorded in southern Illinois near Mount Carmel in 2008. Going back to 1968, there was a 5.3 magnitude quake, also downstate in Hamilton County. And more than a hundred years ago, in the Chicago area, a 5.1 magnitude quake shook Aurora, which caused some damage and led to a few fires, Bauer said.
As far as magnitude goes, however, earthquakes are also felt a bit differently in the Midwest than, say, California, which lies close to a plate boundary. Being in the center of a tectonic plate, an earthquake in Illinois will radiate a lot farther than one by a boundary, Bauer said.
Think of it like a bell, Bauer explained. When a bell is cracked, the waves don’t go very far. But with a bell that’s complete, it rings. In other words, an intraplate earthquake goes a long way.
On Wednesday, local North Shore officials reported no damages as a result of the Lake Michigan tremor, nor were there any reports of injured boaters or swimmers.
And while earthquakes may not always be top of mind here in intraplate territory, Bauer encouraged earthquake awareness — safety especially — nonetheless.
The Associated Press contributed.
Then, as now, America loves true crime stories. That’s why the last edition of our Illinois 250 series looks back at how our state has been home to some of the most notorious ones.
Here’s a look back at the most infamous, shocking, blood-curdling or mysterious crimes and disasters that captured the attention of the nation — and the world.
The city burns (1871): The Great Chicago Fire began in a hay-filled cow barn behind the frame house that Mrs. Catherine O’Leary shared with her husband, Patrick, and their five kids on DeKoven Street on the Near West Side.
The fire ran — and it grew, swept by a strong wind from the southwest, eating its ravenous way north and toward downtown and beyond. People ran to the lake for shelter as the city became a vast ocean of flame.
After that horrible night and the equally terrifying and destructive day and night that followed, the fire finally burned itself out. Chicago awoke two days later to find almost 18,000 buildings destroyed, much of the city leveled, 90,000 people homeless and 300-some people dead.
The Tribune offered a stirring prophecy that “CHICAGO SHALL RISE AGAIN.”
Abraham Lincoln’s grave robbers (1876): Four men with shady backgrounds, under the cover of darkness on Nov. 7, 1876, tried to remove the body of President Abraham Lincoln from its marble sarcophagus in Springfield’s Oak Ridge Cemetery. The next day, the Tribune ran a long article about the aborted scheme. The following day, the newspaper carried a longer account about the “Desecrators of Lincoln’s Remains.” On Nov. 18, the whole front page was devoted to in-depth coverage of the plot, the break-in, the escape of two would-be body snatchers and their capture at a Chicago saloon called The Hub, allegedly frequented by lowlifes.
What made such instant journalism possible? Chicago police Chief Elmer Washburn had a confidential secretary, Percy English, who also wrote for the Tribune. When Washburn was alerted that the skulduggery was going to happen, he allowed the young reporter to accompany authorities determined to foil the plot. English became a witness and got one of the scoops of the century.
‘Murder Castle’ of H.H. Holmes (1893): Differing accounts claim that the man who became infamous during the World’s Columbian Exposition as H.H. Holmes may have had hundreds of victims who were tortured and killed within a network of secret rooms in his so-called Murder Castle at 610 W. 63rd St. There was a “mostly” soundproof walk-in vault, but it likely was used to conceal stolen furniture, not murder, experts said.
“He did kill nine or 10 people, but it wasn’t hundreds and hundreds. It wasn’t in a hotel, and it wasn’t World’s Fair patrons,” said author and Chicago tour guide Adam Selzer, whose 2017 book “H.H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil” sought to demystify the killer behind the legend, using official records and documents.
“He was a swindler, first and foremost, who partly through his own confessions, became a new American tall tale,” Selzer said.
Iroquois Theatre fire (1903): The matinee performance of “Mr. Bluebeard” at Chicago’s newly opened Iroquois Theatre on Randolph Street between State and Dearborn Streets was packed on Dec. 30, 1903, with an estimated 2,000 schoolchildren and families. Though the “finest, handsomest, and best equipped” theater bragged about its 35 exits, it did not have a sprinkler system, telephone, fire alarm or exit signs.
The second act had just begun when an arc light near the stage ignited a curtain. As flames licked at the fabric and smoke curled toward the ceiling, an overcapacity crowd of more than 1,800 panicked, rushing for the exits and jamming against doors that opened inward. Some exits were locked; others were nearly impossible to open.
Firefighters put out the fire in 30 minutes, but not before it became the worst of its kind in American history with 602 dead, more than twice the toll of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Theatergoers from 13 states were killed in the disaster, which made headlines worldwide.
The Iroquois Theatre fire resulted in reforms such as fireproof scenery and stage curtains, illuminated exits and doors that open outward. It also inspired the invention of the exit-door “panic bar,” which is still in use today, and the UL Label Service.
SS Eastland disaster (1915): The SS Eastland — packed on July 24, 1915, with Western Electric Co. employees and their families for a day trip to Michigan City, Indiana — rolled to its side in the Chicago River between LaSalle Drive and Clark Street.
More than 840 of the 2,500 aboard died, many of them trapped inside the vessel as water poured in when the ship tipped over just a few feet from the riverbank.
‘Black Sox’ banned from baseball (1921): Eight White Sox players were charged with throwing the 1919 World Series. Despite earning the “Black Sox” nickname, the men were acquitted by a jury that deliberated for just 2 hours and 47 minutes on Aug. 2, 1921.
A day after their acquittal, however, baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis ruled the players allegedly involved — Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Oscar Emil “Happy” Felsch, Chick Gandil, Frederick William McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver and Lefty Williams — would be banned for life from organized baseball.
Good girl gone bad (1924): Chicago’s youngest and first female assistant U.S. district attorney was a brilliant Polish immigrant named Wanda Stopa. She had been one of only two women to graduate from John Marshall Law School in 1921. But just three years after graduation, Stopa left her career, married a Russian count and then fell in love with a rich, married advertising executive, Y. Kenley Smith, who paid for her to live in New York.
When Smith refused to leave his wife, Genevieve, nicknamed Doodles, Stopa showed up at their Palos Park home on April 24, 1924, intending to kill Smith’s wife. She took a shot, but it hit the couple’s elderly caretaker, Henry Manning, killing him. Stopa went on the run, later killing herself by swallowing poison in a Detroit hotel room.
Approximately 10,000 Chicagoans turned out for her wake and funeral.
‘The perfect murder’ (1924): Friends Nathan “Babe” Leopold Jr. and Richard “Dickie” Loeb — the pampered sons of prominent Kenwood families — killed Robert “Bobby” Franks after they offered him a ride home from school on May 21, 1924.
To the public, Franks’ death appeared to have been orchestrated for money and thrills. But the two brilliant masterminds behind the crime simply referred to it as a “perfect murder” for which they believed they could outsmart the authorities and would never stand trial.
After they dumped the boy’s body near Wolf Lake, however, they confessed to the murder and were brought to trial for what became the “crime of the century.”
Clarence Darrow was hired by the confessed killers’ families for their defense, and he made a surprise tactical move as the trial began.
“We withdraw our plea of not guilty and enter a plea of guilty,” Darrow told Judge John Caverly.
Darrow’s eloquent plea had the desired effect, and Leopold and Loeb were sentenced to life in prison.
‘Prettiest woman ever accused of murder in Chicago’ (1924): A young, liquored-up woman (this was during Prohibition) named Beulah Annan shot her equally inebriated lover to death on April 3, 1924, inside the apartment she shared with her husband. Another young woman named Maurine Dallas Watkins reported Annan’s expedited travails through Cook County’s legal system for the Tribune.
Watkins used the trial’s twists to write a three-act play, “A Brave Little Woman,” while attending the new Yale School of Drama in 1926. When it debuted on Broadway later that year, it was called “Chicago.”
The musical version of “Chicago” is the second-longest-running show on Broadway after “The Phantom of the Opera” (13,981 performances) and the longest active show.
First person to kill a federal agent (1925): On Oct. 11, 1925, Martin Durkin shot FBI Agent Edwin Shanahan at Porter’s Garage, 6231 Princeton Ave. in Englewood. Shanahan was attempting to arrest Durkin for violating the Dyer Act by transporting a stolen automobile, a charge Durkin denied. Durkin was eventually caught, subsequently convicted and sentenced to 19 years in an Illinois prison for the murder of Shanahan, followed by 15 more years in Leavenworth for his federal crime.
Most infamous of all gangland slayings in America (1929): Seven men, suspected to be members of George “Bugs” Moran’s gang, were lined up against the wall of a garage on Clark Street, the gang’s headquarters, and killed by rivals’ machine guns in what became known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
It savagely achieved its purpose: eliminating the last challenge to Al Capone for the mantle of crime boss in Chicago.
John Dillinger given up by ‘woman in red’ (1934): Chicago was in the grip of a weeklong heat wave, and the mercury on July 22, 1934, reached 101 degrees. Twenty-three people died of the heat, but the death that drew the most attention was that of John Dillinger — a 31-year-old Indiana man who, on his birthday a month earlier, had been declared Public Enemy No. 1 by the FBI.
Dillinger was ambushed by federal agents outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater (now known as Victory Gardens Theater), 2433 N. Lincoln Ave. His corpse was put on display at the Cook County morgue.
‘Battle of Barrington’ (1934): Bank robber and “Public Enemy No. 1” Lester Joseph Gillis — better known as George “Baby Face” Nelson — was killed on Nov. 27, 1934, in a gun battle with FBI agents in Barrington. FBI Inspector Samuel P. Cowley and FBI Special Agent Herman E. Hollis were also killed.
Chicago’s notorious ‘Lipstick Killer’ (1945-46): Six-year-old Suzanne Degnan was strangled by an intruder on Jan. 7, 1946, who used a ladder to climb into a window of her Edgewater home. The killer left a note demanding $20,000, but her body was found dismembered and disposed of in city sewers.
William Heirens, then a 17-year-old University of Chicago student, was caught and confessed to killing Degnan and two women later that year. He became known as the “Lipstick Killer” after scrawling a message in lipstick at a crime scene: “For heaven’s sake, catch me before I kill more.”
Heirens was in prison for 65 years, becoming one of the longest-serving inmates in Illinois history, before he died in 2012.
The shooting of Eddie Waitkus (1949): Onetime Chicago Cub Eddie Waitkus, by then with the Philadelphia Phillies, became the inspiration for “The Natural” when he was shot in the Edgewater Beach Hotel by Ruth Ann Steinhagen, a 19-year-old fan.
Grimes sisters’ nude bodies found (1957): The nude bodies of sisters Barbara and Patricia Grimes were found on Jan. 22, 1957, along a rural road near Burr Ridge. The girls had slipped away from their home in Chicago’s McKinley Park neighborhood a month earlier to see an Elvis Presley movie at a nearby theater, but never returned.
Investigators didn’t find enough evidence to explain their deaths. The official cause of death was exposure to winter cold, and despite an exhaustive investigation and widespread media attention, the case remains one of the Chicago area’s most notorious unsolved mysteries.
Killing of eight student nurses (1966): Armed with a gun and a knife, Richard Speck broke into a townhouse on July 14, 1966, in the 2300 block of East 100th Street on Chicago’s South Side and killed eight student nurses who lived there and worked at South Chicago Community Hospital. They were Nina Jo Schmale, Patricia Ann Matusek, Pamela Lee Wilkening, Mary Ann Jordan, Suzanne Bridget Farris, Valentina Pasion, Merlita Gargullo and Gloria Jean Davy. Corazon Amurao Atienza managed to crawl under a bed and hide while Speck methodically stabbed and strangled her roommates after telling them he would not hurt them, that he just needed money to get to New Orleans.
Speck was captured two days later when an emergency room doctor at Cook County Hospital thought a patient he was treating for self-inflicted gashes looked familiar. The doctor had just had a dinner break and saw the front page of a newspaper featuring the killer’s face. As he was sponging blood off the patient’s arm, he saw the man had a tattoo that said “Born to Raise Hell” that matched the paper’s description.
Though originally convicted and then sentenced to die in the electric chair for the murders, Speck was resentenced to eight consecutive terms of 50 to 150 years each after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty of Illinois and other states was unconstitutional.
Speck died of a heart attack at a Joliet hospital on Dec. 5, 1991 — the day before his 50th birthday.Black Panthers leaders killed in a hail of police bullets (1969): Police raided a two-flat on Dec. 4, 1969, at 2337 W. Monroe St. — the Illinois’ Black Panther Party stronghold — killing party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.
Officially, the Cook County state’s attorney’s 4:30 a.m. raid by 14 Chicago police officers began as the execution of a search warrant to turn up weapons and explosives that the feared Black power group was supposedly hoarding inside.
But survivors described a far more frightening scene: Officers armed with shotguns and rifles opened fire on sleeping Black Panther members inside, among them Hampton’s pregnant fiancee. A special federal grand jury determined that police sprayed 82 to 99 gunshots through doors, walls and windows, while just one shot appeared to have been fired by someone inside.
Hoodlum shot in his basement kitchen (1975): Just hours after returning from Houston, where he had undergone gallbladder surgery, former Chicago Outfit head Salvatore “Sam” Giancana entertained friends and family on June 19, 1975, at his Oak Park home at 1147 Wenonah Ave. Police conducted surveillance as revelers entered and exited the home.
Someone shot Giancana five times as he prepared a meal in his basement kitchen. His body was discovered by his live-in caretaker and the caretaker’s wife.
“A frying pan containing sausage and spinach was on the stove,” Tribune reporter Weldon Whisler wrote. “The gas was turned off by police when they arrived shortly after midnight, but the food had not burned, indicating that Giancana was shot not long before.”
The killing was never solved.
Disappearance of a candy heiress (1977): Helen Vorhees Brach was last seen alive on Feb. 17, 1977. Brach left an appointment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where she was given a clean bill of health after a routine checkup.
Not many seemed to notice, at first, that she had disappeared. Brach’s husband, Frank, president of E.J. Brach & Sons candy company, died in 1970. They had no children, and she was close only with few relatives. Her handyman, Jack Matlick — who claimed he picked Brach up from O’Hare Airport on Feb. 17, 1977, drove her to her palatial house in Glenview, then took her back to O’Hare on Feb. 21, 1977 — didn’t submit a missing-person report to police until March 1977. Five checks were cashed — forged with her signature — after she vanished.
Brach was declared legally dead in 1984, though her body was never found.
John Wayne Gacy arrested (1978): Investigators uncovered 29 bodies buried at the serial killer’s one-story, ranch-style house in unincorporated Norwood Park Township — 26 in the crawl space under his home and three more outside the house. Gacy confessed to four more murders, of victims whose bodies were found in waterways south of Chicago.
After five weeks of testimony from psychiatrists, police, neighbors, acquaintances and family members of the victims, a jury of seven men and five women took less than two hours to convict Gacy on March 12, 1980, of killing 33 young men.
Gacy was sentenced to death the next day. He was executed on May 10, 1994, by lethal injection at Stateville Penitentiary near Joliet.
The Tylenol murders (1982): Twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village died on Sept. 29, 1982, after taking an Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule.
Seven people died as a result of poisoning from drug tampering in the Chicago area and panicked the nation. Widely regarded as an act of domestic terrorism — a term not in the country’s vernacular at the time — the killings led to tamper-evident packaging, copycat killings and myths about tainted Halloween candy.
Spilotro brothers buried alive (1986): Anthony Spilotro, 48, and his brother Michael, 41, were beaten with baseball bats and then buried alive on June 14, 1986, in a northwest Indiana cornfield. Contrary to what was depicted in the 1995 film “Casino,” the brothers were driven to a Bensenville home where Michael thought he was going to become a “made member” of the Outfit. Instead, the brothers were beaten with fists, knees and feet in the home’s basement before being driven to the cornfield and buried.
Dental records were used by their brother, Patrick Spilotro, a dentist, to identify the bodies. The details came out during the 2007 “Family Secrets” trial, which Tribune editor Jeff Coen wrote about in his 2009 book, “Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob.”
The gang leader and Libya (1987): Jeff Fort, founder of the ruthless El Rukn gang, was convicted on Nov. 24, 1987, of plotting acts of domestic terrorism from his Texas jail cell in exchange for $2.5 million from Libya. It was the first time that U.S. citizens were brought to trial and found guilty on terrorism charges, the Tribune reported at the time.
Fort is serving an 80-year sentence in the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado.
Hubbard Woods Elementary School shooting (1988): Laurie Dann shot six children at the Winnetka school, killing 8-year-old Nicholas Corwin, during a rampage that ended in her own death in the North Shore suburb.
Killed while walking to school (1992): Shortly after the 9 a.m. school bell, 7-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot in the head by a sniper while walking with his mother from his Cabrini-Green high-rise to the Jenner Academy of the Arts. Half an hour later, he was pronounced dead at Children’s Memorial Hospital.
Later that day, police arrested reputed street gang leader Anthony Garrett in connection with Dantrell’s murder.
Brown’s Chicken murders (1993): Seven people — five employees and the couple that owned the restaurant — were killed on Jan. 8, 1993, inside Brown’s Chicken & Pasta at 168 W. Northwest Highway in Palatine.
Juan Luna and Jim Degorski escaped justice for nearly a decade until investigators caught a break. Degorski had told an ex-girlfriend of his role in the killings, and a friend who overheard her talking about it in 2002 went to the police.
Another piece of evidence was crucial to the case. Investigators had saved a discarded meal from the scene, and as DNA analysis improved, they were able to match DNA left on a chicken bone with Luna’s saliva. The two were arrested in May 2002. Luna was convicted of murder in 2007, and Degorski followed two years later. Jurors spared them the death penalty, but both are serving life sentences with no possibility of parole.
11-year-old gang member killed execution style (1994): Black Disciples-affiliated Robert “Yummy” Sandifer was a 4-foot, 6-inch 11-year-old on the run after he allegedly fired the shot on Aug. 28, 1994, that wounded 16-year-old Kianta Britten. Two hours later, Sandifer shot and killed his 14-year-old neighbor Shavon Dean.
After an intense police manhunt, Sandifer was found killed, his body lying in the mouth of a pedestrian walkway at 108th Street and Dauphin Avenue. Less than 24 hours later, neighbors Derrick Hardaway, 14, and his 16-year-old brother, Cragg, were charged with Sandifer’s murder. Both were convicted of murder in 1997. Derrick was sentenced to 45 years in prison, but was released in December 2016. Cragg was sentenced to 60 years.
Sandifer’s photo was used on the cover of Time magazine in September 1994.
Chicago heat wave (1995): The prolonged extreme heat of July 1995 — the deadliest weather event in Illinois history — led to the deaths of 739 people, mostly elderly residents, people of color and those who lived alone. The heat wave also redefined the city’s emergency response and disaster preparedness.
Its exact duration — which, by most accounts, lasted July 13 to July 20 — is still somewhat difficult to settle on, partly because of dead Chicagoans found in homes and hotels after the heat declined to the low 90s. Even the final number of dead was only settled on months later.
Husband of cosmetics guru Marilyn Miglin murdered (1997): Real estate magnate Lee Miglin was discovered slain on May 4, 1997, in the garage of his Gold Coast home.
Though there was no known link, police suspect Andrew Cunanan committed the crime. Cunanan killed himself on July 23, 1997.
‘Unabomber’ pleads guilty (1998): Chicago-area native Ted Kaczynski, dubbed the “Unabomber,” pleaded guilty on Jan. 22, 1998 — almost 20 years after his first pipe bomb exploded — choosing to spend life in prison rather than be portrayed at trial as mentally ill.
Kaczynski was arrested in 1996 at his remote Montana cabin. He was held in the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge. He admitted to committing 16 bombings from 1978 to 1995, permanently maiming several of his victims. Kaczynski died in 2023.
Judge’s husband and mother killed in her home (2005): U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow found her husband — Michael F. Lefkow, 64, an attorney — and mother — Donna Grace Humphrey, 90 — shot dead in the basement of her home, less than a year after white supremacist Matthew Hale was convicted of trying to have her murdered for holding him in contempt of court.
Security at the Lefkow home — including a camera mounted outside the home and guards posted on the block in unmarked cars — had been beefed up after the allegations against Hale emerged in January 2003. But neighbors said the extra measures tailed off about the time Hale was convicted in April 2004.
On March 7, 2005, investigators told Tribune reporters that DNA was pulled from a cigarette butt found in the kitchen sink of the Lefkow home. Out-of-work electrician Bart Ross, who had a long history of ranting against judges and lawyers, shot himself two days later during a traffic stop outside Milwaukee. The DNA from the cigarette butt matched samples taken from Ross’ body.
Judge Lefkow was determined to return to the bench. She is now a U.S. District judge for the Northern District of Illinois.
Back-to-back governors imprisoned (early 2000s): George Ryan was governor of Illinois from 1999 to 2003. He chose not to run for a second term amid a brewing scandal and ongoing federal investigation related to his time as Illinois secretary of state. Ryan was convicted in 2006 on 18 felony counts, including racketeering conspiracy, tax and mail fraud and lying to the FBI.
Prosecutors accused him of receiving illegal cash payments and gifts during his time as secretary of state and governor. Ryan was given a 6½-year prison sentence. He spent more than five years in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, and was released from home confinement in 2013.
Rod Blagojevich was elected governor in 2002 and served until 2009, when he became the first Illinois governor in history to be impeached and removed from office.
The impeachment occurred after Blagojevich was arrested in late 2008 by federal law enforcement on a series of corruption charges, including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama. At Blagojevich’s first trial, he was convicted of lying to the FBI, but the jury was hung on other charges.
At his second trial in 2011, Blagojevich was found guilty on the more widespread allegations, including the Senate seat charges, trying to shake down a children’s hospital leader in exchange for sending money approved for pediatric services, and seeking a $100,000 contribution from a horse track owner in exchange for signing favorable legislation.
In 2020, President Donald Trump, a Republican later convicted of felonies himself, commuted Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence to about eight years served.
Jon Burge’s ‘Midnight Crew’ (2010): Decades after torture allegations were first leveled against former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge’s “Midnight Crew,” a secret Chicago police internal report surfaced cataloging more than 50 instances of “methodical” and “systematic” torture by Burge and his subordinates. Burge himself was never charged directly in any of the torture allegations, though he was fired from the Chicago Police Department in 1993.
Although most of Burge’s alleged misconduct took place in the 1970s and ‘80s, his accusers played a fundamental role in former Gov. Ryan’s decision to vacate Illinois’ death row in 2000 and declare a moratorium on capital punishment in the state.
A federal jury convicted Burge on June 28, 2010, on all three counts of obstruction of justice and perjury for lying in a lawsuit about the torture of suspects in attempts to obtain confessions. He was sentenced to prison and released in 2014. Burge died in 2018.
Lawsuits from Burge’s victims have cost taxpayers many millions in settlements and judgments, much of it paid out of city coffers.
Then, as now, America loves true crime stories. That’s why the last edition of our Illinois 250 series looks back at how our state has been home to some of the most notorious ones.
Here’s a look back at the most infamous, shocking, blood-curdling or mysterious crimes and disasters that captured the attention of the nation — and the world.
The city burns (1871): The Great Chicago Fire began in a hay-filled cow barn behind the frame house that Mrs. Catherine O’Leary shared with her husband, Patrick, and their five kids on DeKoven Street on the Near West Side.
The fire ran — and it grew, swept by a strong wind from the southwest, eating its ravenous way north and toward downtown and beyond. People ran to the lake for shelter as the city became a vast ocean of flame.
After that horrible night and the equally terrifying and destructive day and night that followed, the fire finally burned itself out. Chicago awoke two days later to find almost 18,000 buildings destroyed, much of the city leveled, 90,000 people homeless and 300-some people dead.
The Tribune offered a stirring prophecy that “CHICAGO SHALL RISE AGAIN.”
Abraham Lincoln’s grave robbers (1876): Four men with shady backgrounds, under the cover of darkness on Nov. 7, 1876, tried to remove the body of President Abraham Lincoln from its marble sarcophagus in Springfield’s Oak Ridge Cemetery. The next day, the Tribune ran a long article about the aborted scheme. The following day, the newspaper carried a longer account about the “Desecrators of Lincoln’s Remains.” On Nov. 18, the whole front page was devoted to in-depth coverage of the plot, the break-in, the escape of two would-be body snatchers and their capture at a Chicago saloon called The Hub, allegedly frequented by lowlifes.
What made such instant journalism possible? Chicago police Chief Elmer Washburn had a confidential secretary, Percy English, who also wrote for the Tribune. When Washburn was alerted that the skulduggery was going to happen, he allowed the young reporter to accompany authorities determined to foil the plot. English became a witness and got one of the scoops of the century.
‘Murder Castle’ of H.H. Holmes (1893): Differing accounts claim that the man who became infamous during the World’s Columbian Exposition as H.H. Holmes may have had hundreds of victims who were tortured and killed within a network of secret rooms in his so-called Murder Castle at 610 W. 63rd St. There was a “mostly” soundproof walk-in vault, but it likely was used to conceal stolen furniture, not murder, experts said.
“He did kill nine or 10 people, but it wasn’t hundreds and hundreds. It wasn’t in a hotel, and it wasn’t World’s Fair patrons,” said author and Chicago tour guide Adam Selzer, whose 2017 book “H.H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil” sought to demystify the killer behind the legend, using official records and documents.
“He was a swindler, first and foremost, who partly through his own confessions, became a new American tall tale,” Selzer said.
Iroquois Theatre fire (1903): The matinee performance of “Mr. Bluebeard” at Chicago’s newly opened Iroquois Theatre on Randolph Street between State and Dearborn Streets was packed on Dec. 30, 1903, with an estimated 2,000 schoolchildren and families. Though the “finest, handsomest, and best equipped” theater bragged about its 35 exits, it did not have a sprinkler system, telephone, fire alarm or exit signs.
The second act had just begun when an arc light near the stage ignited a curtain. As flames licked at the fabric and smoke curled toward the ceiling, an overcapacity crowd of more than 1,800 panicked, rushing for the exits and jamming against doors that opened inward. Some exits were locked; others were nearly impossible to open.
Firefighters put out the fire in 30 minutes, but not before it became the worst of its kind in American history with 602 dead, more than twice the toll of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Theatergoers from 13 states were killed in the disaster, which made headlines worldwide.
The Iroquois Theatre fire resulted in reforms such as fireproof scenery and stage curtains, illuminated exits and doors that open outward. It also inspired the invention of the exit-door “panic bar,” which is still in use today, and the UL Label Service.
SS Eastland disaster (1915): The SS Eastland — packed on July 24, 1915, with Western Electric Co. employees and their families for a day trip to Michigan City, Indiana — rolled to its side in the Chicago River between LaSalle Drive and Clark Street.
More than 840 of the 2,500 aboard died, many of them trapped inside the vessel as water poured in when the ship tipped over just a few feet from the riverbank.
‘Black Sox’ banned from baseball (1921): Eight White Sox players were charged with throwing the 1919 World Series. Despite earning the “Black Sox” nickname, the men were acquitted by a jury that deliberated for just 2 hours and 47 minutes on Aug. 2, 1921.
A day after their acquittal, however, baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis ruled the players allegedly involved — Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Oscar Emil “Happy” Felsch, Chick Gandil, Frederick William McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver and Lefty Williams — would be banned for life from organized baseball.
Good girl gone bad (1924): Chicago’s youngest and first female assistant U.S. district attorney was a brilliant Polish immigrant named Wanda Stopa. She had been one of only two women to graduate from John Marshall Law School in 1921. But just three years after graduation, Stopa left her career, married a Russian count and then fell in love with a rich, married advertising executive, Y. Kenley Smith, who paid for her to live in New York.
When Smith refused to leave his wife, Genevieve, nicknamed Doodles, Stopa showed up at their Palos Park home on April 24, 1924, intending to kill Smith’s wife. She took a shot, but it hit the couple’s elderly caretaker, Henry Manning, killing him. Stopa went on the run, later killing herself by swallowing poison in a Detroit hotel room.
Approximately 10,000 Chicagoans turned out for her wake and funeral.
‘The perfect murder’ (1924): Friends Nathan “Babe” Leopold Jr. and Richard “Dickie” Loeb — the pampered sons of prominent Kenwood families — killed Robert “Bobby” Franks after they offered him a ride home from school on May 21, 1924.
To the public, Franks’ death appeared to have been orchestrated for money and thrills. But the two brilliant masterminds behind the crime simply referred to it as a “perfect murder” for which they believed they could outsmart the authorities and would never stand trial.
After they dumped the boy’s body near Wolf Lake, however, they confessed to the murder and were brought to trial for what became the “crime of the century.”
Clarence Darrow was hired by the confessed killers’ families for their defense, and he made a surprise tactical move as the trial began.
“We withdraw our plea of not guilty and enter a plea of guilty,” Darrow told Judge John Caverly.
Darrow’s eloquent plea had the desired effect, and Leopold and Loeb were sentenced to life in prison.
‘Prettiest woman ever accused of murder in Chicago’ (1924): A young, liquored-up woman (this was during Prohibition) named Beulah Annan shot her equally inebriated lover to death on April 3, 1924, inside the apartment she shared with her husband. Another young woman named Maurine Dallas Watkins reported Annan’s expedited travails through Cook County’s legal system for the Tribune.
Watkins used the trial’s twists to write a three-act play, “A Brave Little Woman,” while attending the new Yale School of Drama in 1926. When it debuted on Broadway later that year, it was called “Chicago.”
The musical version of “Chicago” is the second-longest-running show on Broadway after “The Phantom of the Opera” (13,981 performances) and the longest active show.
First person to kill a federal agent (1925): On Oct. 11, 1925, Martin Durkin shot FBI Agent Edwin Shanahan at Porter’s Garage, 6231 Princeton Ave. in Englewood. Shanahan was attempting to arrest Durkin for violating the Dyer Act by transporting a stolen automobile, a charge Durkin denied. Durkin was eventually caught, subsequently convicted and sentenced to 19 years in an Illinois prison for the murder of Shanahan, followed by 15 more years in Leavenworth for his federal crime.
Most infamous of all gangland slayings in America (1929): Seven men, suspected to be members of George “Bugs” Moran’s gang, were lined up against the wall of a garage on Clark Street, the gang’s headquarters, and killed by rivals’ machine guns in what became known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
It savagely achieved its purpose: eliminating the last challenge to Al Capone for the mantle of crime boss in Chicago.
John Dillinger given up by ‘woman in red’ (1934): Chicago was in the grip of a weeklong heat wave, and the mercury on July 22, 1934, reached 101 degrees. Twenty-three people died of the heat, but the death that drew the most attention was that of John Dillinger — a 31-year-old Indiana man who, on his birthday a month earlier, had been declared Public Enemy No. 1 by the FBI.
Dillinger was ambushed by federal agents outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater (now known as Victory Gardens Theater), 2433 N. Lincoln Ave. His corpse was put on display at the Cook County morgue.
‘Battle of Barrington’ (1934): Bank robber and “Public Enemy No. 1” Lester Joseph Gillis — better known as George “Baby Face” Nelson — was killed on Nov. 27, 1934, in a gun battle with FBI agents in Barrington. FBI Inspector Samuel P. Cowley and FBI Special Agent Herman E. Hollis were also killed.
Chicago’s notorious ‘Lipstick Killer’ (1945-46): Six-year-old Suzanne Degnan was strangled by an intruder on Jan. 7, 1946, who used a ladder to climb into a window of her Edgewater home. The killer left a note demanding $20,000, but her body was found dismembered and disposed of in city sewers.
William Heirens, then a 17-year-old University of Chicago student, was caught and confessed to killing Degnan and two women later that year. He became known as the “Lipstick Killer” after scrawling a message in lipstick at a crime scene: “For heaven’s sake, catch me before I kill more.”
Heirens was in prison for 65 years, becoming one of the longest-serving inmates in Illinois history, before he died in 2012.
The shooting of Eddie Waitkus (1949): Onetime Chicago Cub Eddie Waitkus, by then with the Philadelphia Phillies, became the inspiration for “The Natural” when he was shot in the Edgewater Beach Hotel by Ruth Ann Steinhagen, a 19-year-old fan.
Grimes sisters’ nude bodies found (1957): The nude bodies of sisters Barbara and Patricia Grimes were found on Jan. 22, 1957, along a rural road near Burr Ridge. The girls had slipped away from their home in Chicago’s McKinley Park neighborhood a month earlier to see an Elvis Presley movie at a nearby theater, but never returned.
Investigators didn’t find enough evidence to explain their deaths. The official cause of death was exposure to winter cold, and despite an exhaustive investigation and widespread media attention, the case remains one of the Chicago area’s most notorious unsolved mysteries.
Killing of eight student nurses (1966): Armed with a gun and a knife, Richard Speck broke into a townhouse on July 14, 1966, in the 2300 block of East 100th Street on Chicago’s South Side and killed eight student nurses who lived there and worked at South Chicago Community Hospital. They were Nina Jo Schmale, Patricia Ann Matusek, Pamela Lee Wilkening, Mary Ann Jordan, Suzanne Bridget Farris, Valentina Pasion, Merlita Gargullo and Gloria Jean Davy. Corazon Amurao Atienza managed to crawl under a bed and hide while Speck methodically stabbed and strangled her roommates after telling them he would not hurt them, that he just needed money to get to New Orleans.
Speck was captured two days later when an emergency room doctor at Cook County Hospital thought a patient he was treating for self-inflicted gashes looked familiar. The doctor had just had a dinner break and saw the front page of a newspaper featuring the killer’s face. As he was sponging blood off the patient’s arm, he saw the man had a tattoo that said “Born to Raise Hell” that matched the paper’s description.
Though originally convicted and then sentenced to die in the electric chair for the murders, Speck was resentenced to eight consecutive terms of 50 to 150 years each after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty of Illinois and other states was unconstitutional.
Speck died of a heart attack at a Joliet hospital on Dec. 5, 1991 — the day before his 50th birthday.Black Panthers leaders killed in a hail of police bullets (1969): Police raided a two-flat on Dec. 4, 1969, at 2337 W. Monroe St. — the Illinois’ Black Panther Party stronghold — killing party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.
Officially, the Cook County state’s attorney’s 4:30 a.m. raid by 14 Chicago police officers began as the execution of a search warrant to turn up weapons and explosives that the feared Black power group was supposedly hoarding inside.
But survivors described a far more frightening scene: Officers armed with shotguns and rifles opened fire on sleeping Black Panther members inside, among them Hampton’s pregnant fiancee. A special federal grand jury determined that police sprayed 82 to 99 gunshots through doors, walls and windows, while just one shot appeared to have been fired by someone inside.
Hoodlum shot in his basement kitchen (1975): Just hours after returning from Houston, where he had undergone gallbladder surgery, former Chicago Outfit head Salvatore “Sam” Giancana entertained friends and family on June 19, 1975, at his Oak Park home at 1147 Wenonah Ave. Police conducted surveillance as revelers entered and exited the home.
Someone shot Giancana five times as he prepared a meal in his basement kitchen. His body was discovered by his live-in caretaker and the caretaker’s wife.
“A frying pan containing sausage and spinach was on the stove,” Tribune reporter Weldon Whisler wrote. “The gas was turned off by police when they arrived shortly after midnight, but the food had not burned, indicating that Giancana was shot not long before.”
The killing was never solved.
Disappearance of a candy heiress (1977): Helen Vorhees Brach was last seen alive on Feb. 17, 1977. Brach left an appointment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where she was given a clean bill of health after a routine checkup.
Not many seemed to notice, at first, that she had disappeared. Brach’s husband, Frank, president of E.J. Brach & Sons candy company, died in 1970. They had no children, and she was close only with few relatives. Her handyman, Jack Matlick — who claimed he picked Brach up from O’Hare Airport on Feb. 17, 1977, drove her to her palatial house in Glenview, then took her back to O’Hare on Feb. 21, 1977 — didn’t submit a missing-person report to police until March 1977. Five checks were cashed — forged with her signature — after she vanished.
Brach was declared legally dead in 1984, though her body was never found.
John Wayne Gacy arrested (1978): Investigators uncovered 29 bodies buried at the serial killer’s one-story, ranch-style house in unincorporated Norwood Park Township — 26 in the crawl space under his home and three more outside the house. Gacy confessed to four more murders, of victims whose bodies were found in waterways south of Chicago.
After five weeks of testimony from psychiatrists, police, neighbors, acquaintances and family members of the victims, a jury of seven men and five women took less than two hours to convict Gacy on March 12, 1980, of killing 33 young men.
Gacy was sentenced to death the next day. He was executed on May 10, 1994, by lethal injection at Stateville Penitentiary near Joliet.
The Tylenol murders (1982): Twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village died on Sept. 29, 1982, after taking an Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule.
Seven people died as a result of poisoning from drug tampering in the Chicago area and panicked the nation. Widely regarded as an act of domestic terrorism — a term not in the country’s vernacular at the time — the killings led to tamper-evident packaging, copycat killings and myths about tainted Halloween candy.
Spilotro brothers buried alive (1986): Anthony Spilotro, 48, and his brother Michael, 41, were beaten with baseball bats and then buried alive on June 14, 1986, in a northwest Indiana cornfield. Contrary to what was depicted in the 1995 film “Casino,” the brothers were driven to a Bensenville home where Michael thought he was going to become a “made member” of the Outfit. Instead, the brothers were beaten with fists, knees and feet in the home’s basement before being driven to the cornfield and buried.
Dental records were used by their brother, Patrick Spilotro, a dentist, to identify the bodies. The details came out during the 2007 “Family Secrets” trial, which Tribune editor Jeff Coen wrote about in his 2009 book, “Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob.”
The gang leader and Libya (1987): Jeff Fort, founder of the ruthless El Rukn gang, was convicted on Nov. 24, 1987, of plotting acts of domestic terrorism from his Texas jail cell in exchange for $2.5 million from Libya. It was the first time that U.S. citizens were brought to trial and found guilty on terrorism charges, the Tribune reported at the time.
Fort is serving an 80-year sentence in the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado.
Hubbard Woods Elementary School shooting (1988): Laurie Dann shot six children at the Winnetka school, killing 8-year-old Nicholas Corwin, during a rampage that ended in her own death in the North Shore suburb.
Killed while walking to school (1992): Shortly after the 9 a.m. school bell, 7-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot in the head by a sniper while walking with his mother from his Cabrini-Green high-rise to the Jenner Academy of the Arts. Half an hour later, he was pronounced dead at Children’s Memorial Hospital.
Later that day, police arrested reputed street gang leader Anthony Garrett in connection with Dantrell’s murder.
Brown’s Chicken murders (1993): Seven people — five employees and the couple that owned the restaurant — were killed on Jan. 8, 1993, inside Brown’s Chicken & Pasta at 168 W. Northwest Highway in Palatine.
Juan Luna and Jim Degorski escaped justice for nearly a decade until investigators caught a break. Degorski had told an ex-girlfriend of his role in the killings, and a friend who overheard her talking about it in 2002 went to the police.
Another piece of evidence was crucial to the case. Investigators had saved a discarded meal from the scene, and as DNA analysis improved, they were able to match DNA left on a chicken bone with Luna’s saliva. The two were arrested in May 2002. Luna was convicted of murder in 2007, and Degorski followed two years later. Jurors spared them the death penalty, but both are serving life sentences with no possibility of parole.
11-year-old gang member killed execution style (1994): Black Disciples-affiliated Robert “Yummy” Sandifer was a 4-foot, 6-inch 11-year-old on the run after he allegedly fired the shot on Aug. 28, 1994, that wounded 16-year-old Kianta Britten. Two hours later, Sandifer shot and killed his 14-year-old neighbor Shavon Dean.
After an intense police manhunt, Sandifer was found killed, his body lying in the mouth of a pedestrian walkway at 108th Street and Dauphin Avenue. Less than 24 hours later, neighbors Derrick Hardaway, 14, and his 16-year-old brother, Cragg, were charged with Sandifer’s murder. Both were convicted of murder in 1997. Derrick was sentenced to 45 years in prison, but was released in December 2016. Cragg was sentenced to 60 years.
Sandifer’s photo was used on the cover of Time magazine in September 1994.
Chicago heat wave (1995): The prolonged extreme heat of July 1995 — the deadliest weather event in Illinois history — led to the deaths of 739 people, mostly elderly residents, people of color and those who lived alone. The heat wave also redefined the city’s emergency response and disaster preparedness.
Its exact duration — which, by most accounts, lasted July 13 to July 20 — is still somewhat difficult to settle on, partly because of dead Chicagoans found in homes and hotels after the heat declined to the low 90s. Even the final number of dead was only settled on months later.
Husband of cosmetics guru Marilyn Miglin murdered (1997): Real estate magnate Lee Miglin was discovered slain on May 4, 1997, in the garage of his Gold Coast home.
Though there was no known link, police suspect Andrew Cunanan committed the crime. Cunanan killed himself on July 23, 1997.
‘Unabomber’ pleads guilty (1998): Chicago-area native Ted Kaczynski, dubbed the “Unabomber,” pleaded guilty on Jan. 22, 1998 — almost 20 years after his first pipe bomb exploded — choosing to spend life in prison rather than be portrayed at trial as mentally ill.
Kaczynski was arrested in 1996 at his remote Montana cabin. He was held in the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge. He admitted to committing 16 bombings from 1978 to 1995, permanently maiming several of his victims. Kaczynski died in 2023.
Judge’s husband and mother killed in her home (2005): U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow found her husband — Michael F. Lefkow, 64, an attorney — and mother — Donna Grace Humphrey, 90 — shot dead in the basement of her home, less than a year after white supremacist Matthew Hale was convicted of trying to have her murdered for holding him in contempt of court.
Security at the Lefkow home — including a camera mounted outside the home and guards posted on the block in unmarked cars — had been beefed up after the allegations against Hale emerged in January 2003. But neighbors said the extra measures tailed off about the time Hale was convicted in April 2004.
On March 7, 2005, investigators told Tribune reporters that DNA was pulled from a cigarette butt found in the kitchen sink of the Lefkow home. Out-of-work electrician Bart Ross, who had a long history of ranting against judges and lawyers, shot himself two days later during a traffic stop outside Milwaukee. The DNA from the cigarette butt matched samples taken from Ross’ body.
Judge Lefkow was determined to return to the bench. She is now a U.S. District judge for the Northern District of Illinois.
Back-to-back governors imprisoned (early 2000s): George Ryan was governor of Illinois from 1999 to 2003. He chose not to run for a second term amid a brewing scandal and ongoing federal investigation related to his time as Illinois secretary of state. Ryan was convicted in 2006 on 18 felony counts, including racketeering conspiracy, tax and mail fraud and lying to the FBI.
Prosecutors accused him of receiving illegal cash payments and gifts during his time as secretary of state and governor. Ryan was given a 6½-year prison sentence. He spent more than five years in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, and was released from home confinement in 2013.
Rod Blagojevich was elected governor in 2002 and served until 2009, when he became the first Illinois governor in history to be impeached and removed from office.
The impeachment occurred after Blagojevich was arrested in late 2008 by federal law enforcement on a series of corruption charges, including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama. At Blagojevich’s first trial, he was convicted of lying to the FBI, but the jury was hung on other charges.
At his second trial in 2011, Blagojevich was found guilty on the more widespread allegations, including the Senate seat charges, trying to shake down a children’s hospital leader in exchange for sending money approved for pediatric services, and seeking a $100,000 contribution from a horse track owner in exchange for signing favorable legislation.
In 2020, President Donald Trump, a Republican later convicted of felonies himself, commuted Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence to about eight years served.
Jon Burge’s ‘Midnight Crew’ (2010): Decades after torture allegations were first leveled against former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge’s “Midnight Crew,” a secret Chicago police internal report surfaced cataloging more than 50 instances of “methodical” and “systematic” torture by Burge and his subordinates. Burge himself was never charged directly in any of the torture allegations, though he was fired from the Chicago Police Department in 1993.
Although most of Burge’s alleged misconduct took place in the 1970s and ‘80s, his accusers played a fundamental role in former Gov. Ryan’s decision to vacate Illinois’ death row in 2000 and declare a moratorium on capital punishment in the state.
A federal jury convicted Burge on June 28, 2010, on all three counts of obstruction of justice and perjury for lying in a lawsuit about the torture of suspects in attempts to obtain confessions. He was sentenced to prison and released in 2014. Burge died in 2018.
Lawsuits from Burge’s victims have cost taxpayers many millions in settlements and judgments, much of it paid out of city coffers.
A former McHenry Township trustee is asking Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to look deeper into claims that state Sen. Napoleon Harris does not live in Thornton Township, where he is supervisor.
Bob Anderson, 89, says he is passionate about restoring people’s faith in their leaders through ethics reform, after working for nearly 60 years as a barber in Wonder Lake. He said working taxation and representation into conversations with his clients, he heard that many of them felt powerless to stop the corruption they believed to be rampant within many levels of government.
“I started talking to people, and they’d be so frustrated,” he said. “It takes a lot of time and effort, and it takes guts to do this.”
Anderson said he recently learned about challenges to Harris’ candidacy for Thornton Township supervisor and township committeeperson brought last year by allies of former Supervisor Tiffany Henyard, Keith Price and Michael Smith.
Harris won the party seat for Thornton Township supervisor during a caucus he presided over last year in his role as the township’s Democratic committeeman, beating out Henyard. Smith and Price stated Harris lived at an address in Flossmoor within Bloom Township, which is listed as Harris’ address on the Illinois State Board of Elections’ website, rather than in Harvey, as Harris has claimed.
They brought the same objection again when Harris faced former Thornton Township Trustee Stephanie Wiedeman in a race for Democratic committeeman, along with another claim that Harris’ nominating petition for the March 17, 2026 primary included eight pages of duplicate signatures.
Wiedeman says she split with Harris politically after he pulled levers at the state level to continue collecting a $202,000 salary as supervisor, despite an ordinance meant to reset the salary to $57,000. She said Smith and Price ultimately dropped their objections after feeling “the decision was already made” by county officials, but she supports any efforts to continue looking into Harris’ residency.
“I’m happy that somebody is pursuing this,” Wiedeman said. “I don’t think it’s fair that our tax money is taken and spent elsewhere. I think we deserve better than that.”
The former trustee expressed frustrations that other township trustees, along with those at the county and state level, have in her mind turned a blind eye to concerns about Harris’ salary and residency.
“Everybody’s hands is dirty, so nobody wants to say anything because the fingers are going to point back at them at some point,” Wiedeman said.
“These are people I believed in. I supported them, I walked for them, I campaigned for them, I made phone calls for them,” she said. “I gave up time away from my family for these people. So when things like this come up and they’re not willing to stand up for what’s right, it is really disappointing.”
State Rep. Suzanne Ness, D-East Dundee, expressed similar concerns that legislation she introduced to prevent elected officials from holding more than one office at once was “a nonstarter” in Springfield.
The legislation would directly affect Harris and many other south suburban leaders, such as Thaddeus Jones, who is both a state representative and mayor of Calumet City. Anderson said he was passionate about the measure as well to prevent officials from “double dipping.”
“The practice of holding two elected positions at the same time, especially the ones that receive salaries, I think it just erodes public trust and is just not a good thing for us to do,” Ness said.
She said she gave up her seat on the McHenry County Board after being elected as representative in 2020.
“People were like, ‘oh, are you going to keep your seat?’ I was like, well no, why would I do that?”
Anderson sent certified letters asking for Harris’ removal as township supervisor to the Cook County state’s attorney and Illinois governor’s offices, among others.
“It’s inconceivable that a public official would file, what appears to be, incorrect residency information; one more reason for the public to have mistrust of their elected officials and government,” the letter states.
A spokesperson for Harris did not respond to requests for comment.
Lucia Vasquez-Gonzalez thought she was doing the right thing when she went to court in March.
Vasquez-Gonzalez migrated to the U.S. in search of a better life but did not have legal permission to live here. In January, she was charged with one count of misdemeanor domestic battery in a confrontation with her roommate, according to court records, but she appeared before a judge hoping to take care of the matter responsibly — despite the risk posed by continuing immigration activity around Cook County courthouses.
After leaving court, though, Vasquez-Gonzalez said she was stopped by immigration agents a couple of blocks from the building and pulled out of her car.
“I was in complete shock because I didn’t know what was happening,” Vasquez-Gonzalez told the Tribune in Spanish. “I was like, ‘Why are they arresting me if I didn’t do anything bad?’ … And then they said, ‘No, it is because you missed the first rule of immigration, which was don’t get into any problems.’
“I said: ‘But this is the problem that I am fixing.’ ”
In December, Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law a ban on federal agents making certain arrests near courthouses and easing a path for individuals to sue if they think their rights were violated during civil immigration arrests.
The Court Access, Safety and Participation Act, which is being challenged by the Trump administration, followed an order issued by Cook County’s chief judge at the time, Tim Evans, similarly barring civil immigration enforcement around county courthouses.
Despite the measures, though, the presence of immigration agents around Cook County courthouses is stubbornly persistent, according to a Tribune review of a tracker maintained by the Cook County public defender’s office.
Since the beginning of the year, immigration agents have been in or around county courthouses at least 50 times through June 9 — a rate of more than twice per week.
“What they are doing is interfering with the operation of state courts,” said Jonathan Manes, senior counsel for the MacArthur Justice Center’s Illinois office. “They are making it very difficult for people to access justice here in Illinois.”
In a statement to the Tribune, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said immigration enforcement near courthouses is “common sense.”
“It conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be,” the statement said. “It is also safer for our officers and the community.”
In Cook County, agents have sometimes made arrests or entered the buildings, while other times just been spotted nearby. But their mere presence has a chilling effect on the county’s court system, stakeholders say. It has united factions of the criminal justice system that are often in opposition, as they condemn the behavior of federal agents and argue it makes people less safe when victims and defendants are afraid to participate in the court process.
It puts people like Vasquez-Gonzalez in an impossible position, they say, as undocumented immigrants must choose between complying with their mandate to come to court, or risk being detained. Court records show that Vasquez-Gonzalez’s misdemeanor charge was dropped after she was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“I cry about this, and feel so upset because I think ‘how many people are there robbing, killing, doing bad things?’” she said, speaking by phone from Venezuela, where she had been deported. “And I was only there as a single mother who was searching for a future for my daughter.”
‘Made their jobs impossible’
Staff members for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office’s victim services bureau were recently working with a mother and her children facing one of the most difficult types of cases the office prosecutes.
The victim specialists — who work with crime survivors as well as the prosecutors handling their cases —were preparing a sexual assault case involving minor victims. The children’s mother, though, was afraid to bring them to court to meet to prepare testimony because of the chance of encountering immigration agents, said Kayla Johnson, chief of the victim services bureau.
In that case, the victim specialists arranged to do some of the prep virtually so the family could avoid the risk of court. But while practical in that instance, it’s not an ideal solution, Johnson said.
“People who have obviously experienced that level of trauma really benefit from the support of in person engagement and building rapport … so that is something we are navigating alongside people,” Johnson said.
Setting up virtual sessions to replace in-person contact with victims is a method the bureau has increasingly had to rely on due to immigration presence around court, as court workers across the system say they’ve had to modify operations in a number of ways to keep things functional.
“The response when these arrests picked up under the first Trump administration was so broad and brought together aspects of the justice system who are usually not in agreement with each other,” said Douglas Keith, deputy director in the Brennan Center for Justice’s judiciary program, which has tracked how similar courthouse-focused immigration enforcement unfolded in New York during President Donald Trump’s first term. “This was public defenders, hand in hand with prosecutors and judges, talking about how this has made their jobs impossible and their communities less safe.”
In response, lawmakers in New York passed the Protect Our Courts Act in 2020.
According to the tracker kept by the public defender’s office, immigration agents were sometimes seen outside courthouses or in the vicinity, but they entered court buildings at least 27 times since the beginning of the year.
In the same time frame, agents have been reported in or near the domestic violence courthouse at 555 W. Harrison St. at least 22 times. Immigration enforcement around that building has raised particular concern because people seek help there in the form of orders of protection or other services.
The log was compiled based on reports from the county’s building services department as well as the office’s clients, community responders and other sources. Officials described it as a likely undercount based on incidents they feel they have confidently verified.
In at least some cases, the presence of immigration agents has led to tumultuous clashes in or near the court buildings. In November, agents made an arrest outside the Leighton Criminal Court Building on the Southwest Side, knocking over a fence and leaving a trail of blood on the sidewalk.
“There are actual incidents of violence in courthouse hallways that make courthouses appear unsafe with ICE officers chasing down their targets in hallways,” Keith said.
Courthouse security
In June at a branch courthouse in Bridgeview, a chaotic scene unfolded, caught on video and widely circulated online.
Immigration agents were inside the suburban court building, struggling with a man on the ground while onlookers yelled, asking if they had a warrant.
Moments later, outside the building, a person in a Cook County sheriff’s office uniform is seen greeting an immigration agent while they placed the detained man into a vehicle. That day, agents took two adults and a child into custody when the adults appeared in court on misdemeanor retail theft cases.
The dramatic video spurred condemnation of the agents’ actions, as well as letters from state and local lawmakers to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, whose office provides courthouse security, seeking answers and referencing the state law barring warrantless immigration arrests.
“In spite of these laws, video evidence depicts multiple CCSO officers in uniform standing by and watching ICE agents flout our laws,” the letter from state lawmakers said.
But in response, Dart, in a letter obtained by the Tribune through a public records request, said his office “shares your concern” about the conduct of federal agents, but contended that parts of the letter, signed by 15 lawmakers including Rep. Kelly Cassidy and Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, “require factual correction.”
In the “fast moving and evolving situation,” deputies manning a security entrance sought to maintain the security screening area during an “active and chaotic” situation and stop members of the public from entering through an exit lane, Dart said in the letter. Deputies had no advance notice of any law enforcement action when agents chased a man who ran inside the screening area.
“Maintaining the integrity of the screening area during a rapidly evolving incident is required to ensure the safety of all people in the building,” Dart said in the letter.
The letter also notes that the Court Access, Safety and Participation Act offers civil remedies but does not empower local law enforcement to arrest federal agents who violate the law.
Deputies have received training, the letter said, and the office of professional review is investigating the conduct of deputies during the Bridgeview incident.
Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Cassidy said that “Illinois, Cook County, and the City of Chicago have all taken steps to address the harms caused by ICE enforcement activities at our courthouses because access to the justice system impacts the safety of everyone in our community.”
A spokesman for Dart referred to the office’s written responses to lawmakers.
The Bridgeview arrests led immigration advocates to call on Dart’s office as well as Chief Judge Charles Beach to do more to prevent the enforcement activity, while Dart’s letter argued that there are limits to what they can do in response to the federal government’s actions.
Though noting the law and court order can be difficult to enforce when agents follow people from court, some have questioned why law enforcement agents have been able to access the interior of buildings so often, and whether options for remote court could be expanded. In a statement to the Tribune, Cassidy said the sheriff’s office should “provide actionable policy steps and enforcement mechanisms to ensure these harms are addressed so that people feel safe utilizing our court system.”
Beach’s office, in response to a request for comment, pointed to information it has released about virtual court options.
“It’s a difficult situation. I understand what I think to be at least some of Sheriff Dart’s stated concerns,” said Daniel Schneider, of counsel at Legal Action Chicago. “At this point I think … the chief judge and the sheriff both have an obligation to ensure that the spirit and letter of state laws are followed.”
‘We don’t have anything’
Meanwhile, fear in the county’s immigrant communities is constant.
Organized Communities Against Deportation, an immigrant rights group, has received hotline calls and requests for support from families who need court services or must attend court dates, said Antonio Gutierrez, strategic coordinator for the group.
“We’ve been documenting as much as we can,” Gutierrez said. “Letting them know of their rights and the necessity of still showing up for hearing. Letting them know the possibility of doing a virtual hearing.”
Still, remote court isn’t a perfect solution, experts say. Not all courtrooms offer it, and most judges would not consider it for major hearings where someone’s life may be impacted significantly, like a sentencing or trial.
Even as officials try to call for better local solutions, county stakeholders called on the Trump administration to stop enforcement around courthouses in alignment with longstanding practice meant to protect court operations.
“It’s up to ICE to stop the practice of targeting people,” Manes said.
Now, Vasquez-Gonzalez no longer faces any active criminal charges in Cook County, but she has been deported to Venezuela, where she said she and her daughter are struggling to make ends meet. She wishes she could return so her daughter could receive a better education.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Vasquez-Gonzalez accepted voluntary departure and was removed from the country.
“She was given full due process,” the agency said in a statement.
Now, Vasquez-Gonzalez and her daughter are trying their best to start over.
“We don’t have any clothes. We have to bathe and wash our undergarments at the same time,” she said. “We don’t have anything.”
Southwest suburban officials are urging the Illinois Commerce Commission to reject Illinois American Water’s proposed water and sewer rate hike, saying residents cannot afford increasing water bills.
“Water is not a luxury,” Bolingbrook Mayor Mary Alexander-Basta said Wednesday. “It is not a vacation. It is not a new television or a shopping trip that can be postponed. Water, electricity and natural gas are essential services that every family needs to live with dignity, safety and health.”
Alexander-Basta, along with state legislators, said Bolingbrook residents pay an average of $220 a month for their water bills. Senior citizens on fixed incomes and households already cash-strapped by rising costs in food, insurance and housing cannot afford more rate hikes, she said.
“People should not be choosing if they should flush their toilet or take a shower,” said state Rep. Dagmara Avelar, D-Bolingbrook.
Illinois American Water filed for a $136.3 million rate increase, according to the Illinois Commerce Commission.
The Citizens Utility Board, a state watchdog, is asking the ICC to reject rate hikes proposed by Illinois American Water and Aqua Illinois, the state’s two biggest private water companies, which serve several towns in the Chicago region. American Water, the parent company of Illinois American, wants to buy Aqua’s parent Essential Utilities, which the Citizens Utility Board also opposes.
Alexander-Basta said the latest request by Illinois American Water comes after four rate increases over the past decade totaling about $319 million.
She urged residents to attend a public forum before the ICC at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 14, at the Bolingbrook Community Center, 201 Canterbury Lane.
“We are in a time right now where every penny counts, every dollar matters,” Alexander-Basta said. “When the cost of an essential service becomes increasingly difficult for families to afford, silence is no longer an option.”
Homer Glen Mayor Christina Neitzke-Troike said village officials there also plan to protest the rate hike at Tuesday’s public forum and urged residents to attend. About 6,000 Homer Glen households are served by Illinois American Water and are burdened with high water bills.
Neitzke-Troike said about 100 Homer Glen residents attended a previous ICC forum and hopes their personal stories make a difference. She said residents should spread the word among their neighbors to submit an official comment to the ICC on the rate increase or the proposed merger with Aqua Illinois. The village has listed ways residents can be heard on its website, www.homerglenil.org.
Residents can also bring their water bills to the village to look for anomalies.
The village is opposed to both the rate increase and the merger, Neitzke-Troike said, and is working with the Illinois attorney general’s office, lobbyists and state legislators to let their concerns be known. “I don’t want to give up,” Neitzke-Troike said.
Illinois American Water filed its general rate increase petition with the ICC in January. The rates will support about $577 million in water and wastewater investments through December 2027, according to the company.
Under its proposal, if approved, the typical residential water customer using 3,500 gallons of water would see an increase of approximately $14 per month, depending on the service area. Typical customers served by sanitary wastewater systems using 3,500 gallons of water would see an increase of about $28 per month.
The proposed rate adjustment supports the company’s plans to modernize and strengthen its water and wastewater systems in communities across Illinois, Anna Kubas, Illinois American Water’s senior manager for external affairs and communications, said in an email.
Investments include replacing aging pipes, upgrading treatment facilities, improving storage and pumping systems, and meeting evolving regulatory requirements. Examples of investments in the Chicago area include $3.5 million in a booster tank installation in Woodridge, $2.5 million in lift station improvements in Homer Glen, and $1 million in water storage tank renovations in Bolingbrook this year, Kubas said. The company’s new rates would take effect in January 2027. The ICC is expected to make a decision by December.
Alexander-Basta said any improvements that Illinois American Water wants to make should be made within its existing revenue stream and not on the backs of consumers who have no choice but to use their service.
“It is not the time right now to give a for-profit, publicly traded company more money to pad their pockets,” she said.
Burton Odelson, Bolingbrook’s attorney, said the village has fought rate increases for years.
“The public utility laws of our state require utility rates to be just and reasonable,” Odelson said. “The village will continue to exhaust all legal remedies on behalf of our residents.”
Verbal and written comments from consumers will be accepted by the ICC administrative law judge. Customers are not required to attend the in-person forum to submit a comment, according to the ICC. Those unable to attend may submit comments via the ICC website, www.icc.illinois.gov, or by calling its consumer services division at 800-524-0795.
Michelle Mullins is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Pitchfork Festivals LLC is suing the co-founder of its namesake festival, alleging he misappropriated and pocketed some $564,000 in outstanding event funding after the festival shuttered in 2024.
In a complaint filed Monday in federal court in Chicago, the company accuses Michael Reed of orchestrating a “deliberate scheme” to keep the more than half a million dollars in festival funds by falsely claiming the total accounted for costs he’d accrued in anticipation of Pitchfork Music Festival 2025 before it was canceled.
The suit, first reported by Block Club Chicago, seeks to recover the misappropriated funds alongside compensatory and punitive damages for “willful and intentional misconduct,” the 24-page filing states.
Pitchfork shuttered after its 19th installation in 2024. The festival had been held annually in Union Park since 2006, barring a year off in 2020 due to the pandemic. The event was born out of an inaugural summer fete known as the 2005 Intonation Music Festival, curated by Pitchfork Media.
The three-day music festival has been known for its mix of alternative and indie rock, hip hop and electronic music; it catered to a festival-going demographic older than the larger annual Lollapalooza music festival in Grant Park. It had a daily capacity of about 20,000 in Union Park, with music on three stages.
The event had been produced by its namesake music publication. In early 2024, Condé Nast — the owner of the music publication — folded the Pitchfork title into GQ, another magazine it held. Though the music festival continued the following summer, some Pitchfork staffers lost their jobs. Pitchfork, the publication, was sold to Condé Nast in 2015.
At the core of Pitchfork Festivals’ complaint is allegations that Reed employed corporate entities that he alone owns and controls to keep event funding for his own benefit. The corporate entities in question include Big Stik LLC, an event company that contracted with Pitchfork to produce the festival, and At Pluto LTD.
In 2019, Big Stik entered into an agreement with Pitchfork to provide production services for the festival, the complaint states. Through the parties’ relationship, Pitchfork advanced funds to Big Stik for the sole purpose of approved festival expenses, per filings. Ahead of its 2024 festival, Pitchfork advanced more than $3.9 million to Big Stik for what, ultimately, became the final edition of the event, according to the complaint. Per its services agreement with Pitchfork, Big Stik was to return any remaining funds in the event budget after the 2024 festival in a timely manner.
In the fall of 2024, Pitchfork told Big Stik and Reed personally that the festival would not be moving forward the next year, the complaint states. A couple of months later, the finance director for Condé Nast discovered that more than $560,000 of Pitchfork’s festival advance to Big Stik was unaccounted for.
The director subsequently asked Reed for clarification and requested that he return the missing funds, the complaint states. The next day, he sent the director a “Wind Down Settlement Report” that maintained Condé Nast had told them to proceed with the 2025 festival, so they had started advance operations for the event. The report went on to itemize advance expenses allegedly incurred.
In its complaint, Pitchfork alleges that the reported costs were “reverse engineered to consume the precise balance” that it had been seeking to recover from Reed. Pitchfork further argues that — in the weeks after the 2024 festival, when Condé Nast still intended to keep the event going — Reed did not submit any budget or expense requests in connection with the 2025 festival.
Reed did not stop at misrepresentation, the complaint alleges. The lawsuit goes on to accuse Reed of silently transferring the disputed funds out of Big Stik’s event account and into the operations account of At Pluto, which Reed has sole control over. Pitchfork also only learned about the “concealed transfer” through proceedings in a related arbitration case, the complaint states.
Pitchfork cites Reed and At Pluto on several counts of alleged wrongdoing, including for fraudulent misrepresentation and unjust enrichment.
A magistrate judge has asked that parties file an initial joint status report by Aug. 12.
An attorney representing Pitchfork Festivals in the case and Condé Nast did not return requests for comment Friday night.
In a statement to the Tribune on Saturday, Reed claimed that Condé Nast had given his team “about 90 minutes’ notice that it was ending the Chicago festival, months of work remained to responsibly wrap up the 2024 event, and planning for 2025 — with its own costs and obligations — was already underway.”
He said his dispute with the publishing giant is currently in arbitration and that he had followed the arbitration procedure, which included producing documents, sitting for depositions and preparing for an upcoming hearing.
“But instead of letting that agreed process reach a conclusion, Condé Nast has now launched last‑minute, parallel litigation that looks like an end‑around designed to increase pressure rather than to fairly resolve what is, at bottom, a dispute about how to share the real costs of winding down a long‑running festival partnership,” Reed said in his statement. He added, “We categorically deny any wrongdoing and look forward to bringing this matter to a favorable resolution.”
Last year, in the wake of Pitchfork Music Festival’s cancellation, Reed staged a new music festival called Sound & Gravity through a music venue, Constellation, which he owns in town. Ahead of the event’s fall debut, Reed spoke with the Tribune.
“I see the cyclical nature of the concert industry,” Reed said last September, speaking to Pitchfork’s demise. “I was like, ‘Jesus Christ, all right, we need to do something to build reserves — not just get our heads above water, but maybe our torso, too.”
According to Constellation’s website, Sound & Gravity is scheduled to take place again this fall.
Chicago Tribune’s Doug George contributed.
As Manny Diaz testified in a fluorescent-lit basement hearing room, he returned time and again to a single response: “I do not recall.”
Pushing to kick a progressive independent Latina off this autumn’s 4th Congressional District election ballot late last month, he said he couldn’t recall if he had ever before challenged a candidate’s signatures. He said he didn’t know if he had ever worked outside regular business hours in his busy job as a political staffer.
Most strikingly, Diaz paused when asked whom he worked for, responding only when the attorney representing him in the hearing gave him the go-ahead.
The answer — and the man now intimately tied to the strong-arm effort to clear the opposition to his preferred candidate off the ballot — was U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García.
The exchange highlighted the charge by García opponents that the outgoing congressman from the Southwest Side is incinerating his long progressive track record by resorting to the kinds of obstructionist Chicago Democratic machine election tactics his outsider movement has railed against for decades.
In his relentless attempts to clear the way for his chosen successor — his former chief of staff, Patty García — to coast to an easy win this November, García is no better, they say, than the political insiders who have long leveraged their deep pockets and control of the election rules to keep themselves in power in the face of challenges from grassroots political organizations in and around Chicago.
“This will certainly taint his legacy as someone who leaves out the back door, suppressing the voice of the people, anointing a successor,” said one of the two progressive Latino independent candidates García’s organization is trying to boot from the ballot, firebrand Southwest Side Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th. “You don’t fight authoritarianism with these kinds of authoritarian or unilateral decisions.”
Late last month, Diaz, a senior staffer for the four-term congressman, zeroed in on ending the candidacy of independent Mayra Macías. He testified under oath at the Illinois State Board of Elections hearing as a notary who gathered evidence, on behalf of several objectors, that could invalidate hundreds signatures for Macías.
At least two of the people who objected to Macías’ and Sigcho-Lopez’s signatures also gathered petition signatures for Patty Garcia, yet another sign of apparent coordination by the candidate and the congressman.
Macías and Sigcho-Lopez face a flood of challenges against the signatures they collected to be listed on the ballot. Both submitted the maximum amount, over 17,000 names, but the Board of Elections could rule this month against them and effectively end their uphill-battle campaigns.
To get on the general election ballot as an independent, a candidate must secure 10,816 valid signatures from registered voters. The García-linked objectors are seeking to push Macías and Sigcho-Lopez below that threshold by asserting thousands of their signatures are no good for one reason or another.
The signature challenge is a time-honored way for well-heeled Chicago campaigns to try to remove opponents who might not have the organizational depth to get enough names or the money to mount a time-consuming defense against the claims.
As his political organization again moves to knock out candidates, the man who was a top mayoral candidate in 2015 and 2023 appears to be doubling down. In doing so, Garcia is trouncing his long-held progressive ideals, Macías and Sigcho-Lopez say.
“If we are saying that we want people to engage in the democratic process, we want democracy to thrive, why are we not trusting our voters?” said Macías, a former Planned Parenthood Action Fund member.
Macías filed a complaint July 3 with the House Ethics Committee and the Office of Congressional Conduct alleging the congressman, Patty García, Diaz and other staffers violated ethics rules by working on Patty García’s campaign during taxpayer-funded work hours.
Rebuffing the criticism, allies of Rep. García and Patty García say they are proven progressives.
“But they’re progressives in Chicago,” said state Rep. Edgar Gonzalez, who worked under Patty García in Rep. García’s office. “And Chicago’s a very different ballgame than anywhere else in the country. We play with the rules that are set.”
Gonzalez praised Patty García as “extremely organized,” “extremely intelligent” and deserving of the seat. Chicago politics is a “hardball sport” where candidates do what they can to win, he argued.
“Complaining and whining about the rules is kind of dumb,” he said. “Don’t hate the player, hate the game. … Everybody knew what they were signing up for.”
The general election ballot fight is only the latest chapter in a monthslong controversy that began when the congressman cleared the way for his chief of staff to secure the Democratic nomination by announcing in November he would not seek a fifth term just hours before a deadline for candidates to run in the primary election.
Only Patty García, of no relation, had the heads-up that the incumbent — her boss — would bow out, and only she submitted the hundreds of signatures needed to enter the race.
The move drew criticism for taking choice away from voters. The progressive congressman representing the heavily Latino Southwest Side district was even censured by his U.S. House of Representatives colleagues in a 236-183 vote led by Republicans.
David Orr, the former Cook County clerk and aldermen whose ties to García stretch back to their shared support for Mayor Harold Washington in the 1980s, said he was disappointed by the way the congressman exited office.
“That really could or should have been better,” he said of García’s decision to only alert his chief of staff that he would not run again.
But Orr was unbothered by the petition signature challenges.
“I see that as a different situation. It’s the law, and you have a right to challenge,” he said. “I just don’t know how far you get ignoring the law.”
Orr said he believes the law should be changed. But García has nonetheless proved himself as a key part of Chicago’s progressive movement, he added.
“Most of the major issues that we consider progressive, he’s been there,” he said. “And not just on a vote, but working behind the scenes on many things, working with some of his colleagues, working to build coalitions where you need to.”
In the eyes of Juan Rangel, CEO of the Urban Center and long a political enemy of García’s, the congressman’s tactics looked familiar.
Petition challenging is a “classic move employed mostly by machine politicians,” Rangel said.
He would know. Rangel’s own organization has played a key role in broadly challenging the validity of signatures collected to allow Chicago Teachers Union-affiliated candidates onto the ballot in recent weeks, he said.
That signatures were challenged is not surprising, he said. The surprising thing is who the challenges seemed to come from, Rangel said: “A self-pronounced reformer, anti-machine (who) always saw himself as the outsider fighting the good fight.”
“There’s nothing illegal in terms of the maneuver,” he said. “But I’ve never grandstanded and stood on a moral high ground above everybody else as Chuy likes to do.”
It’s a late effort to hold onto power for “the old guard of the progressive left,” Rangel said. “The politics of the progressive movement kind of left Chuy. … He’s just not progressive enough.”
In the days after he announced he wouldn’t run again, García told reporters he made the last-second decision because of health and family pressures.
His cardiologist advised him to find less stressful work. His wife, Evelyn, faced complications from multiple sclerosis and told him she needed him in Chicago. And he was just completing the adoption of a grandchild after his daughter, Rosa, passed away in 2023.
“Congressman García made a deeply personal decision based on his health, his wife’s worsening condition and his responsibility to the grandchildren he is raising after the death of his daughter,” García congressional spokesperson Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli said in a statement shortly after García dropped out of the race in November.
“He followed every rule and every filing requirement laid out by the State of Illinois,” Rodriguez-Ciampoli said. “At a moment like this, he hopes his colleagues, especially those who speak about family values, can show the same compassion and respect that any family would want during a health crisis.”
García has not publicly defended his connections to the signature challenging effort. He and his office did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Neither did Patty García or her campaign.
A third independent congressional candidate vying for a ballot spot, Lyons Mayor Chris Getty, has not faced any challenges to his petition signatures.
Asked after the late June hearing why he was trying to bounce Macías from the ballot, Diaz told a Tribune reporter he didn’t need to answer. Diaz then turned his back, rolled his eyes and walked out of the underground elections office.
Macías maintained after the hearing that her team will be able to secure enough legal evidence to prove she qualified for the ballot if given only a few more days to collect affidavits.
During another hearing Monday, Sigcho-Lopez, a democratic socialist, took a different approach. His attorney, Andrew Finko, did not attempt to prove he had enough signatures. Instead, he took aim at the “very sad” system.
It would be “a travesty of democracy” if the support from 18,000 petition signers were negated because there was too little time months later to gather evidence supporting each signature, he said. “I need to keep raising it, keep bringing it up, because at some point, someone will start listening.”
The tattoo on Amari Mead’s inner left arm demands attention.
Mead calls it her Butterfly Garden.
The artwork includes the footprints of Kaiden Amir Tappler, imprinted with the meaning of his name, “Warrior Prince” surrounded by butterflies and roses. The tattoo has yet to be finished, but the words ‘this too shall pass, because nothing lasts forever’ and a clock face without hands fill out the arm below the elbow. The clock doesn’t have hands, because as Mead says, “grief has no time limit.”
Kaiden Amir’s footprints forever rest where he usually slept in Mead’s arms. It was there, as the two slept in the bed in Mead’s Auburn Gresham apartment, that he passed away. Kaiden Amir came into the world April 15, 2023, and departed fewer than three months later.
“I woke up, and something felt off because I woke up on my own accord … not from his cries for a morning feed. I flipped on the light and saw that his lips were blue,” Mead said.
“The first few weeks after my son Kaiden’s death left me feeling numb, lost and utterly alone. I couldn’t see how I could fit into this world without him,” she said. “Despite having family and friends surrounding me with love, none of them could comprehend the depth of my pain.”
‘Grief is a beast’
The American Psychological Association defines grief as the deep and poignant anguish experienced after significant loss. Grief that ensues after the death of someone beloved is unique to each individual. It can destabilize because it lacks a timeframe; it’s not linear and “normal” doesn’t apply.
Illinois programs like Missing Pieces and global organizations like Soaring Spirits International aim to help the bereaved navigate complex emotions and guide them through the grief process.
“Grief is a beast … there is no cookie-cutter package for it,” said Melody Stried, a licensed clinical social worker and founder of Lotus Health Counseling & Coaching. Stried, a Forest Park resident, has worked over 25 years in hospice and palliative care. Her knowledge of grief is also personal, as a daughter, sister and mother of cancer patients.
“After memorial services, everyone is like, ‘Let’s go back to normal; this isn’t healthy for you,’ but it is,” she said. “We reach out to people the first two weeks, and then go back to our lives. We don’t want them to hurt, we want them back to normal. But who are we to say when grief needs you the most?”
Without treatment, symptoms of grief can escalate and/or persist. Extended grief, also known as complicated/prolonged grief, can be so overwhelming it debilitates and prevents people from resuming simple, everyday tasks, which experts explain as an emerging public health crisis.
It’s the “great leveler,” according to Amy McNicholas, director of the Missing Pieces program. “We know that if we don’t address it, unsupported grief is where we see long-term social and health issues.”
Since 2022, Missing Pieces has been supporting families like Mead who have lost a child under the age of 25. Mead’s pain was further compounded when Kaiden’s death was on the news the morning after.
Their team of “grief navigators” — a social worker, trauma therapist, child life specialist, nurse and a community health worker — support families who lost a child.
They connect them to grief resources and social services, often by referral from hospitals, county medical examiner’s and coroners’ offices. They meet the grieving where they’re at, communicating via texts, calls and in-person check-ins from death to 18 months.
“We have interventional care, hospice and palliative care. Let’s get bereavement care to the point where every family that experiences it can get the care they need,” McNicholas said.
In doing outreach, grief navigators uncover factors affecting those adapting to life after a loss — ripple effects that may impact well-being and stability, which can prevent individuals from addressing grief.
The effects can include a family not wanting to remain in a home their child died in, scheduling transportation to get a loved one home for burial or not being able to stay current with the rent when grief prevents a return to work. Individuals can feel overwhelmed while still having to navigate systems that include hospitals, coroners, funerals, behavioral health and the legal system.
For 18 years, Soaring Spirits has aided widows, widowers and their children through peer support and events like Camp Widow, a day-long program where participants process their loss.
Jennifer Loudon came to Soaring Spirits International following the killing of her husband, Chicago police Officer Thor Soderberg, in the summer of 2010. Now a board member of the nonprofit, Loudon credits the organization with helping her feel whole again a decade later, having rebuilt a life that “she could still love.”
“I’m never gonna be over it, but I didn’t want to be under it anymore,” Loudon said about grief. “It is so different for everyone … some people have family support, their faith community, but still need more. I went to Camp Widow in 2012 and having access to people who understood the complexity of grief made it safe for me to consider the complexity. I was never going to be done (grieving), but I could be okay without being done. That was a big mental health breakthrough for me.”
Unsupported grief can lead to social and health issues
The HAP Foundation, a Chicago and Oakbrook Terrace-based, nonprofit hospice and palliative care research and advocacy organization, oversees Missing Pieces. Bereavement care is a safety net for people overcome by loss, a centralized hub for support through direct outreach to families, according to Joseph Matty, president of the HAP Foundation. In 2025, Missing Pieces served over 450 families with grief support, at no cost to them, according to the foundation.
McNicholas and Matty want to see the Missing Pieces model embedded in existing healthcare systems — making grief care part of the continuum of care for Illinoisans. To that end, the organization is part of a $6.2M Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) research grant with Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and University of Chicago Medicine to research, evaluate and prepare grief navigation for replication.
“Our mission is to understand grief as an emerging public health issue that greatly affects all of our wellness,” McNicholas said. “Grief navigation can be a healing mechanism, not because it fixes loss but because it is helping families feel seen and less isolated. We know connection and loneliness are big topics within public health and how unhealthy they can be.”
As support needs change, grief navigators pivot to address them. Families stay connected beyond the 18-month mark, calling navigators when needed and participating in annual events like the Butterfly Picnic where they gather to remember their loved ones in camaraderie.
“We’re really supporting the whole family unit, any person that loss has affected,” McNicholas said. “Grief is the great leveler. We know that if we don’t address it, unsupported grief is where we see long-term social and health issues.”
The other side of grief
Loudon said that had she not found Soaring Spirits International and a phenomenal therapist, she would still be in a place of mental illness.
“I think not talking about grief does contribute to mental health crises,” she said.
Stried is comfortable with conversations about grief. She says while many try to put everybody in the same box when it comes to grief, it doesn’t work.
“We give nine months for a life to come into this world, but we’re lucky if we give it nine days when it’s ending,” she said.
Mead is still on her grief journey.
She vividly shares the details of Kaiden’s birth. She pushed for 45 minutes, and he was born healthy. She had postpartum preeclampsia and had to stay at the University of Chicago hospital for a couple of days before she and “her guy” went home.
“He didn’t cry much, he had a snort in his cry. He was super chill,” Mead said. Evidence of his calm demeanor could be seen in cellphone videos of Kaiden receiving his first immunizations.
Mead’s recollection of Kaiden’s passing prompts her to apologize. She admits she has holes in her memory around that time because the grief was so heavy. She couldn’t return to her apartment, so her mother, Nina Manney, packed up the apartment without her. At work as a school paraprofessional, she would hear a song from a nearby classroom and start crying because it was on one of Kaiden’s playlists.
“I was trying to figure out how I’m supposed to continue living when my heart isn’t here anymore … he was my purpose for living,” Mead said.
Mead recalled her first conversation with Missing Pieces’ McNicholas, who said: ‘I’m really sorry this is what you’re going through. I’ve been there myself. It’s not easy. It is extremely hard. What do you need?’ She listened to me talk about Kaiden, she still listens to me talk about Kaiden,” Mead said.
Since connecting with Missing Pieces, Mead said she and McNicholas were in constant communication, with McNicholas constantly checking on her. As time went on, healing was progressing and they talked less, but Mead said the profundity of the conversations didn’t wane. “I can reach out to Amy anytime I want, and say, ‘I’m having a really tough time today. Can I call you?’ She’s always, ‘Yeah, give me a call.’”
Mead lights up when she shares her experience at her first Butterfly Picnic. She said the event made her feel seen and part of a community that helped her navigate how to keep Kaiden’s memory alive.
Mead wears a necklace with Kaiden’s ashes. She keeps the items he used in Ziploc bags so when she wants, she can reconnect with his scent. It’s a guilty pleasure Mead shares with her mom.
Mead is now married and working toward a degree and a career in education. She has gone from not wanting children and avoiding putting herself in a position to face heartbreak again to trying for another child with her husband of almost a year, Mekhi Mead. She also reaches out to other grieving parents who follow her on social media, sharing support she received.
“Amy and Missing Pieces helped me navigate my grief, allowing me to remember Kaiden by embracing the ebbs and flows,” Mead said. “They guided me forward, enabling me to laugh again and continue living each day.”
The Illinois House is launching a special committee to investigate longtime state Rep. Carol Ammons after the Urbana Democrat’s recent indictment on federal wire fraud and obstruction charges, a move forced by members of the chamber’s Republican superminority.
House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch said Rep. Curtis Tarver of Chicago would chair the special investigating committee, with Reps. Jay Hoffman of Swansea and Lilian Jimenez of Chicago filling the other two Democratic seats on the six-member panel. Welch, a Hillside Democrat, described all three as experienced attorneys.
Across the aisle, House GOP leader Tony McCombie of Savanna appointed Rep. Ryan Spain of Peoria as the party’s spokesperson and Reps. Dan Ugaste of Geneva and Adam Niemerg of Dieterich to round out the committee.
On Wednesday, a day after Ammons’ indictment, Welch temporarily removed the six-term lawmaker from legislative committee assignments, which included chairing the Energy & Environment Committee, and barred her from meetings of the House Democratic caucus.
It was the second high-profile shakeup in the House Democratic caucus this month after Rep. Harry Benton resigned July 3 following an investigation into his conduct. On Thursday, the board in southwest suburban Wheatland Township officially called for the Plainfield Democrat to step down from a separate elected office there.
Ammons on Friday denied any wrongdoing in connection with her federal case.
“I strongly disagree with the allegations outlined in this indictment. I have complete confidence that the facts will determine my innocence, and I intend to vigorously defend myself through the judicial process,” Ammons said in a statement posted to social media.
Welch, meanwhile, defended the steps he’s taken since the charges against Ammons were made public.
“At my direction, we took immediate action to uphold the integrity of the House,” Welch said, “and the special investigating committee is another process to ensure the House responds appropriately and within our purview — while ensuring nothing we do interferes with the ongoing federal case.”
Welch is intimately familiar with the House process from his time heading a special committee Republicans triggered in 2020 to investigate his predecessor, Michael Madigan, after the longtime speaker was implicated in a federal investigation involving utility giant Commonwealth Edison.
While ComEd had already admitted in an agreement with federal prosecutors that it had engaged in a “yearslong bribery scheme” aimed at currying favor with Madigan, Welch accused the GOP of staging “political theater” in an election year. The committee adjourned without taking any action, but Madigan was later convicted on corruption charges and is serving a 7 1/2-year federal prison sentence.
According to House rules, the committee investigating Ammons’ conduct has subpoena power at the discretion of its chair and Welch, and its investigation could result in disciplinary action decided by the House.
“The courts should absolutely do their job, but the Illinois House has a responsibility to do ours,” McCombie said in a statement on the Republicans’ petition calling for the committee’s creation. “Accountability in the legislature cannot be outsourced to the criminal justice system. … This is not about politics; it is about ensuring no elected official is above accountability and that the people of Illinois can have confidence in their government.”
Ammons on Friday said she remains committed to serving her constituents “with integrity and transparency.”
“I ask for patience as the legal process unfolds, and I remain confident that the facts will ultimately speak for themselves,” Ammons said. She and her attorney, Mutaqee Akbar, both released statements on one of her social media accounts saying she would not litigate the allegations “through the media.”
In total, 11 House Republicans signed the petition, nearly four times the number needed under House rules to force the committee’s creation. Republicans, including McCombie, had previously called for Ammons’ resignation.
Ammons is accused of devising a scheme dating back to 2017 to defraud the state that included directing state and federal funds to organizations that then paid her daughter. The state representative also allegedly received cash kickbacks stemming from payments made through organizations that received state grants, as well as through her campaign fund, according to a 12-page indictment a federal grand jury in central Illinois handed up Tuesday.
In all, Ammons and her daughter “received financial benefits in excess of $100,000,” the indictment alleges.
In addition to eight counts of wire fraud, the indictment charges Ammons with making a false statement to a federal agent, stemming from an allegation that she told the FBI she had no knowledge of a conflict of interest with a community organization paying her daughter from state funds.
The indictment also charges both Ammons and her husband, Champaign County Clerk Aaron Ammons, with conspiracy to obstruct justice. Aaron Ammons was also charged with a separate count of obstruction of justice.
Welch and Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker both have noted that Carol Ammons has a right to due process. And major disciplinary action by the General Assembly against one of its members is rare.
Since Pritzker took office in 2019, 11 now-former state lawmakers have pleaded guilty to or been convicted of criminal charges, and another, Sen. Emil Jones III of Chicago, reached a deal with prosecutors late last year to avoid a retrial in a bribery case after a jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict in his first trial.
Nevertheless, the last time either chamber kicked out a lawmaker was in 2012, when the House voted 100-6 to expel then-Rep. Derrick Smith of Chicago after he was indicted on charges he accepted a $7,000 bribe. It was the first time in more than a century the chamber ousted a member.
Smith remained on the ballot that year and won reelection. When Smith was awaiting his criminal trial, Madigan supported his bid for another term in the March 2014 primary, but he lost, and was automatically removed from office when he was convicted of bribery and extortion later that year. He was sentenced to five months in prison.
Separately, the Wheatland Township Board passed a resolution Thursday calling on Benton to step down from his post as the township highway commissioner.
Benton resigned from his seat in the General Assembly July 3 after a legislative inspector general’s investigation into conduct that Welch described as “outrageous, unethical, and unbecoming of a member.” But he had not stepped down from the $72,000-per-year highway commissioner position as of Friday afternoon, Wheatland Township Supervisor Michael Crowner wrote in an email.
Welch has not publicly detailed Benton’s behavior. A source familiar with the situation previously told the Tribune the allegations involved sexual harassment.
Despite the summer heat, tens of thousands of people packed into Jackson Park Saturday afternoon, dancing and barbecuing under the cover of hundreds of colorful pop-up tents. The smell of grilled meats wafted through the air as Chicago’s own house music thumped through speakers and boomed from the central festival stage.
Calling themselves “House Heads,” attendees gathered on the South Side for the 36th annual Chosen Few DJs Picnic and Music Festival. Organizers expected around 45,000 people to attend Chosen Few, which is widely considered one of the largest house music festivals in the world.
Though the size and logistics of the festival have changed over its three-and-a-half decades, Chosen Few’s roots remain unshaken. At its inception, Chosen Few began as a small family reunion, and, for many attendees, it still feels that way today.
Keesha Lee and Miriam Smith have attended Chosen Few together for more than 15 years. The sisters-in-law come back every year for the music, the people and the fellowship. Lee called it a “big reunion.’
“People I went to high school with, people I went to college with and have never seen again, but they always come here,” Smith said.
Ramona Thomas and William Cook have been friends since they attended fifth grade together at Emerson Elementary School in south suburban Harvey. The music festival has bonded their friendship over the years, as Thomas has attended all 36 festivals and Cook has missed only one.
“We’re House Heads,” Thomas said. “We love house music, so it doesn’t even matter what the price is, it doesn’t matter the setup. We’re gonna have the same DJs that we like and we’re gonna have the same music. It’s nostalgic. It just doesn’t change.
The pair has seen the festival evolve from a small, free event hosted behind the Museum of Science and Industry into a full-out festival. Cook, a life-long South Side resident, recalled when Chosen Few had no vendors, no sponsors and no admission fees.
“The way we used to get money for the permit was we passed a bucket around,” Cook said. “There would be some buckets on stage and you would just pass it around; people would throw in whatever they had in their pockets. Quarters, dimes, dollars — whatever you gave went toward the next year’s permit.”
This year, the festival shares its Jackson Park location with the newly opened Obama Presidential Center. The top of the concrete museum building peeked out from behind the main DJ stage. For Cook, it’s a full-circle moment, as he remembered years ago, in 2015, when Former President Obama sent in a video message that played above the festival’s stage.
“It was a cheer that you could imagine,” Cook remembered. “Having the building there is reminiscent of him looking over us and reminding us that, hey, we’re not too far from greatness right there.”
The Obama Presidential Center has not changed the dynamic of the festival otherwise, attendees agreed. If anything, a few more passersby get to hear the Chicago-grown music genre,
“It hasn’t changed the party and the picnic because for 36 years, it’s the same people that have been coming. So they would have come anyway,” Thomas said. “But what it has done is, people who want to come visit Chicago, you find a festival, a picnic and the Obama Center, so you probably gain more people because of that.”
At the end of the day, it’s not the festival itself that keeps long-timers returning to Jackson Park year over year, or what draws in newcomers. It’s the music.
“It connects us back to our roots,” said Lewis Patterson, a Bronzeville native. “I grew up on it and it’s a spiritual connection back to the roots. We grew up listening to this music. No matter what we were going through in our lives and escaping our problems.”
For more than 90 years, Beatrice Lumpkin brought a zeal for fairness and a fierce desire to protect working-class employees to her civil rights and workers’ rights activism.
Lumpkin, 107, died of heart failure on June 14 at the Montgomery Place senior living community in Hyde Park, said her son John. She had lived in Hyde Park for the past 15 years, and previously had lived in the South Shore neighborhood.
Fearless, Lumpkin was a dogged union organizer in many settings and was a civil rights advocate and an interracial marriage pioneer who protested Jim Crow laws, while also teaching math in the Chicago Public Schools and at Malcolm X College.
One of Lumpkin’s longest and most rewarding struggles was fighting to gain compensation for the more than 3,000 employees of the Wisconsin Steel plant on the Southeast Side who lost their jobs when the plant abruptly closed in 1980. After a 17-year fight, workers received a $15 million settlement.
“People always focus on her extremely long life which is remarkable, but what I think is really remarkable about Bea is this sort of red thread that ran through her life — she wasn’t just a list of a million organizations and causes,” said Roberta Wood, a longtime friend and the former secretary-treasurer of the Communist Party USA. “It was a red thread, based on her love and confidence in the working class, and every struggle about that and related to that. She was always looking to build justice for Black workers and equality.”
Born Beatrice Shapiro in New York City’s Bronx borough in 1918, Lumpkin was the daughter of parents who operated a laundry business. Her parents’ work informed Lumpkin’s sympathy for the plight of workers.
“My mother ironed shirts and washed and stretched curtains. That meant standing on her feet long hours,” Lumpkin wrote in her 2013 autobiography, “Joy in the Struggle.” “Her legs were thick with swollen veins. It hurt my heart, watching my mother stand on swollen legs every day. But that’s the way it was.”
Lumpkin attended James Monroe High School in the Bronx, where she joined the Young Communist League. She was drawn to that group’s organizing in free speech fights.
“From the moment I joined the YCL … I can truly say that I have never had a moment when I had nothing to do,” she wrote. “There were always picket lines for workers on strike, demonstrations to demand food for a hungry family, knocking on doors to sell The Daily Worker (newspaper) or bringing people out to vote.”
In 1935, Lumpkin was arrested when she was part of a mass picket line in front of a New York City department store, Ohrbach’s, where clerks were striking. She and fellow picketers were released several hours later.
Lumpkin earned a bachelor’s degree from Hunter College in New York City in 1939. During college, she helped to organize local laundry workers in a union, and she also organized the National Student Strike for Peace, which earned her a suspension from school.
After college, she returned to laundry work, though this time in New York City’s Brooklyn borough. Accused of being a Communist, Lumpkin was expelled from her laundry union — and, from the industry — and she shifted to working as a drill press operator at a machine shop in Queens, and then as an engineer for a radio maker.
During World War II, Lumpkin moved to Buffalo, New York, and took a job with a radio transmitter maker. While in Buffalo, she married and divorced Roderick Mohrherr, and then married Frank Lumpkin. With jobs in Buffalo scarce, the couple moved to Chicago in 1949, settling in an apartment at 37th Street and Lake Park Avenue. In 1950, Frank Lumpkin took a job with Wisconsin Steel.
Seeking more income to support a growing family, Beatrice Lumpkin took a technical job with Allied Radio in Chicago in 1952, where she worked for the next 11 years. In 1954, she and her husband moved from Woodlawn to Gary, where they lived until 1962.
Lumpkin left Allied Radio and spent six weeks writing ad copy for the Gary Post-Tribune before taking a job as a metallurgical lab test report clerk at National Tube in Gary. She then returned to Allied Radio in a role building and wiring electronic equipment.
Lumpkin and her husband moved to west suburban Broadview in 1962 when Allied Radio relocated its operations from the Loop to Maywood. She also had been taking night courses with an eye toward becoming a public school teacher, and she picked up a master’s degree from Northeastern Illinois State College in 1967. In 1965, Lumpkin began teaching math at Crane High School on the West Side. She then shifted to Manley Elementary School, a few blocks away. In 1966, she began teaching at Austin High School.
In 1967, Lumpkin started teaching math at Crane Junior College, which was soon renamed Malcolm X College. While there, Lumpkin gained a new appreciation for contributions to the field of math from ancient Egyptians and Africans, which sparked her desire to write a children’s book, “Senefer: A Young Genius in Old Egypt,” about an Egyptian mathematician, which was published in 1979.
In 1971, Lumpkin, a union delegate, joined City Colleges teachers in going on strike after the system’s leaders proposed an increased workload with no corresponding increase in pay. The strike lasted five weeks, and after it ended, Malcolm X’s president barred Lumpkin and two other union officials from campus, assigning them to a college satellite location in the Cabrini-Green housing project. Lumpkin was soon allowed to return to Malcolm X.
In 1974, Lumpkin picked up a second master’s degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology. That year, she also helped found the Coalition of Labor Union Women, which supports trade unionist women.
“We wanted to fight for women’s rights through an organization of our own,” Lumpkin wrote in her autobiography. “Men were invited to join too, to help fight for women’s rights. My husband, Frank, was one of the first men to join CLUW.”
In 1980, Frank Lumpkin and 3,400 others lost their jobs when Wisconsin Steel’s plant abruptly closed. The laid-off workers immediately lost their union, and didn’t even receive their final paychecks. The Lumpkins spearheaded a long fight for justice for them, forming the Wisconsin Steel Workers Save Our Jobs Committee and lobbying and picketing. Finally, almost 17 years after the plant closed, the 2,700 former hourly workers from the plant received final settlement checks.
In 1999, Beatrice Lumpkin published a book she wrote, “Always Bring a Crowd!: The Story of Frank Lumpkin, Steelworker,” about the Wisconsin Steel battle.
Lawyer Tom Geoghegan, who represented the Wisconsin Steel workers, called Beatrice and Frank Lumpkin “a power couple for people who were absolutely powerless.”
“They worked together and complemented each other,” Geoghegan said. “And after Frank died, she just carried on — she went up and worked on campaigns and she was an activist.”
After retiring from Malcolm X in 1982, Lumpkin remained in the classroom, teaching as a substitute teacher at several city high schools before landing a teaching job at Bowen High School. She left Bowen in a staff cutback in 1990 but landed briefly at George Washington High on the Southeast Side before she retired again at the end of 1990.
Into the 21st century, Lumpkin continued organizing and remaining politically active. Upset over the high cost of heating one’s home during the winter of 2001, she helped form a coalition, Angry Utility Consumers, which demonstrated against Peoples Gas. Eventually, the utility was required to refund its customers an overcharge.
In 2008, Lumpkin was elected secretary of the national retiree organization Alliance for Retired Americans.
Lumpkin remained active well into her 11th decade and lived on her own until a year ago. That included attending demonstrations, such as the recent “No Kings” rallies.
In addition to her son, John, Lumpkin is survived by two other sons, Carl Mohrherr and Paul Lumpkin; a daughter, Jeanleah Mohrherr; three grandchildren; and a great-grandson. Frank Lumpkin died in 2010.
A celebration of life service will take place at 1 p.m. on Aug. 9 at the CTU Center, 1901 W. Carroll Ave., Chicago.
In lieu of flowers, the Lumpkin family is encouraging contributions to the Bea and Frank Lumpkin Memorial Fund at the Illinois Labor History Society.
Mayor Brandon Johnson has declared Aug. 3 “Beatrice Lumpkin Day” in Chicago. In a statement, Johnson called Lumpkin “a towering figure in the labor movement, an unwavering advocate for fully funded education and a continued source of inspiration for us all.”
“Bea Lumpkin’s life was a testament to the power of principled activism and the enduring belief that ordinary people, working together, can change the world,” Johnson added. “May her memory continue to guide and inspire us and we honor her legacy and carry on her pursuit for justice.”
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
Springfield passed 395 bills this session.
That’s a lot of legislating. But is it good governance?
Lawmakers love sending out press releases boasting about the bills they passed last session. Nobody brags about getting rid of something we don’t need anymore.
Yet, if Illinois were a private company, its board wouldn’t judge management by how many initiatives it launched; it would ask whether the business was healthier than it was a year ago.
State government deserves the same discipline.
When you spend roughly 70 days in the Capitol, every minute counts. And in a state like Illinois, which faces perennial budget deficits and a long list of pressing challenges to tackle, focus matters.
In other words, state lawmakers must get down to business. The question is: Which business? And what results actually matter?
Not tinkering at the margins, but dealing with the most important challenges.
By that standard, Illinois doesn’t quite measure up. The point isn’t that lawmakers should never pass hundreds of bills, it’s that the number tells us almost nothing about whether Springfield politicians are effective stewards of our state government.
Too much remained unfinished.
Consider: Major housing legislation stalled, even as affordability remains the top issue of the day. Dysfunction also led to a Bears stadium fumble even as the team considers switching allegiances with a move to Indiana. Pension debt remains among the state’s steepest fiscal challenges, crowding out Illinois’ ability to invest in the future. As we wrote last month, Illinois spends roughly 65 cents on pensions for every dollar it spends on classrooms. While we spend well below peer states on education, we’re at the top of the list for the percentage of state spending that goes toward pensions.
That’s not the behavior of a healthy state.
Yet addressing this problem was not high on the priority list last session.
This isn’t new. Illinois has long paired flurries of legislative activity with an unwillingness to tackle the elephants in the room. If you thought this last legislative session was an outlier at 395 bills passed, think again. In 2025, state lawmakers pushed through 430 bills. In 2024, Illinois got about 425 new laws.
Springfield has become very good at measuring success by what it adds, but it should also measure success by what it has the discipline to eliminate.
Every successful organization eventually learns that saying “yes” to one priority means saying “no” to another. Legislatures should be no different. If new laws equaled a better-functioning state, Illinois would be thriving.
As a guiding principle, before figuring out what to do next, state lawmakers should be asking: What should we stop doing?
Imagine if every committee began each session by identifying five laws, mandates or reporting requirements that no longer serve a useful purpose before introducing new legislation. Under the Regulatory Sunset Act, many occupational licensing laws periodically come up for review rather than remaining on the books forever. The idea is sound. Springfield should adopt that same habit more broadly, not because fewer laws are always better, but because a simpler government is often a more cost-effective one.
Springfield also should welcome outside perspectives. Business leaders, local officials and policy experts often see inefficiencies that government itself overlooks. They should be invited to identify outdated mandates, unnecessary regulations and redundant processes that no longer serve the public.
Imagine lawmakers celebrating the obsolete mandates they repealed with the same enthusiasm they devote to announcing new legislation. Removing unnecessary costs for families and employers would make Illinois an easier place to live and do business.
But beyond cutting out the unessential, a useful state scorecard would track the state’s vital signs, not bills passed. More importantly, it would force lawmakers to organize their agendas around improving those indicators year after year.
On fiscal health, we need to be obsessively tracking things like our rainy day fund and our pension funded ratio. On economic growth, we need to be tracking population growth (which, fortunately, has recently turned positive in recent years after a long stretch of serious decline) — and not just the top-line numbers, but details on who’s leaving and who’s coming in. We can learn a lot about confidence in our state based on things like domestic migration, along with jobs created, new business formation and median household income.
What about family quality of life? Can people afford a home here, and what are homeownership rates here versus our neighbors and peers? What about access to childcare and how much it costs?
We have no doubt this information exists already. The public ought to have an easy-to-access dashboard that tracks these sorts of indicators, similar to how the Illinois comptroller makes public key fiscal data.
Public safety, education and transportation belong on the dashboard as well.
Those metrics would provide a far clearer picture of whether Illinois is becoming a healthier state than the number of bills lawmakers managed to pass. More important, they would give taxpayers a way to judge whether the policies coming out of Springfield are actually moving the state in the right direction.
Layers and layers of red tape and other obstacles add to Illinois’ reputation as a difficult place to get things done. To change that, every legislative session should leave Illinois with not just new laws, but a simpler statute book than it had the year before.
Springfield shouldn’t be in the business of handing out participation awards simply for passing a heap of new laws. The legislature will know it’s succeeding not when it passes another 395 bills, but when Illinois is measurably healthier, government is more streamlined and the state is making more than marginal progress on its biggest challenges.
“I think that one of the reasons, though, that (state Rep. Harry Benton) may have chosen to resign is because … a report can’t be released about somebody that’s not in the Legislature anymore.”
Gov. JB Pritzker
“Speaker Welch should join me in calling for (state Rep. Carol Ammons’) resignation. Leadership means holding your own members accountable, not waiting until political pressure becomes unavoidable. Elected officials are entrusted with serving the public, not enriching themselves, and the seriousness of these allegations demands accountability.”
House Minority Leader Tony McCombie
“It’s been interesting to see some of those people who dragged this woman, Lindsey Fifield, who was in The New York Times story, they called it uncorroborated claims. You know, another person basically said that she was essentially a plant of the Republican Party. And now those people have changed their tune.”
CNN “NewsNight” host Abby Phillip
“I told (Lionel Messi) right there on the pitch to enjoy the moment because he deserved it and that we would keep giving our all for ourselves — but above all for him, since this is his last World Cup and he has given us so much.”
Argentina national soccer team’s Lautaro Martínez
“The progressive movement is alive and well. We just have a few obstinate individuals that are more aligned with the interests of corporations that are ultimately stalling what could be a full-out revolution in this city, and the people of Chicago want it.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson
We will never forget the 2022 Highland Park mass shooting that killed seven, wounded dozens more and resulted in the saddest July Fourth in the history of Illinois.
“Do we have to live like this?” we wrote the following day, just as Highland Park was beginning to mourn its dead and tend to its wounded, “that’s really the only salient question. Do we?”
Our answer to that question, then and now, is “no, we don’t.”
That means we must rid ourselves of assault weapons, the tool of choice for disillusioned, nihilistic killers who hope to kill scores of innocent people at once, as was the case at the Highland Park parade, but that no one needs for sporting purposes or for self-defense.
So we were glad to read federal Appellate Judge Amy St. Eve, a President Donald Trump appointee, write as follows in the court’s righteous upholding of the Illinois assault weapons ban: “Whatever else may be contributing to America’s mass-shooting epidemic, the record makes one thing clear: The more people killed, the more likely it is that the killer used an assault weapon and large-capacity magazines.”
Exactly. As the court said, the Illinois law is “consistent with our regulatory tradition” and does not violate the Second Amendment right to bear arms. These weapons and magazines exist to promote the death of innocents. They are killing machines. They have no place in our state.
We’ve said this many times.
In 2024, for example, we lamented that the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling invalidating the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ rule banning so-called bump stocks (a heinous device that allows a killer to fire off 400 to 800 rounds in a minute) would be unthinkable in other nations, and noted that the rule was put in place during Trump’s first term. The court held that the rule was imprecise and Justice Samuel Alito urged the legislative branch to amend the law instead.
Well, Illinois has such a law, dubbed the Protect Illinois Communities Act, passed and quickly signed by Gov. JB Pritzker in January 2023. It prohibits the sale of more than 100 kinds of semiautomatic firearms and, crucially, also limits magazine capacities. It is a very good law. Our state does not need these weapons. We find unpersuasive the dissent’s argument that a widespread civilian ownership of AR-15s, including their asserted use for self-defense, places them beyond the state’s power to prohibit.
No doubt this one is headed to the Supreme Court. If so, we urge that court, not least in memory of the dead of Highland Park, to uphold the wisdom of the 7th Circuit’s decision.
There hasn’t been a lot of new anything for decades in the neighborhood immediately west of the old South Works site in South Chicago. But that’s changed with the recent completion of a well-scaled mixed-use mid-rise called Thrive Exchange.
The design is the product of locally based Koo Architecture led by architect Jackie Koo. It was developed by DL3 Realty as part of the Invest South/West initiative that was launched by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot and then-Department of Planning and Development Commissioner Maurice Cox.
Koo first made her name in hospitality design with the striking Wit Hotel in the Loop in 2009. More recent projects include the Sable Hotel at Navy Pier and the Altgeld Family Resource Center in the Riverdale neighborhood. This background informed her work at Thrive Exchange: “We definitely try to bring some hospitality vibes to make it a nice place for the residents,” Koo said.
The 55,000-square-foot, six-story-tall brick-clad building sits at the corner of East 79th Street and South Exchange Avenue just south of the Cheltenham Metra Electric station. This is an almost perfect site for what’s known as transit-oriented development, or TOD, that encourages larger buildings with limited, or even no, on-site parking when located near public transportation.
And it’s just a few blocks west of the 440-acre Quantum Shore Chicago development that’s rising on the old South Works site. Construction of Advocate Health Care’s new Trinity Hospital replacement facility is already underway.
Thrive Exchange is a building that eschews sharp edges; it features curved corners that are reminiscent of art deco’s effect on buildings and trains — which seems appropriate for its transit-adjacent location.
The site is oddly shaped for Chicago, with its north, west and south edges defined by the street grid and the east side by the angle of the railroad right-of-way. That provided an opportunity to create a somewhat unusual form — a six-sided tower whose central double-loaded corridor is set parallel with the train tracks.
And for an urban apartment building, it’s not terribly large, with just 43 affordable apartments in studio, one-, and two-bedroom configurations. Because its shape is somewhat unconventional, the plans for the end units have some modest spatial character. Thrive Exchange’s size makes it a Goldilocks building — not too large and not too small, but just right for this not-so-typical Chicago site.
The ground floor provides ample retail spaces that have yet to be leased. “That retail would be great for a wide variety of commuter uses,” Koo said. “You could stop by, get coffee, get on the train, (and) commute downtown.”
On the side of the building facing the railroad tracks, there’s a single-story bustle that extends from the body of the building. This brick-clad volume contains offices while creating a pleasant second-floor roof deck that connects with a community room and fitness room for the residents. It also helps define a ground-level courtyard space that can be accessed from the retail spaces.
The building’s apartments are affordable, but Koo noted that market rate units in this neighborhood are affordable organically. She notes that its location with quick access to the Loop via Metra means that it can function as workforce housing.
Immediately south of the new structure is the Ringer Building. Built in 1928, it’s a petite, classically inspired brick- and stone-clad gem that is slated for renovation. Its arched entry was a source of inspiration for the architects.
“We capture some of these curved elements,” Koo said. “It started as an elevation move, then it turned into a plan move.” This thoughtful mix of old and new demonstrates an approach that architects and developers should adopt throughout the city: to reuse and remake what surrounds us.
Much of the building’s mass is cantilevered over the glazed storefronts of the ground floor, creating a dramatic and visually contrasting base. Among the building’s more appealing details is a vertical slot of windows that face South Exchange Avenue at the corner with 79th Street. A setback along Exchange Avenue creates a pleasantly landscaped area that welcomes visitors and residents. And a curved metal canopy over the entrance reprises the curves of the brick corners. The plaza facing the train tracks would be an awfully nice place to have a cup of coffee while waiting for a train.
But while Thrive Exchange does all the big things right, there are a few discordant notes. While the masons built the curved corners with some dexterity, there are a number of metal enclosures around windows and storefront glazing that seem haphazardly hacked together to form curved features. It’s unfortunate, as these details detract from the overall success of the building’s forms — right where tenants and visitors can see them up close.
The project was always meant to spur further development. The conceptual plans Koo created for the Invest South/West proposal included the renovation of an existing building across 79th Street coupled with a new four-story apartment building that would be kin to the recently completed one. And that master plan calls for the renovation of the Ringer Building as well. Completion of this more expansive project would give the complex — and the neighborhood — more chances at success.
To date, the residential leasing has been proceeding nicely, although the retail spaces remain vacant.
Thrive Exchange is a damn good building. It’s modest but not anonymous and thoughtful but not overwrought. And we need more — lots more — of this sort of thoughtful and inventive design across the city.
This corner of Chicago has seen better days, but Thrive Exchange is a successful exercise in hope for a community that’s been beset by disinvestment for too many decades.
Edward Keegan writes, broadcasts and teaches on architectural subjects. Keegan’s biweekly architecture column is supported by a grant from former Tribune critic Blair Kamin, as administered by the not-for-profit Journalism Funding Partners. The Tribune maintains editorial control over assignments and content.
If we want to consider what’s possible for Ukraine, the people of Poland are living proof. They gained freedom from communist rule at the end of the Cold War with President Ronald Reagan playing what he called a supporting role in bringing down the Soviet Union.
A virulent anti-communist, Reagan found his way into the history books by telling Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. A considerable contrast to a fawning Donald Trump at the feet of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Reagan came to the rescue of the Polish Solidarity movement in the 1980s. He used a CIA covert action to fund a $20 million campaign, in 1980 dollars, to bring the Solidarity message of democracy and freedom to the Polish people living under communist rule. One of the most successful stunts used broadcast break-ins to bring Solidarity messages to TV screens in Polish living rooms. Using black market smuggling networks, Poland was inundated with leaflets, posters, magazines, newspapers and radio break-ins to offer hope for a democratic Poland.
Reagan’s support of CIA strategies bringing messages of hope and freedom to the Poles living under communist rule in the ‘80s is documented by Seth Jones in his book “A Covert Action: Reagan, the CIA and the Cold War Struggle in Poland.” It serves as a reminder to Republicans today that Trump’s reluctance to deliver the weaponry to Ukraine it needs to defend its citizens against Russian aggression is a sorry example of a party gone soft in support of its European allies.
Russia’s latest ballistic missile attack on the people of Ukraine prompted President Volodymyr Zelenskyy once again to claim Ukraine had an “insufficient supply of interceptor missiles” needed to shoot down those missiles. Zelenskyy wrote in a social media post that “as long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies’ stockpiles, Russia is only encouraged to keep ‘vanquishing’ residential buildings.”
Ukraine’s request for additional American Tomahawk missiles and Patriot interceptors has fallen on deaf ears as of this writing. Trump’s Department of Defense expresses concern for America’s own stockpiles of weapons, but it’s hard to believe that Reagan would have hesitated to deliver the weapons needed to protect innocent Ukrainian lives. Instead, he would have ordered emergency production of weapons for America’s stockpiles, and he would have proclaimed his support of a free Ukrainian people.
Instead, Trump fiddles while Ukraine innocents are killed by Putin’s missiles and drones.
Reagan’s imperative to Gorbachev backed by the uncompromising authority of America’s commitment to a free Europe reminds us how the Republican Party of Reagan is gone and long forgotten. A new playbook seems to distance America from helping freedom-loving people fight off the terror of a Russian dictator intent on extending the Russian empire as far as his missiles will travel.
What Putin has in store for democratic Ukraine standing in his way of rebuilding the Russian empire can best be understood by how Putin regards his Russian subjects today. In his recent book “The Closing of the Russian Mind: How Putin’s Ideology Took the Nation Hostage,” Andrei Kolesnikov, a Russian journalist writing from Russia, quotes Putin’s minister of defense, Andrei Belousov, whose description of life under Putin sounds eerily like the days of czarist Russia.
Belousov defends Putin’s Russia today by claiming that “the state will feed me and teach me how to think about the world around me. In exchange for food, I will not demand that the government should change and become non-corrupt and transparent … and I will think the way it asks me to think.”
“I will not demand that the government should change”? Apart from how that describes Republicans who overlook Trump’s corruption in office, it’s a considerable contrast to the individual freedoms Poles and other Eastern Europeans now enjoy thanks to Reagan.
This insight into how Putin sees the role of government dictating the daily lives of his Russian subjects is evidence of how Putin would govern the people of Ukraine and any other Western democracy next in line for his murderous wrath. Trump will continue to berate Europeans for their failure to build up defense budgets, but significant progress has been made in that regard. But America’s arsenal of weapons is second to none and must also play a role in confronting Putin’s aggression across Europe.
Putin’s minister of defense lays bare the difference between life in a dictatorship and life in a democracy. It reveals what side of this historic battle for freedom and democracy Trump and his Republican loyalists have chosen. It is one of the failed measures of the Republican Party today and why it must be rebuilt after Trump.
Bob Kustra served two terms as an Illinois Republican lieutenant governor and 10 years as a state legislator. He now hosts the “Reader’s Corner” podcast, an author interview program that also airs on Boise State Public Radio, an NPR affiliate.
Some images stay with us long after they stop being news.
Mothers weeping for their children. Men of all ages clawing through concrete with their bare hands. Neighbors embracing strangers. People handing out water, carrying the wounded, offering a bed to someone who lost everything in a matter of seconds.
Earthquakes don’t just test a city’s resilience. They reveal the character of the people who live there.
On June 24, two earthquakes struck north-central Venezuela less than a minute apart. As of July 8, the official death toll stood at more than 3,800, with more than 16,700 injured and tens of thousands still unaccounted for, according to figures announced by Venezuelan authorities — numbers that forensic workers on the ground and United Nations officials warn may capture only a fraction of the true loss. The city of La Guaira has borne the brunt of the devastation, though the capital city of Caracas has also seen buildings damaged and evacuated by the hundreds and essential services knocked out.
But tragedies are rarely just about destruction. They’re about people.
In those first hours, when every minute meant the difference between life and death, it was ordinary citizens who started digging — many with their bare hands, as fuel shortages and a lack of heavy machinery stalled official rescue efforts, according to reporting. Neighbors set up collection points, handed out food, drove the wounded to hospitals and opened their homes to people with nowhere left to go. Amid that response, a phrase began to spread across social media: “Donde faltó gobierno, sobró pueblo.” That translates to: Where the government fell short, the people more than made up for it.
Images captured by AFP show hundreds of families sleeping in the streets of La Guaira, unable to return to buildings left cracked or on the verge of collapse.
The solidarity has crossed borders, too. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 40 international search and rescue teams — over 2,200 specialists and 140 search dogs — have deployed to Venezuela, while the United Nations activated emergency funding through its Central Emergency Response Fund. In the days that followed, new pledges of international assistance, including $150 million in aid from the United States and reconstruction support from China, expanded the humanitarian response.
Even as the odds of finding survivors shrank by the hour, people kept digging. Five days in, 21-year-old Aaron Levi Cantillo Vargas was pulled out alive after 106 hours under the rubble in Caraballeda, a rescue documented by The Guardian that restored hope just as it seemed to be running out.
For millions of Venezuelans, starting over is nothing new.
Over the past decade, more than 8 million Venezuelans have rebuilt their lives far from home, according to the Regional Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela. This time, the rebuilding will be different. It will mean rebuilding hospitals, schools, roads and homes. But it will also be emotional. Some families will never be the same, and entire communities will live for years with the memory of what happened.
And yet, amid the dust, something else has come into view.
A deeply human capacity has resurfaced, one that rarely makes headlines: the capacity to care for others even when you, too, have lost almost everything.
For a few days, Venezuela dominated our screens. We saw collapsed buildings, stories of improbable rescues and families waiting for word from loved ones still under the rubble. We shared photographs, followed every update and celebrated every life found. But the news cycle moved on. Another story comes. Another crisis. Another place claims our attention.
And little by little, Venezuela slipped off the front pages — even though, for millions of people, the work of rebuilding is just getting started. Because reconstruction lasts longer than any news cycle.
It will take months to restore essential services. Years to rebuild schools, hospitals and homes. And, for many families, a lifetime to learn to live with an absence — or many. Perhaps the hardest part of an earthquake isn’t when the ground stops shaking. Perhaps it comes after.
When the aid dwindles. When the cameras leave. When reconstruction stops being news and becomes the daily life of the people who remain.
Some images stay with us long after they stop being news.
The news ends. The grief does not. And the rebuilding has only just begun.
Cristina Guevara is a Latin America policy analyst and writer. She previously served as a policy and legislative adviser in Panama’s National Assembly.
Questions for top cop hopefuls
In the examination of candidates to succeed Larry Snelling as Chicago’s next superintendent of police, a successful candidate must be able to answer two important questions truthfully.
First, the candidate must acknowledge that there is a code of silence within the Chicago Police Department, and he or she must promise to create the hiring, training and culture changes that will eliminate this practice. The code of silence prevents the establishment of an honest, effective and efficient police force that is welcomed and trusted by all communities. Until honest officers are given the necessary backing to identify those among them who are a discredit to the department and the city, Chicago will never have the police department it deserves.
Second, the candidate must be committed to removing from the department officers who have been found to lie on reports, in court or under investigative questioning. An officer who lies can never effectively testify in court, a requirement of their job, because they will always be subject to a cross examination regarding their credibility. Officers must understand that lying to protect themselves or their co-workers will result in removal from the department.
I was an FBI agent who investigated public corruption, a chief investigator for the Chicago Police Department Office of Professional Standards and a director of investigations for the city of Chicago Office of Inspector General. I regularly investigated Chicago police officers who lied during investigations. I found this to be the greatest impediment to having a fair, honest, trustworthy and effective police force.
Make no mistake. Instituting the necessary changes to a deeply embedded police culture will be the most difficult part of a new superintendent’s job, with pushback from those who will contend that no such culture presently exists within the department. But unless a candidate can promise to work to change the culture of the Chicago Police Department in these two areas, it should be suggested to them that they seek another line of work.
We have missed too many opportunities to demand this change. We must seize the opportunity now.
— David Grossman, Chicago
Snelling’s exit is our loss
Here is another reason to make sure this is Brandon Johnson’s only term as mayor. I so admire police Superintendent Larry Snelling, and it is a great loss to Chicago for him to retire.
I once chatted with two police officers while watching the Pride Parade, and they were so complimentary of him and said he is admired throughout the police force.
I wish he would have stayed through Johnson’s term because hopefully it’s the mayor’s last.
— Susan Bernstein, Chicago
The kind of mayor I want
Regarding the editorial “Johnson says Chicagoans want a ‘revolution.’ How about competence, Mr. Mayor?” (July 9): I am a born-and-bred Chicagoan, and I certainly do not want a “full-out” progressive political revolution in this city. I am a “full-out” lover of this city, and what I do want is a mayor who understands that the business community is vital for the growth and development of the city by providing job opportunities and it wants to collaborate and invest in the city’s future and safety. It is not the enemy but can be a positive force for Chicago.
I want a mayor who will take a stand against the Chicago Teachers Union and who recognizes how detrimental to taxpayers and students the union is in fighting the closure of underused schools. I want a mayor who works with our elected aldermen and recognizes that they represent all of the city and should be listened to and respected. I want a mayor who understands the need for competency in his appointments. The retirement of police Superintendent Larry Snelling is a huge loss, and I want a mayor who will follow a careful, collaborative, transparent search for a new police superintendent.
When I voted for mayor, I did not want a representative of a type of party — progressive, conservative or any other label. I wanted a mayor who understood the compromises, collaborations and skills necessary to running a complex and beautiful Chicago.
— Joy Daskal, Chicago
A real revolution for Chicago
I disagree with the editorial that Chicagoans don’t want “a full-out revolution,” such as envisioned by Mayor Brandon Johnson. My idea of a “full-out revolution” for Chicago would involve:
Rising up against an incompetent mayor. Fixing the tax burden. Resolving the untenable pension deficit. Addressing financial mismanagement. Addressing affordable housing. Addressing gun violence. Investing in jobs. Prioritizing investment in neighborhoods. Growing our economy. Attracting business. Prioritizing our kids. Fixing the lead pipe crisis. Having a multidiscipline approach to combating “teen takeovers.” Supporting Chicago Public Schools students. Eliminating obvious waste. Making school safer for learning. Having the Chicago Teachers Union focus on children and their education, not politics.
Maybe a revolution is brewing as we look toward deep reforms for Chicago to continue to be a world-class city.
— Elizabeth Butler Marren, Chicago
DuSable and Obama center
A recent editorial (“The DuSable, the other South Side museum celebrating civil rights, needs some help,” July 1) recognizes what we have long believed: The opening of the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) represents a transformative moment for Chicago’s South Side and for our city as a whole. We appreciate the editorial’s encouragement that visitors extend their journey beyond a single destination to experience the remarkable cultural institutions that have served this community for generations.
The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center welcomes the OPC to our neighborhood. We look forward to being not only neighbors, but also partners in inspiring curiosity, fostering dialogue and sharing stories that have shaped our nation.
Long before this historic moment, generations of Chicagoans, educators, artists, scholars and visitors found the DuSable to be a place to learn, reflect, and discover the people and events that are central to the American story.
Millions of visitors will visit the OPC. We invite them to continue their exploration just steps away at the DuSable where the broader story of Black history provides essential context for understanding the past, present and future of our country.
This moment is about more than tourism. It’s about community stewardship.
We invite everyone to spend an evening with us at DuSummer Music Series. Join us on July 24 for a screening of the award-winning film “Montmartre” as part of our Black Imagination Abroad series. From July 24 to 26, experience the powerful production of “Anne & Emmett,” which reflects on the shared injustices suffered by Anne Frank and Emmett Till. Explore our exhibitions and permanent collections where stories of innovation, resilience, artistry and leadership come to life.
Chicago’s cultural landscape is strongest when its institutions lift one another up. The arrival of the OPC is not a replacement for the work already happening in this community — it is an opportunity to amplify it.
— Perri L. Irmer, president and CEO, DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, Chicago
The Aragon Ballroom’s ballroom era formally ended with three shows in 1964 featuring the venue’s longtime regular bandleader, Wayne King, dubbed in the Tribune as “the master of soft, smooth and silken melody.”
A young woman who accompanied her widowed father into the storied interior at 1106 W. Lawrence Ave. — featuring a 21,000-square-foot dance floor that resembled a moonlit courtyard in medieval Spain — found it all a bit puzzling.
“I watched Dad’s eyes light up when we came in,” she told the Chicago Sun-Times. “I understand his sentiment, but, good grief, this place is weird. Was this the sort of stuff people went for in the 1920s?”
It was.
The Aragon, which later generations experienced mainly as a shabby, sticky home for loud rock music, was once the North Side’s hub for romance, where young men and women came in droves to dance to mellow music in an elegant atmosphere. An early advertisement for the ballroom promised “a veritable fairyland of romantic enchantment.”
As Andy Karzas, the second generation of his family to run the Aragon, said in a 1963 WFMT interview with Studs Terkel: “This was the wonderful place for courtship in Chicago. What nicer place for a fellow to take a girl for an inexpensive evening of entertainment?”
Many Chicago couples used to tell the same story about how they fell in love: “We met at the Aragon Ballroom.”
The Aragon’s founders were two Greek immigrant brothers, Andrew and William Karzas, who had opened the majestic Trianon Ballroom in 1922 at 62nd Street and Cottage Grove Avenue in the Woodlawn neighborhood.
“Dancing in Chicago would never be the same again,” Charles A. Sengstock wrote about the Trianon in his 2004 book “That Toddlin’ Town.” “It set higher standards for ballroom design, decor, and operation, not to mention size, and it seemed to eliminate any doubt as to whether or not ballroom dancing was just a fad.”
Turning their attention to the bustling Uptown neighborhood, where the Uptown Theatre had opened in 1925, the brothers began planning what the Tribune said would be “the largest and most beautiful ballroom in the world.”
Boyd T. Hill and Ralph D. Huszagh designed the Aragon, but the interior was created by another architect, John Eberson, who was renowned for his “atmospheric” movie palaces. Like those theaters, the Aragon had a ceiling painted like a night sky, replete with drifting clouds and twinkling stars. The balcony structure around the dance floor — with its Moorish castle turrets, terra cotta lion’s heads, rows of columns and numerous other decorative flourishes — enhanced the illusion that dancers were outdoors somewhere in old Spain.
Advertisements touted “the most elaborate cooling system ever devised for the refreshment of summertime amusement seekers.” And the dance floor was cushioned by a system of springs.
The ads said the Aragon was big enough for 5,000 dancers. (Its official capacity today is 4,873.) But the Tribune reported that 10,000 people filled the ballroom for its first event on July 14, 1926, when it hosted a Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks beauty pageant. On the following night, the Aragon welcomed dancers for the first time.
As WGN began making live radio broadcasts from the Aragon, King gained popularity as the “Waltz King.” The Tribune noted that “he has never gone for the merry, mad gang stuff” (in other words, the wilder forms of jazz). “Girls call his music ‘soulful’ and ‘spiritual’ and they dance to it, sometimes, with tears in their eyes,” the Tribune reported.
“We played very little of the Charleston,” King told the Sun-Times in 1964, recalling how the Aragon had employed “floor men” who stopped anyone from jitterbugging or engaging in other rambunctious dance moves. “It was one of the few dance halls I know of where careful parents allowed their daughters to go unescorted,” King said. “Floor men kept an eye on the fellows who came in alone. The wrong ones were sent on their way.”
Other bandleaders in the Aragon’s early years included Artie Shaw, Lawrence Welk, Guy Lombardo, Tommy Dorsey, Ted Weems (whose band included singer Perry Como) and Benny Goodman (with singer Peggy Lee).
But by 1963, times were changing. “Young people today, the fellows don’t want to learn how to dance,” Andy Karzas, William Karzas’ son, told Terkel. “They think it’s a sissy activity. … They do a lot of gyrations in record stores, but they don’t learn beautiful ballroom dancing.”
Karzas would soon sell the Aragon. But though the South Side’s Trianon Ballroom was demolished, the Aragon lived on, hosting boxing matches and other events.
And in 1966, it took on a whole new identity. Borden Stevenson, a son of former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson II, reopened the Aragon with a French business partner, Olivier Coquelin, as the Cheetah Club.
They covered up the Spanish decor with white stretch fabric and installed strobe lights. “At Cheetah, the whole place will pulse,” a manager said. No alcohol was served, except inside a 21-and-over bar. Elsewhere, the Cheetah served soft drinks to an 18-and-over crowd. The club included a fashion boutique, a reading room and a nook where avant-garde films were screened.
Tribune reporter William Leonard described “two rock ’n’ roll bands blaring unceasingly, young ladies in mini-skirts gyrating with deadpanned dedication, and bemused onlookers standing about in varying degrees of mystification.” Columnist Herb Lyon said the flashing lights and loud music made him feel like he was in purgatory.
But it was a hit with a young crowd. “We come here to move. It’s tough music. It moves,” one young man explained, telling a 27-year-old Tribune writer: “You’re already too old to really understand. … This is for us.”
Chicago bands including the New Colony Six and the Shadows of Knight played the Cheetah. Wilson Pickett broke the club’s attendance records with 7,000 people on each of two nights. And when the Paul Butterfield Blues Band played March 29, 1968, Jimi Hendrix made a surprise appearance. He’d reportedly walked out of his scheduled concert earlier that evening on the University of Illinois Circle campus after barely playing anything. But at the Cheetah, Hendrix and Butterfield “held their audience spellbound for over two hours,” the Tribune reported, calling it “a major happening.”
A week later, when rioting broke out in parts of Chicago after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the Cheetah closed for the weekend, calling off two concerts by the Turtles. A manager said it cost the club $10,000. By June, the Cheetah was several months behind in rent, so building owner Emerson Whitney took over the venue, restoring the Aragon name. And the swaths of fabric came down. “Grownup people don’t need all that psychedelic light-flashing to enjoy themselves,” Whitney said.
Whitney tried to bring back ballroom dancing, but bigger crowds turned out for shows by Jefferson Airplane and Stevie Wonder. When Big Brother and the Holding Company played, Whitney ran a spotlight himself, training it on the group’s singer, Janis Joplin. “To me, she’s the only one on the show,” he said.
In the years after that, the Aragon went through various owners, hosted more prizefights and tried again to revive ballroom dancing. But over the past six decades, it’s mostly been a concert venue, though critics often complained about the quality of the sound. When Nirvana played in 1993, Tribune critic Greg Kot observed how the “horrendous acoustics occasionally muffled (Kurt) Cobain’s voice and muddled the guitars.”
Live Nation, the corporate giant that has operated and co-owned the Aragon since 2014, worked to fix the sound issues in 2023 with a new system “engineered specifically for the room’s unique acoustics,” Jason Wright, the company’s Midwest region president, told the Tribune recently via email. “It has significantly improved clarity, consistency, and coverage throughout the venue, creating a better listening experience no matter where fans are in the room.”
After snow caused 75 feet of the Aragon’s roof line to collapse in 2021, renovations spruced up the building. The many terra cotta figures on the Aragon’s exterior walls got face-lifts.
As the Aragon turns 100 years old this month, it remains one of Chicago’s leading concert venues. Today’s music — rock, EDM, Latin, hip-hop — might shock the ears of those nattily dressed young Chicagoans who waltzed a century ago to Wayne King’s mellow tunes.
And yet, the Aragon still offers something akin to the escape that the ballroom’s advertisements described back in 1926: “Drab reality is banished as entranced couples dance in this enchanting atmosphere.”
Robert Loerzel is a freelance writer and the co-author of “The Uptown: Chicago’s Endangered Movie Palace.” Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Marianne Mather at mmather@chicagotribune.com and Kori Rumore at krumore@chicagotribune.com.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran said it considers the Strait of Hormuz closed once again after a vessel using an ‘unauthorized route’ was struck by a warning shot in the critical waterway, further jeopardizing the already tenuous ceasefire agreement with the United States.
U.S. Central Command said a short time later that its forces began a third round of strikes against Iran.
“The United States is imposing a heavy cost by continuing to degrade Iran’s ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial ships freely transiting the strait,” the military said.
A Cyprus-flagged container ship struck by Iran suffered “significant engineroom damage” and a civilian crew member is missing, U.S. Central Command said.
Senior U.S. officials had previously said in Washington that negotiations to further cement last month’s deal to end the war will be unable to progress without the strait being secure — and had even said they expected Iran to offer public statements to that effect.
Instead, the Revolutionary Guards Corps stated in an online post on Saturday that Iran launched warning shots at a “violating ship.” Iran further reported that the strait would now remain closed until further notice.
Those announcements followed Iran and Oman’s foreign ministers meeting on Saturday to discuss the strait that lies between them, after days of Iranian attacks on ships and U.S. retaliation that dealt a blow to the interim deal to end the war.
Iran blockaded the strait during the war with the United States and Israel, and it has yet to fully reopen despite the ceasefire signed last month.
The comments came after a heavy week of skirmishes between the United States and Iran focused on the strait.
Adding to the tensions, President Donald Trump and Iran Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei continued to trade threats into the weekend. Iran’s new supreme leader, still unseen since the war began, also vowed in his first statement since the funeral of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that Iranians would avenge his killing in the war’s opening strikes on Feb. 28. Such revenge “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out,” Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement carried on state television, hours after President Donald Trump threatened more missile attacks.
Oman said it and Iran agreed to keep talking about the Strait of Hormuz “at the technical and political levels,” a day after the United States called on Iran to publicly say the crucial waterway is open and ships won’t be attacked.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he met with his counterpart in Oman to discuss “appropriate mechanisms for ensuring the safe passage of ships.”
The world for decades has considered the strait an international waterway. Iran has insisted that the strait now remain under its control and that it be allowed to charge ships moving through it, a stance it took after the war began. The U.S. urges mariners to transit on a southern route through Oman’s territorial waters.
About a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas passed through the strait before the war began. Iran’s grip on it during the war led to a global energy crisis, though oil prices have sharply dropped since wartime highs of $120 a barrel.
Iran’s top diplomat also accused the U.S. of violating the interim deal by ending waivers allowing Iran to sell crude oil on the open market in U.S. dollars. Washington ended them in response to the attacks on ships in the strait. “Reality check: There can only be mutual compliance,” Araghchi wrote on X.
A thousand “missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat,” Trump wrote on social media overnight.
He said he was responding to threats “to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate” him. During Khamenei’s funeral, mourners held posters or banners calling for Trump to be killed along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump has declared the ceasefire over but said the U.S. would continue negotiations.
U.S. officials, speaking Friday on condition of anonymity about the current situation with Iran, said the resumption of strikes in recent days came after what they described as a rogue faction of Iranian hard-liners tried to sabotage the ceasefire. Iran has insisted its theocracy is unified under the new supreme leader.
The Pentagon said U.S. forces hit more than 170 Iranian military targets Tuesday and Wednesday.
The targets included air-defense systems, drone and missile storage sites, and military speedboats along the southern coast of Iran near the Strait of Hormuz.
U.S. forces also appeared to hit a railway bridge in northeastern Iran more than 700 miles from the strait.
Current and former U.S. commanders and Pentagon officials said the strikes were a clear escalation as the United States and Iran appeared to edge closer to a return to full-scale war.
After the U.S. wrapped up its latest strikes on Thursday, more attacks reportedly hit Iran, raising questions about who else may be targeting the Islamic Republic.
Israel didn’t claim them, meaning the Gulf Arab states may have launched them, likely as a means to deter Iran from attacking them again.
The New York Times contributed.
BEDAR, SPAIN — Hundreds of firefighters backed by helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft struggled Saturday to contain one of Spain’s deadliest wildfires that erupted in recent days and killed a least 12 people.
The blazes, which also lashed France, came as parts of Western Europe are facing their third heat wave in six weeks.
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
In Spain’s Andalusia region, light winds and high humidity are helping crews, but the sheer size of the fire poses challenges, Antonio Sanz, head of the region’s emergency services, said.
The fire has scorched 25 square miles of forest and farmland — about the size of Manhattan.
Sanz said fire crews carried out controlled burns overnight around the perimeter of the fire, which broke out late Thursday in a semi-arid area near the Sierre de Los Filabres mountains in Almería province.
Favorable weather conditions were expected into Sunday, which could help firefighting efforts, Spain’s official EFE news agency reported.
Justice Minister Félix Bolaños said nearly all homes on the fire front’s perimeter were undamaged.
Most of the victims, who are believed to be foreign nationals, died after ignoring shelter-in-place instructions, authorities said. Seven people died while on foot after abandoning their cars.
Sanz said Saturday that authorities had completed autopsies and DNA samples were collected to identify them.
Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares has spoken with his counterparts from the U.K., Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands about the fire, EFE reported.
Almería is home to one of the largest communities of foreign nationals in Andalusia.
Authorities evacuated 1,448 people from some 11 areas.
Jeffrey Kember and his wife, Christine, were watching a favorite TV show in their Los Pinos farmhouse when the blare of a siren alerted them to the fire.
The couple jumped into their respective cars while also trying to help a neighbor with two toddlers.
Kember described how they got separated and how he was unable to speak to his wife because she did not have a phone on her.
“I’m driving through the flames. It was actually flames. I though, ‘I can’t stop, I just gotta go,’ ” he told The Associated Press, his wife now next to him outside an evacuation center. “It was eerie because all of a sudden I came out of the flames and it was all bright sunshine. It was like surreal.”
Meanwhile, Spanish authorities arrested two people for ignoring evacuation orders and returning to a high-risk area, according to EFE.
Authorities are still combing through the Bédar area in search for any victims.
Spain has battled frequent and severe heat waves in recent years, with temperatures often exceeding 104 degrees.
Bolaños on Saturday attributed the ferocity of the Almería wildfire to a “climate emergency.”
In June, Spain experienced several days of record-setting heat, with over 1,000 excess deaths. Globally, 2025 was the third-hottest year on record, bringing several intense heat waves across Europe.
Spain is no stranger to wildfires.
More than 971,000 acres, an area twice as large as London, burned last year. Four people died.
In 1979, 21 people died in Lloret de Mar, a coastal town an hour north of Barcelona.
Meanwhile, several wildfires remained active across France as temperatures soared.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said that 32 people have been arrested across the country since the beginning of the summer in connection with wildfires.
“Those unacceptable acts, which have disastrous consequences and mobilize our firefighters at the risk of their lives, now fall into the hands of the justice system,” he said. “We will continue our determined action and will not let anything slide.”
French President Emmanuel Macron also weighed in, recalling in a post on X that nine out of 10 wildfires start because of human activity.
More than 62,000 acres of land have burned in France since the start of 2026, roughly double the area compared to the same period last year.
France is experiencing the peak of its third heat wave this summer, with temperatures reaching 98 degrees in Paris.
Last month was France’s hottest June on record, with deaths surging by nearly a third during the hottest week.
BEIJING — Typhoon Bavi made landfall in China’s eastern province of Zhejiang late Saturday night and was expected to gradually weaken, according to China’s national weather center.
Bavi previously brought strong winds and rain to Japan’s southern islands and Taiwan. It was the second typhoon to hit China in just over a week’s time. The first, Maysak, made landfall July 3 in southern China.
Chinese authorities have evacuated more than 1.7 million people as of Saturday and issued alerts while eastern China braced for Bavi, which had maximum sustained winds of 144 kph near its center.
After passing north of Taiwan on Saturday and making landfall in the coastal city of Yuhuan in Zhejiang, Bavi is expected to move northwestward inland, the National Meteorological Center said.
Earlier, at least 17 people were killed in the southern Philippines, mostly due to landslides that were set off by seasonal monsoon rains that Bavi intensified before the typhoon blew away toward Taiwan, officials said Saturday.
Authorities in Zhejiang had evacuated more than 1.7 million people by Saturday morning, the official Xinhua News Agency said. By noon, Shanghai relocated 34,000 residents from high-risk areas, according to Xinhua.
In Ningde in Fujian province, more than 3,700 people were relocated from high-risk onshore areas as of Friday evening, Xinhua said. Authorities in Fujian province placed over 17,000 emergency rescue workers on standby.
China’s weather center issued an orange typhoon alert, the second-highest on a four-tier level, with many schools and ferry services suspended. Hundreds of flights were canceled, and some high-speed railway services were halted.
NEW YORK — A week ago, 18-year-old Nolan Xavier Wells took a boat trip with friends to celebrate the Fourth of July on an island off Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. He never came back. Two days later, he was found dead.
What happened, Wells’ parents say, is a mystery riddled with conflicting stories, implausible explanations and missing details. It is a case shadowed by the state’s fraught racial history and lingering distrust in law enforcement.
At a news conference Friday in New York City, Christine and Elmore Wonsley called for a transparent investigation into their son’s death, skeptical of claims that Wells told his friends to leave the island without him and suggestions that he, an elite athlete who knew how to swim, had accidentally drowned. Wells’ body was found early Monday along the shore of Horn Island, about 7 miles off the Mississippi coast, more than a day after he was last seen alive.
The roughly 11-mile long spit of land is near the Alabama state line. The island is uninhabited and accessible only by boat. About 200 people were there July 4, the family’s lawyers said.
“We just want to know what happened and why our baby didn’t come home,” Christine Wonsley said, looking upward several times as she stood alongside her lawyer, Ben Crump, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who will officiate Wells’ funeral.
Crump said Wells’ family has commissioned an independent autopsy, performed by a forensic pathologist in Washington, D.C., with no ties to Mississippi law enforcement, while they await the results of an official autopsy, which could take weeks.
They also plan to employ experts to recover messages that appeared to have been deleted from his cellphone, Crump said. They will eventually turn the device over to authorities, he said.
Wells’ family also encouraged witnesses to come forward and asked people to submit any video they recorded that may show him on Horn Island, echoing a call by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office to help shed light on the moments before Wells’ disappearance and death.
A photo posted on social media, purportedly from the boat ride to the island, shows Wells with his arms around three white male friends.
Sheriff John Ledbetter said Wells’ friends were cooperating and that investigators don’t suspect foul play.
Crump said those friends now have lawyers and that his investigators haven’t attempted to speak with them yet. Wells’ death has led to rampant speculation and suspicion as people grapple with Mississippi’s history of racial tension and what it means to be a Black person in a majority white space.
Actor and producer Tyler Perry is helping pay for Wells’ funeral, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is helping pay for his independent autopsy, and filmmaker Spike Lee showed up to the news conference to show support for Wells’ family.
Crump said Wells’ parents hired him to conduct an independent investigation into their son’s death because they don’t trust that law enforcement officials will perform a fair inquiry in a state still reckoning with its Jim Crow past, including the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till and the murders of three civil rights workers in the 1960s.
“The history of Mississippi is something that they don’t just read about in books,” Crump told reporters at Sharpton’s National Action Network headquarters in Harlem. “It’s a lived experience for many Black Americans that oftentimes when our children are killed in highly questionable situations that there is this notion that ‘Oh, there was nothing wrong, no foul play, let’s just sweep it under the rug.’ Well, we refuse to sweep it under the rug.”
Ledbetter told The Associated Press last week that investigators suspect that Wells “chose to stay on the island with the assumption that he was going to ride back to the mainland with someone else.”
But Wells didn’t have his cellphone or his keys — his friends did.
“What teenager would leave their phone behind if they’re going to stay on this island? What teenager wouldn’t take their phone?” Crump said. “It’s not adding up at all.”
Crump said bystander video from the island showed a person he said was Wells arguing with someone to give him his phone back. In another discrepancy, Crump said that a witness reported Wells had planned to leave on the boat with his friends, contradicting the sheriff’s theory.
“The friends come back and he’s left there with some story about how he said leave him behind,” Sharpton said. “But then by some magic one of the friends has his keys and his phone.”
The sheriff did not return the AP’s messages seeking his response to the family’s concerns.
Wells’ mother, Christine Wonsley, said she started to worry when a friend of his called her just after 11 p.m. July 4. After trying to track him down on her own, she reported him missing to police and went with her husband to meet an officer in a McDonald’s parking lot, she said, a process exacerbated by a dispute over which law enforcement agency had jurisdiction over the island.
One of Wells’ friends had also reported him missing to the U.S. Coast Guard.
Wells, who would have turned 19 next month, played wide receiver on the football team at Southwest Mississippi Community College in Summit, Mississippi, and had aspirations of playing at a Division I program.
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian attacks on Ukraine killed six people, including a child, and wounded 29, officials said on Saturday, adding that Ukrainian forces damaged more than two dozen Russian tankers and other vessels in the Sea of Azov.
The exchange came as Ukraine’s drones have lately been hitting oil refineries and other infrastructure across Russia to undercut its war effort, triggering a widespread fuel crisis with gasoline shortages. Moscow has responded by intensifying its bombardment on Kyiv and other cities, exposing Ukraine’s vulnerability to ballistic missile strikes.
Ukraine’s General Staff said 21 tankers used to transport oil and petroleum products were damaged overnight, in addition to four tugboats, two cargo ships and a dredging vessel. Russian officials said one person was killed in the Ukrainian drone strikes and that only four ships came under attack.
In Ukraine’s northeast Sumy region, four people were killed, including a child, and 17 people were wounded when two aerial glide bombs hit a crowded area where civilians were present, said Sumy regional head Oleh Hryhorov.
Eleven people, including one child, were wounded in missile and drone attacks overnight on Kyiv, the State Emergency Service reported. In the southern region of Odesa, two people were killed after a Russian missile struck a building, said regional head Oleh Kiper. Another man was wounded by shrapnel.
Explosions and fires were reported across Kyiv’s Solomianskyi, Darnytskyi and Dniprovskyi districts, the emergency service said.
Russia launched 12 missiles, including six ballistic missiles, along with 121 drones against Ukraine overnight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. He said most of the drones and some of the missiles were shot down, but the ballistic missiles reached their targets, reiterating Ukraine’s dire air defense gaps.
Suspect released in UK: British police Saturday released a 26-year-old man arrested as a suspect in the killing of former politician and reality TV contestant Ann Widdecombe, as they revealed she was attacked in her home a full day before her body was discovered.
Devon and Cornwall Police said the man detained on Friday a few miles from the scene of the attack was no longer under investigation. The force said detectives are working “at a significant pace” to find the killer, and they don’t believe there is a risk to the public.
Widdecombe, 78, was found dead Thursday in her isolated rural home in the village of Haytor on the edge of Dartmoor National Park in southwest England. Police did not disclose a cause of death, saying only that she had sustained “serious injuries.”
Police said they believe Widdecombe was attacked at around 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Concerns were raised for her after she failed to appear for a scheduled TV interview on Wednesday afternoon.
The killing is not being investigated as an act of terror and there is no information suggesting it was politically motivated, police said.
15 tourists die in Vietnam: A boat returning from an island trip in southern Vietnam capsized Saturday, killing 15 Indian tourists less than a half-mile from shore, as passengers shouted for help, officials and a witness said.
The speedboat was carrying 32 Indian tourists and four crew members when it overturned Saturday afternoon shortly after leaving Hon May Rut Ngoai Island, which is near Phu Quoc, Vietnam’s largest island, authorities were quoted as saying.
“The boat had not even gone half a (mile) when it just tipped over,” Ashish Kumar, an Indian who witnessed the accident, told The Associated Press over the phone. “We screamed, ‘Help! Help!’ ”
Kumar said that there was no emergency medical care available at the shore when survivors were brought back.
Legionnaires’ disease: New York City’s famed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum was among a number of Manhattan buildings that recently tested positive for the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease amid the city’s latest outbreak.
The city health department Friday released a list of 31 buildings on the Upper East Side that have been ordered to clean and disinfect their cooling towers as the city deals with the latest outbreak of the disease, which is a serious form of pneumonia.
The distinctive, cylindrical-shaped art museum was among 19 that have already completed the remediation, according to the department’s list.
The rest were expected to complete the work by Saturday.
City officials stressed the positive test results do not confirm any of the buildings as the source of outbreak as the tests conducted could not distinguish between live and dead bacteria.
The museum was also not shuttered at any point because of the positive test or remediation work, they said.
Positive test for Ebola: A U.S. citizen working for a humanitarian organization in Congo has tested positive for the Ebola virus, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday, as the Central African country struggles to contain the swelling outbreak.
The CDC said it was working with the person’s employer, U.S. agencies, the public health authorities and Congolese partners to prevent further transmission and identify close contacts. It did not provide any further details.
Earlier last week, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the outbreak is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever recorded on the continent, with 1,830 confirmed cases in Congo, including 648 deaths. Cases have also been confirmed in neighboring Uganda.
Students rescued in Nigeria: Students abducted in May by Islamic militants in Nigeria’s southwestern Oyo state have been rescued, the government said Friday.
Government spokesman Bayo Onanuga did not specify the total number of students rescued, but authorities said at the time of the abductions on May 15 that more than 40 people had been abducted. One of the teachers abducted alongside the students was killed shortly afterward.
Eight militants were arrested as part of the operation, while an unspecified number of the militants were killed, Onanuga said.
The abductions in a southern state had represented an escalation of the country’s security crisis because most such abductions previously had taken place in the north.
Runner gored in Spain: A runner was gored in the face and many more were fortunate to not be seriously injured during a chaotic bull run Saturday at Spain’s San Fermin festival.
The six bulls and accompanying steers charged through crowds of thrill-seekers who packed the narrow street course in Pamplona.
The huge animals knocked down bodies to the cobblestones, and stumbling runners caused several pileups during the 2 1/2-minute run from the pen to the bull ring where bullfighters were scheduled to kill the bulls later.
The new Air Force One, which President Donald Trump flew on last week to Turkey, lacks the same defensive countermeasures that were security features of the old model, including its advanced antimissile capabilities, according to multiple officials who have been briefed on how the jet was retrofitted.
Experts say the absence of those capabilities on the Boeing 747-8 aircraft, which was donated by Qatar, creates potential risk in using the jet abroad, a dynamic underscored by the abrupt decision Wednesday for Trump to leave Turkey on the old Air Force One at the urging of the Secret Service. The episode is intensifying the focus on Trump’s demands to rapidly retrofit the donated 747 to replace an aging fleet that had served as the official presidential planes.
Lawmakers have called on the administration to disclose whether the overhaul of the Qatari plane, which the Air Force oversaw in the course of the past year, provided sufficient security upgrades. The safety of the aircraft is critical not only for the president, but also for the large entourage of White House staff, Secret Service officials, journalists and guests who fly aboard.
Trump pushed for the new plane to be put into use as quickly as possible and frequently complained that the old presidential aircraft was not impressive enough to take on international trips.
On Thursday, the White House did not address specific questions about the new plane’s capabilities, but defended its safety.
“The new Air Force One is a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the president and his staff,” Steven Cheung, the communications director, said in a statement. “As the president has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats.”
The Air Force has declined to discuss specifics around security systems on the retrofitted Qatari plane, which is being used as a “bridge” aircraft while two Boeing jets that will be part of the permanent presidential fleet are being finished.
But when it announced that the donated jet was ready to transport the president, it acknowledged that the temporary plane did not have all the equipment usually found on an Air Force One.
“No risk was taken in security, safety or mission communications,” the Air Force said in a statement on June 19. “But the collective team made trades on some of the less commonly used mission sets that Boeing must deliver to support the next 40 years.”
The Air Force would not say what it meant by “less commonly used mission sets.”
However, officials who have been briefed on the retrofitting of the Qatari jet, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe its security features, said it did not have the same counter-defensive capabilities of the previous model.
Two former Air Force officials, who had both been involved in the effort to replace the older Air Force One planes, said they were surprised to see Trump fly on the new jet overseas, where there are greater security risks. Turkey, where Trump attended a NATO summit, borders Iran, which the United States pummeled with renewed strikes beginning last week.
The former officials were not involved with the retrofitting of the Qatari jet, but said the speed of the project meant there would not have been enough time to make all of the security modifications that are traditionally associated with a fully equipped presidential aircraft.
“Time didn’t permit all the normal Air Force One modifications, so some mix of security, communications and support is missing,” said Frank Kendall, the former Air Force secretary who was in charge of the department as it tried to push Boeing to accelerate its long-delayed contract to deliver two new Air Force One planes.
“With the Iran situation, this could be of concern,” Kendall said. “Frankly, I’m surprised to see this plane used outside the U.S.”
Andrew Hunter, the former Air Force assistant secretary who was in charge of the Air Force One program during the Biden administration, also said that a true retrofit of a 747 jet to prepare it to become Air Force One would require more than a year of work.
The day before Trump left for Turkey, Senate Democrats wrote to the Air Force asking questions about the modifications to the Qatari plane and questioning whether it had all the necessary security upgrades.
“Trump’s own statements — including his celebration of ‘a level of luxury that nobody’s ever seen before’ — make it clear that these decisions prioritized Trump’s personal comfort and tastes over U.S. national security,” they wrote in the letter sent by Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., and 12 other senators.
The older planes that served as Air Force One included a defensive system designed to defeat heat-seeking missiles. That capacity is also planned to be included in the new Boeing planes, according to three former Pentagon officials.
Different parts of the defensive systems are visible on the old Air Force One, under the wing of the plane and on its tail. They are not observable in photographs of the new Qatari plane, according to a third former Air Force official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the security protocols.
Missile defense systems on Air Force One have seen little use in the history of the aircraft, but have nevertheless been considered critical security features.
The Pentagon published specifications for the Boeing aircraft now under construction that indicate the new jets will include a “self-defense system” and “mission communication system,” as these and other upgrades are needed “to enable the president to execute the duties of head of state, chief executive, and commander in chief.”
U.S. officials have said that Iran has been targeting Trump since he ordered the drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, in January 2020. During the 2024 campaign, the Secret Service increased protection for Trump, even before the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, because of intelligence about Iran’s plotting against him.
Despite the resumption of intense U.S. strikes on Iran, U.S. policymakers briefed on the current intelligence do not believe that Iran has a current plan to kill Trump during this period. A U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe intelligence assessments, said that Iran had a clear understanding of what kind of deep provocation any attempt on Trump’s life would be and the intensity of a U.S. response.
Nevertheless, the Secret Service was concerned enough about Trump’s proximity to the country while in Ankara to force the president to swap planes on the way out of Turkey, as The New York Times first reported Wednesday.
The Trump administration has moved to open the habitats of imperiled animals to farming, drilling, mining, real estate development and other activities in what environmentalists characterized as the most severe erosion of protections for wildlife in half a century.
It did so by recasting a single word: “harm.”
For more than 50 years, the federal government has used a broader definition of harm to animals under the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock environmental law. It included any significant “modification or degradation” of habitat that kills or injures animals by impairing their ability to eat, shelter or breed.
The Supreme Court upheld this interpretation in 1995, ruling against property owners who argued that harm should only mean directly killing or injuring an endangered animal.
But on Friday, the Interior Department and the Commerce Department announced a final rule that rescinded this long-standing interpretation. Under the rule, destroying an endangered species’ nest or habitat would no longer be considered illegal.
The change could open the door for fossil fuel companies, agricultural interests, land developers and others to disturb or destroy the habitats of vulnerable species. Many species are already running out of places to live, and the new rule is likely to add extreme pressure, experts said.
The move was the latest in a series of efforts by the Trump administration to weaken environmental regulations designed to fight climate change and prevent species extinction. In March, a panel of administration officials voted to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from measures to protect endangered whales and other imperiled species.
The text of the final rule was not immediately published in the Federal Register, an online clearinghouse for federal regulations. But in a news release, the Interior and Commerce departments suggested that the final rule resembled a proposal issued last year.
The agencies said they were taking action to restore the Endangered Species Act to its original intent. They argued that in recent years, environmentalists and Democratic administrations had weaponized the act to block drilling and other development nationwide.
Legal scholars said the government was acting without conducting scientific research into the impact of the change, a step that would typically precede a move of this kind.
The change is “undermining the fundamental purpose of the Endangered Species Act,” said Lynn Scarlett, who served as deputy interior secretary under President George W. Bush.
Habitat modification or degradation caused by human activity is often the main reason that species face extinction.
Piping plovers, for instance, need undisturbed beaches to nest and raise their young. They return to the same sites year after year but only occupy them in the spring and summer.
During winter, when the birds have migrated south, a property owner could develop a beach without immediately hurting any individual piping plovers. But come spring, the returning plovers would find themselves without a place to feed, nest and raise their chicks.
WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice has subpoenaed New York Times journalists after they reported on security concerns involving the new, Qatari-gifted Air Force One, marking a dramatic escalation of President Donald Trump ’s campaign against the media that has drawn condemnation for eroding a fundamental freedom of American democracy.
The new jet, a present from the U.S. ally that the administration spent $400 million on to retrofit and upgrade, entered service last week. But Trump used an older model Air Force One jet to leave a NATO summit in Turkey and later referenced threats against him made by Iran.
The subpoenas seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan next week, the Times said, adding that federal agents delivered some subpoenas to the reporters at their homes.
The subpoenas were issued after FBI Director Kash Patel and other DOJ officials met Friday at the White House to talk about the matter, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The Times journalists who received subpoenas included Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt, the Times reported.
“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” David McCraw, a lawyer for the Times, said in a statement.
Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said Trump’s “war on the press is looking for another victim.”
The department said that “to be clear, reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.”
Issuing subpoenas represents further ramping up of Trump’s effort to threaten independent new organizations by leveraging the power of the federal government against them. It is also part of a systematic pattern by the Republican president to attempt to undermine press freedom in order to shield him from negative coverage.
Earlier this year, the DOJ issued subpoenas seeking to compel testimony from reporters at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. In both cases, the department later withdrew the subpoenas, though.
In January, FBI agents searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, who has been covering Trump’s transformation of the federal government, as part of a leak investigation into a Pentagon contractor accused of taking home classified information.
During his first term, Trump suggested that the press constituted an “enemy” of the American people. Since returning to the White House last year, he has waged an aggressive campaign against the media unlike any in modern U.S. history.
Trump’s pattern of attacks against news outlets and media figures he believes are overly critical of him has included filing lawsuits against outlets whose coverage he dislikes, threatening to revoke TV broadcast licenses and seeking to bend news organizations and social media companies to his will.
The DOJ over the years has developed and revised internal policies governing how it will respond to news media leaks.
Though the department across presidential administrations has periodically seized the phone records of individual journalists in hopes of identifying sources for national security stories, it is rare for the government to attempt to compel reporters to reveal their sources before a grand jury.
In April 2025, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded a policy from President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations — a practice long decried by news organizations and press freedom groups.
Doing so again gave prosecutors the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make “unauthorized disclosures” to journalists.
CONCORD, N.H. — Two transgender girls who were the first to challenge President Donald Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” have withdrawn their lawsuit in New Hampshire based on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld state bans on transgender athletes in girls’ sports and their own personal hardships, their lawyer said.
“This case was always about two courageous young girls who simply wanted the same opportunities as their peers to participate in school life,” their lawyer, Chris Erchull of GLAD Law, said in a statement Thursday. “Their willingness to stand up to extraordinary hostility made clear the human cost of laws that target transgender youth.”
The teenagers, Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle, took on Trump’s executive order last year, amending their 2024 complaint against New Hampshire’s law on banning transgender girls from school sports.
A federal judge had granted a court order allowing them to play as the case proceeded.
For Tirrell, it meant being able to keep playing on her high school girls’ soccer team.
For Turmelle, it was having a chance to try out for different sports.
Both sides agreed to pause the case and wait for a ruling from the Supreme Court as it considered similar state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school and college athletic teams in Idaho and West Virginia. Last month, the court upheld the laws.
It also said that barring transgender girls and women doesn’t run afoul of the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.
Turmelle and her family moved out of New Hampshire last summer following proposed legislation against transgender people. One measure signed into law by Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte last year prohibits medical professionals from providing puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy to new transgender patients that are under age 18.
“Though there may be a carve-out for people already receiving gender-affirming care, that is way too close a call for us to risk staying,” Turmelle’s mother, Amy Manzetti, wrote in an op-ed piece at the time. “Other New Hampshire laws also seek to erase her.”
Most Republican-controlled states in the past five years have adopted laws or policies limiting gender-affirming care for transgender minors and limiting which school bathrooms transgender people can use, as well as sports restrictions.
The Williams Institute at UCLA estimates that about 3% of youth ages 13 to 17 identify as transgender.
“The challenges with relocation are significant and burdensome — this includes having to find new employment, buying and selling homes, packing and moving possessions, integrating kids with a new school system, losing access to longstanding family and friends, and potential loss of income,” Corinne Goodwin, the executive director of Eastern PA Trans Equality Project in Pennsylvania, said in an email.
“But these families do so because they love their kids and know that supporting them with the care and opportunities they need is critical to their long-term success and happiness.”
Tirrell, 17, began her junior year last fall on the girls’ junior varsity soccer team. Things were fine at first, and each time she scored a goal, she got a round of ice cream from her parents.
But a few weeks into the season, she decided to stop playing.
“With all of the political stuff going on, soccer wasn’t just about the game anymore,” her mother, Sara Tirrell, told The Associated Press.
It became more about preparing for the possibility of conflict.
“Were there any local Facebook groups where they were sort of agitating about potential protests and how do we prepare, and what are we walking into, and we never kind of knew,” she said. “We were on a lot of pins and needles, especially after the previous season.”
She was referring to a controversy at an away game where two dads from an opposing team were banned from school grounds for wearing pink wristbands marked “XX” to represent female chromosomes.
They sued the school district and a judge ruled against them. They have appealed their case.
Last fall, there was an increased presence of school administrators at the games and bus drivers pulled in closer to the field so the students weren’t in the parking lot, she said.
“Parker didn’t talk about it a lot, but I think she could see that stress for everybody — for her, for her teammates, for her coaches,” Sara Tirrell said. “She felt kind of bad about pulling them all into that circus again. And so she ultimately said, ‘This isn’t fun anymore, and I don’t want to do it.’ ”
Parker’s father described the atmosphere as “palpable tension.”
Even playing on her own turf, “there would typically be a couple of police officers at the home games where there weren’t previously,” Zach Tirrell said.
In the past, Parker also played soccer in a recreation league and could still do so.
“But I think it all kind of still sort of weighs on her,” her mother said. “It’s the same group of kids that she plays with who, honestly, have been very supportive and love to have her on the team and have expressed that to her many times over.
“But I think she still has that worry in her brain around, ‘What are other people going to say and do if I show up at a game?’ ”
Parker’s parents hope she’ll return to playing soccer some day.
In the meantime, “she plans to be around and use her voice to continue standing up to discrimination,” her mother said. “In some ways she’s had to grow up a lot faster than some of her peers.”
The Declaration of Independence turned 250 this month, with star-spangled hoopla befitting the birthday of the world’s longest-running democracy. But the founding story underlying it is increasingly up for grabs.
Conservatives have accused progressives of abandoning the wisdom of the Declaration, and distorting the legacy of the American Revolution. On the left, some see the freedom narrative that once inspired people around the world as losing its grip, exposed for its hypocrisies and evasions.
Among scholars, the 50 years since the Bicentennial of 1976 have radically expanded the Revolution’s cast of characters, its geographical scope and timeline, recasting what was once seen as a unified national narrative as a more fractured, kaleidoscopic story of a civil war, nestled inside a larger global conflict.
But lurking underneath both scholarship and the polarized public conversation about 1776 is an old question: Just how revolutionary was the American Revolution anyway?
To many Americans, the question may seem odd. The revolutionary-ness of the American Revolution is baked into its name and attested to by the very fact of the 250th celebration itself.
But the question is also one being implicitly debated on the ground, as President Donald Trump’s flag-draped version of 1776 has been countered by the self-conscious Revolutionary-era iconography of the No Kings protests.
T.H. Breen, a historian at Northwestern University, called it an important if also “slightly embarrassing” question.
“If we didn’t have it, we might look like Canada,” which is also a democracy, he said. “But we did. So we want to understand, how exactly was it a revolution?”
Americans have fought about the history and meaning of the Revolution pretty much from the moment it ended. In the 19th century, its legacy was claimed by abolitionists and women’s suffragists, who embraced the Declaration’s promises of equality, as well as by Southern secessionists who saw themselves as rebelling against an oppressive power.
The now-familiar patriotic founding story arose in the early 20th century, as American leaders sought to bolster an increasingly strong national government, while defending against newer revolutionary currents coming from Europe.
In 1926, in a speech for the 150th anniversary of the Declaration, President Calvin Coolidge described the Revolution as “a movement of the people,” but “in no sense a radical movement.” The vision laid out in the Declaration was perfect, with no need for revision.
“If all men are created equal, that is final,” he said. “If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final,” he said. “If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.”
During the Cold War, the memory of the Revolution became a bulwark in the confrontation with the Soviet Union, defined as a struggle for individual rights and free enterprise. It was definitely a revolution, conservatives argued, but not the bad kind.
In a 1973 essay called “The American Revolution as a Successful Revolution,” neoconservative political theorist Irving Kristol chided left-leaning scholars for downplaying it as “a French Revolution that never quite came off.” Unlike in Russia or France, he wrote, its passions were constrained by reason and virtue.
“The American Revolution was successful in that those who led it were able, in later years, to look back in tranquility at what they had wrought and to say that it was good,” Kristol wrote. Unlike the leaders of more self-devouring revolutions, they “all died in bed.”
Among historians, there was a growing emphasis on the ideology of the revolutionaries, elaborated in books such as Bernard Bailyn’s classic 1967 study “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.”
But at the same time, amid the upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s, social history that was focused on ordinary people began surging in the academy, as scholars examined the perspectives of women, free and enslaved Black people, Native Americans and the working class.
At the Bicentennial, a reporter from The New York Times canvassed leading scholars, and found a sharp divergence between the old-guard ideological school and left-leaning advocates of “history from below.” To the social historians, the story of a Revolution was one of popular democratic impulses ultimately quashed by elites.
Since then, scholars have continued widening the geographical frame, to cast it as part of a broader world war involving multiple empires. It’s a story not just about debates in Philadelphia or Boston, but also Native Americans in the Ohio Valley or naval skirmishes on the Gulf Coast, slave rebellions in Jamaica or even trade in India.
The scholarship also focuses less on causes than on consequences, which were highly uneven. The result, as historian Michael Hattem has put it, is an American Revolution “that looks less American and less revolutionary.”
“In the Cold War, the question was ‘Was it a revolution?’ ” said Hattem, author of “The Memory of ’76,” a study of how the Revolution has been remembered. “Now, it’s ‘Whose revolution was it?’ ”
Some prominent figures in the field held to more celebratory accounts.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1991 book “The Radicalism of the American Revolution,” Gordon Wood argued that the Revolution did more than institute a new form of government. It also gave rise to an egalitarian and individualistic culture that went far beyond what the founders intended.
Today, scholars see a sharp generational break in the field, with many who came of age after the 1990s seeing the Revolution as having a deeply conservative outcome, particularly when it came to slavery and race.
After the Revolution, Northern states began abolishing slavery, as enslaved people used the ideas of the Declaration to press for freedom. But slavery became more entrenched in the South, while expanding west. For Native Americans, the unchecked western expansion unleashed by the Revolution was a disaster.
“Yes, some radical things were inaugurated,” Leslie Harris, a specialist in early African American history at Northwestern University, said in an interview. “But you can’t ignore these profoundly conservative limits on the radicalism.”
Harris, echoing other scholars, says the American Revolution looks more revolutionary when viewed as a spark for an “Age of Revolution” across the Atlantic world. It influenced events not just in France but Haiti, Venezuela, Ireland, Poland and elsewhere.
The Revolution “really did spark a new way of thinking, not just about slavery, but about humanity,” Harris said. “It asked, ‘What is freedom?’ ”
Today, it is common among liberals and progressives to downplay the importance of the Revolution, and embrace the nation’s “Second Founding” after the Civil War as a more fitting origin story for our current multiracial democracy.
But David Waldstreicher, a specialist in early American history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, said that this misses the degree to which the Revolution brought about “an extreme politicization of ordinary people,” and not just white men.
“That politicization is the grounding of American democracy,” he said.
The history of the Revolution is still being rewritten, and will never be final. Breen, the Northwestern historian, said it is the role of scholars to “do the best they can with the surviving evidence, in hope that it instructs the American people to think honestly and critically about their origins.”
The Revolution, Breen said, belonged to the people. So, other historians said, does its legacy today, when Americans, as in 1776, may not need leaders — or historians — to tell them what it means.
“Everyone knows the American Revolution was anti-monarchial,” Waldstreicher said. “No one had to open up a book to do No Kings.”
There was plenty of debate over which direction the Chicago White Sox would go with the No. 1 pick of the MLB draft.
In the end, the Sox looked to the west and selected UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky.
“You look at what he’s done throughout his baseball career, we had interest with him in high school and then to watch his college career unfold and see what he accomplished and the impact he had on his teammates in that program and to envision that type of influence within this organization is something that attracted us to select him at No. 1,” Sox general manager Chris Getz said Saturday at Rate Field.
As a top pick, Cholowsky knows he has joined select company.
“It’s pretty surreal,” Cholowsky said during a videoconference call.
Cholowsky, 21, slashed .320/.452/.636 with 10 doubles, 21 home runs, 60 RBIs, 73 runs and a 1.088 OPS in 60 games as a junior with the Bruins.
“He’s a quarterback on the field,” Getz said. “It just stood out. It really did. What he’s accomplished, he’s a famous player, a guy that was projected to be the overall No. 1 pick coming into this season. So there’s a lot of eyes and there’s a lot of critiquing and oftentimes there can be fatigue.
“In this particular draft, there were three players at the top (Cholowsky, high school shortstop Grady Emerson and Georgia Tech catcher Vahn Lackey). You can make an argument for any of them. But when we got to know Roch, and we have a really strong feeling of our foundation and what we are about, this felt like it was the best fit.”
The pick drew a big cheer from fans watching the video board at Rate Field before Saturday’s 1-0 win against the Athletics. And as Commissioner Rob Manfred announced Cholowsky as the top pick, the handful of Sox fans attending the draft at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia started cheering and twirling their MLB-issued towels to celebrate.
“It was very emotional the last few days,” Cholowsky said. “I was worried about it not working out. Getting the call from my agent that him and Getz were able to work something out today, I was jumping around my hotel room. There were a lot of tears.
“Being able to hear my name called, it was unbelievable.”
Cholowsky said watching the telecast of the draft that he “heard Roch and kind of lost it.”
Cholowsky hit .329/.448/.624 with 41 doubles, 52 home runs, 167 RBIs, 105 walks, 191 runs and a 1.072 OPS in 178 games over three seasons with UCLA. He became the third player named Big Ten Player of the Year in back-to-back seasons.
The consensus first-team All-American was ranked the second-best prospect in the 2026 class, according to MLB Pipeline.
“You’re talking about a special college player who the White Sox feel like can be better,” director of amateur scouting Mike Shirley said at Rate Field. “At the end of the day, Roch’s been the favorite. He’s that talented, he’s that gifted. We were super excited. He wants to win more than anyone I’ve ever seen at the college level.”
Cholowsky was recommended by Sox area scout Carlos Muniz.
The Sox went local with the Competitive Balance Round A selection (No. 34), drafting Nazareth infielder Landon Thome. The son of Hall of Famer Jim Thome, Landon hit .535 with seven home runs and 29 RBIs and was 49-for-50 in stolen-base attempts as a senior.
“We think it’s an elite hitter who’s going to grow into power, who’s going to continue to grow and develop his game rapidly,” Shirley said.
The Sox selected infielder Cole Prosek of Magnolia Heights High School in Mississippi in the second round.
“To be able to bring in Landon, one of the top left-handed high school bats, in addition to Prosek as well, we felt they were the best high school left-handed bats remaining in the draft,” Getz said.
It’s a draft that will forever have Cholowsky’s name at the top. He is the third No. 1 pick in Sox history, joining Danny Goodwin in 1971 and Hall of Famer Harold Baines in 1977.
Cholowsky visited the Sox in June and was in attendance for Braden Montgomery’s walk-off home run against the Atlanta Braves. He left the trip thinking the Sox felt like home.
“Being able to work it out in the long end, the tears were all happy tears,” Cholowsky said. “I’m very excited to be a part of it, I fell in love with the city while I was out there and very excited to get back.”
CINCINNATI — Phil Maton returned to the Chicago Cubs on Saturday after one appearance on his minor-league rehab stint.
The veteran reliever, who was placed on the 15-day injured list on June 26 with right knee tendinitis, has had a horrific start since signing a two-year, $14.5 million deal in the offseason to serve as a late-inning bridge to closer Daniel Palencia.
How much of Maton’s first-half struggles were due to his knee issues?
“It’s hard to know exactly,” manager Craig Counsell said before Saturday’s game against the Cincinnati Reds. “The knee has affected him, there’s no question about it. And I think he would tell you it hasn’t always prevented him from pitching, but it’s just there.
“So we’ve taken two tries now to try and get it behind him a little bit and put it in the background. I think it’s going to be there a little bit as we move forward, but hopefully we can keep it in the background.”
The Cubs designated Jake Woodford for assignment to make room for Maton after his shaky debut outing in Friday’s 4-0 loss. Woodford was signed to replace Bryse Wilson, who was designated for assignment after only two outings — one good and one bad. Wilson cleared waivers and was optioned to Triple-A Iowa.
That’s the sad state of the Cubs bullpen, which has been a revolving door since the start of the season with no signs of slowing down. The relief corps ranks 16th with a 4.14 ERA but is 23rd since June 11 with a 5.54 ERA..
Counsell wouldn’t say how he would use Maton coming off the IL.
“Everybody is the same right now,” he said. “That’s how we’re treating the bullpen. At times he’s going to have leverage innings. Maybe the next two days (before the break), probably not.”
Maton posted a 6.08 ERA in 30 appearances after a 2.79 ERA in 63 outings last year with the St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers. He was the biggest item on President Jed Hoyer’s offseason bullpen shopping list, which also included Hoby Milner, Hunter Harvey and Colin Rea, who re-signed and was moved to the rotation early on.
It’s not exactly the way Hoyer drew it up. Not counting Carson Kelly, the Cubs have used 26 relievers, including one-timers such as Woodford, Charlie Barnes and Ty Blach.
Now the most effective reliever has been Jacob Webb, who signed a one-year, $1.5 million deal. With Palencia and Milner out, Webb, Trent Thornton and Ryan Rolison have been Counsell’s most trusted relievers. Counsell’s most difficult task is getting the most out of a bullpen made up of journeymen pitchers.
“Webby has stepped up in some big situations for us,” Maton said. “But Couns always puts the guy out there that lines up best for those pockets. He’s done an outstanding job at that this year, so I imagine that’s what he’s going to continue to do.”
Maton won’t use the knee injury as an excuse but appreciated the Cubs giving him time to heal. He said he’s working on going back to his old mechanics that alleviated some of the pain. He was scheduled to make a second rehab outing Saturday, but the Cubs, who normally take a more conservative approach, were desperate for help.
“I felt ready to go,” he said. “There might be a need, but it was one of those situations where I told them I felt I was in a good spot mechanically, so if you guys need me I’m ready to go. I feel like I’m in a really good spot, so hoping that slingshots me into a better second half.”
It’s a do-over of sorts, though Maton knows he can’t erase the first-half numbers.
“I wish I could do it over, wish you could get takebacks on outings throughout the year,” he said. “But to me, it’s just try to put up as many zeros as possible down the stretch and try to do my job. As relievers, our numbers can get inflated by certain outings. It’s the nature of the game.”
Maton still has time to get back to his old self, and if we’ve learned anything about Counsell, he’s going to give struggling players with a good track record several opportunities to figure things out.
Bonus baby
Counsell wasn’t up to speed on the Cubs first-round draft pick Saturday, Mississippi pitcher Cade Townsend, leaving that to the scouting department. He didn’t remember much about his draft day, other than the bonus.
Counsell received $5,000 from the Colorado Rockies for being an 11th-round pick in 1992.
“Pat Murphy negotiated it for me. He was my agent,” Counsell said of the Milwaukee Brewers manager, who was then Counsell’s coach at Notre Dame. “He got it up from $2,500.”
What was Murphy’s cut?
“He did not take a cut,” Counsell said. “That was nice of him.”
Did Counsell buy anything with his five grand?
“You spend it on food, because you’re not getting paid, really,” he said, laughing.
Counsell made up for the miniscule bonus by becoming the highest-paid manager in history with a five-year, $40 million deal.
Murphy is also reportedly doing OK in Milwaukee, though he’s no longer an agent.
Caleb Wilson never moves faster than when he’s angry. Especially at himself.
The rookie had messed up. Midway through his Friday debut for the Chicago Bulls in the NBA Summer League, he tried to get too fancy with a behind-the-back pass. “Trying to be sexy,” he said after the game. The Memphis Grizzlies capitalized as they had all night, taking off toward the other end for a breakaway. So Wilson ran mad.
Javon Small had a running head start when he snatched up the ball behind the top of the key. Wilson was a full body length deeper and stuck on the opposite side of the court. It didn’t matter. He closed the gap in eight steps. By the time Small launched himself for a layup, Wilson already had planted two feet in the paint, lofting upward to soar above the smaller guard.
Hand hit leather a half-second after the shot was taken. The ball rattled against the backboard, ricocheting out of bounds as the crowd roared in response. Wilson, a 6-foot-10 forward, almost buckled to his knees as he landed, pausing for a moment to catch his breath under the basket and survey the landscape of his redeemed error.
“You’ve got to make up for it,” Wilson said. “I had to go do it. It had to be done.”
Minutes after recording one of the highest-scoring rookie debuts in summer league history, Wilson didn’t want to talk about his 35 points. He didn’t want to talk about the fact he made seven 3-pointers despite taking only 27 in his entire college career. For Wilson, the main thing is always the main thing.
“We lost,” the rookie said, followed with a shrug.
Wilson wasn’t satisfied. He turned the ball over six times. It was the first thing he mentioned in the locker room to his teammates, the first note on his performance given to the media in the holding area outside the court at the Thomas & Mack Center. He gave up too many offensive rebounds. His four missed free throws could have decided the game. Yet even in his frustration, another emotion seeped through the cracks: relief.
Wilson missed basketball. It sounds silly to say at this point. Of course he did. Twenty weeks and a day separated his last game in a North Carolina jersey and Friday’s debut at summer league. Two fractures — one to his left hand, the other to his right thumb — reduced his short-lived NCAA career to only 24 games. Wilson spent the most important days of his lone year at North Carolina stuck on the sidelines, waiting for the next step and watching his college dreams slip away.
Some days, it felt as if he would never get back on the court. But the time passed anyway. Now that he’s here — in Las Vegas, with the Bulls — Wilson’s enthusiasm often bubbles over. It’s not quite nerves. But sometimes, when he steps on the court or pushes downhill in transition or pauses at the top of the key before initiating a play, Wilson feels a jittery rush of anticipation from his head to his toes.
On Friday, that wave of emotion swelled so intensely that Wilson cried before taking the court, struck by the long absence of basketball and the welcome relief of its return.
“It just felt like I’ve been waiting so long for this opportunity,” Wilson said. “I’m just glad I got to come out here and play.”
‘He’s hunting these guys’
The first impression is complete. Now, the work begins.
Wilson craved this since he made the decision in middle school to push for an NBA career. He talks often about his lack of work ethic when he was younger. Wilson is referring, of course, to himself as a 10-year-old who often railed and rebelled against his father Jerry’s insistence that he needed to practice more. As a kid, Wilson liked basketball. Loved it even. But the work didn’t come easy at first.
“I wanted to be good, but I didn’t know what it took,” Wilson told the Tribune. “My dad used to push me to work hard, but I didn’t really want to listen.”
When asked what type of 10-year-old does have a strong work ethic, Wilson just laughed and shook his head. That’s not the point. Not really. What matters is that he found it, molded it into something that served him better.
By his teenage years, Wilson’s competitiveness began to burn through any lingering uncertainty about devoting all his free hours to basketball. In high school he didn’t feel athletic enough to keep up with his peers, so he began a daily regimen of jumping rope for 15 minutes straight. Over the next three years, the regimen paid off. Wilson developed a springy bounce, bounding from the 3-point arc to the rim with a hardly contained explosivity. He recorded a 34.5-inch vertical leap at the draft combine, the seventh-best in the 2026 class.
Athleticism is now synonymous with Wilson’s game. It’s the rest of his game that he’ll need to prove in his rookie season with the Bulls. Wilson was considered the rawest prospect out of the top-four options in this year’s draft. Every detail of his game from his shot to his ballhandling to his defense must be proved, especially in light of his absence from the NCAA postseason. And this speculation has only added more weight to the rookie’s gravitational pull as a potential star.
For coach Tiago Splitter, most of this season will be spent tamping down the lofty expectations placed on Wilson by fans, the media and himself. He wants summer league and the ensuing regular season to serve as a learning process, not a field test for any of his rookies. But Splitter also knows that it’s hard to keep the majority of the NBA from jumping to conclusions over these early performances in Las Vegas.
“Some people are going to be judged by those four, five, six games — whatever it is,” Splitter said. “I don’t think it’s fair, but it is what it is.”
The most blinding spotlight is focused on Wilson’s stature against the other players picked before him in the draft: AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer. The league wasted no time capitalizing on the interest in this group, scheduling all four players against each other in the opening games of summer league.
To Wilson, most of this attention feels fabricated — especially his inclusion in all the hubbub. For most of the predraft process, he was left on the outside looking in as major media partners fixated on the top trio rather than a “Big Four.” Wilson doesn’t mind a little extra incentive to compete against the three opponents. At the same time, he has made an effort to release himself from any pressure or expectations created by his draft position.
“I feel like that’s a media-pushed narrative,” Wilson said. “In the beginning of the year, I wasn’t even a part of the ‘Big Four’ or whatever. I feel like that’s all something that’s been created by other people to try to stir up some type of drama. We’ll all play against each other and those will be competitive games. But that’s not something I really think about. When we play basketball, it’s basketball.”
Some of this is a carefully crafted front, a facade that belies the intense competitiveness that has driven Wilson to this point. Wilson always says he just wants to win. What that means, in reality, is that he wants to beat everyone else so badly that he can hardly contain it.
Understanding this desire is crucial to understanding Wilson. When North Carolina lost to Duke in the ACC Tournament, Wilson changed the lock screen on his iPhone to a picture of himself walking into the game with his thumb in a cast, a reminder of the lowest moment in his career. At the draft combine, he admitted to keeping a list of every player he wanted to beat in his one year of college. After Friday’s game, he described Boozer as one of the “few guys in my draft class that I actually respect.”
“Caleb is hunting everybody,” fellow Bulls rookie Dailyn Swain said after Friday’s game. “He won’t say it, but we know it. We can see it in his mentality pregame, during the game. He’s hunting these guys.”
There is another list. A longer one. It contains all of the players Wilson is truly excited to play against. He’s itching for his first matchup against Victor Wembanyama, just to figure out what it’s like to play against a 7-4 on-ball behemoth. As an Atlanta native, he’s eager to take on Anthony Edwards and prove he can hang with the best from his hometown. He has known Jalen Johnson for years, giving added incentive for his first game against the Atlanta Hawks.
Kevin Durant, LeBron James — the list stretches long, past every childhood hero who now has become his colleague and opponent. Wilson doesn’t feel these matchups will pile up extra pressure in his rookie season. They’re fun.
For the rookie, the concept of competition must continue to be a source of joy throughout his first season in the NBA. Wilson wants to keep his temperament light. He’s an avid acolyte of author Ryan Holiday, studying books such as “The Daily Stoic” and “Courage is Calling” to ground himself in a more resilient mindset. Those practices became a necessity during his time away from the court. They remained an invaluable source of guidance once he turned to the rigors and pressures of playing under an increasingly bright spotlight.
For the next week — and the next season — most focus will land on Wilson’s ability to develop his shot, defend at a high level and develop as a playmaker. But he feels the true secret to his success as a rookie will be the curiosity and tenacity honed over those teenage years as he grew into a competitor.
“Although I feel like I’m prepared for the situation of being a great player in the NBA, I know that there’s going to be tough times and tough days,” Wilson said. “I try to keep my mind clear because it’s all been a process. And nobody’s good from the jump.”
With time comes patience
The morning of his last day on campus in Chapel Hill, N.C., Wilson posted on his Instagram story: “Rams @ 5:30. Bring ur 5 against mine.”
For most of his freshman year, Wilson fielded eager requests from North Carolina students for a chance to play against him. He often brushed off the idea with a laugh or a promise to lace up once the season was over. That night in April, Wilson followed through.
He held court with a small crew of friends at the Ram’s Head Recreation Center, taking on regular North Carolina students in full-court scrimmages and 1-on-1 battles. Wilson spent his last night of college dunking over classmates, flexing and laughing as he rained down one-handed slams over business majors, finding a little piece of joy on the court once again.
It was fun yet bittersweet. Wilson went to North Carolina with big dreams. He knew his tenure would be short. Still, he believed one year provided enough time to make an impact. He wanted to win the ACC, then an NCAA championship. He wanted those victories to be declarative, the type of dominance that would lift North Carolina onto a pedestal it had slipped off in recent years.
Instead, he spent those final weeks of his only college season watching. Waiting. North Carolina lost to Duke in the ACC Tournament semifinals, then exited in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. His coach got fired. There was nothing Wilson could do about it. He still can’t convince himself that it wasn’t his fault. So even as he enjoyed one final night as a star on campus, Wilson couldn’t shake his disappointment.
“I was really sad,” Wilson said. “I was leaving college. I didn’t really feel like I accomplished everything I thought I was going to when I went there.”
Weeks later, Wilson arrived in Chicago with a similar goal. The two programs aren’t all that similar. North Carolina won a national championship in 2017, but is now struggling to find a new identity without Hall of Fame coach Roy Williams at the helm. The Bulls, meanwhile, have been stuck in a morass of mediocrity since Wilson was in elementary school, a disappointment made only starker by the sharp contrast to the receding glory days of the ’90s.
But for Wilson, the overarching concept is the same. Both North Carolina and the Bulls represent once-great programs in need of revitalization. And on both teams, Wilson sees himself as a natural catalyst for that transformation.
The Bulls can offer one luxury that didn’t exist for Wilson in college — time. This doesn’t all have to happen at once. The Bulls are budgeting years for this rebuild to take shape. Wilson has time to make mistakes and experiment with his style of play. No part of this process needs to be rushed.
Wilson isn’t always patient. He’s 19. He wants to be great. He wants the Bulls to be great. But he knows what he’s getting into with the Bulls. He embraced the idea of leading a rebuild long before his name was called on draft night. And now he’s shouldering the responsibilities of reimagining the franchise with an eagerness that obscures any doubt about the future.
“I know I’m young,” Wilson said. “I have a lot of work I can do for myself. I know that. But in all honesty, I’m excited for the opportunity to be a part of something new. It’s a new start, new coaches, new front office. I feel like I’m in the forefront of that being the top pick. I know that’s something I can do — make something better from the start.”
LONDON — Linda Noskova placed fingers in both of her ears to drown out the noise from the Centre Court crowd.
She draped one of Wimbledon’s strawberry-red towels over her head.
And eventually — after she had wasted five match points and a 5-2 lead and conceded the second set of a drama-filled final — she left the court completely for a bathroom break.
During Noskova’s brief time off the court, two shiny objects caught her attention: the Venus Rosewater Dish that is awarded to the women’s champion and the smaller dish for the runner-up.
“I was like, ‘I’m not going to take the small one. I’m taking the big one. I have been so close. This will probably be the heartbreak of my life,’” Noskova said. “’I’m going to leave my soul on court in the third set, whatever that be.’”
The 21-year-old Noskova did just as she promised herself, overcoming her second-set meltdown to beat Karolina Muchova 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 in an all-Czech final for her first Grand Slam trophy on Saturday.
When Noskova finally finished it off with a service winner on her sixth match point — and first of the third set — she covered her face and dropped down to the grass on her back.
Minutes later, Noskova was being awarded the Venus Rosewater Dish by Kate, the Princess of Wales.
“It’s never easy to get the last point,” Noskova said during her victory speech. “Karo, you really made me work for it.”
Noskova became the third Czech woman in four years to win the grass-court major, after Marketa Vondrousova in 2023 and Barbora Krejcikova in 2024.
Muchova and Noskova played doubles together at the 2024 Paris Olympics and finished fourth.
“I am so glad that I could play my first Grand Slam final with you,” Noskova told Muchova during her speech. “We made history today. All our Czech fans at home are proud of us no matter the result. It was a good day for both of us.”
Petra Kvitova, who won Wimbledon in 2011 and 2014, was in attendance, as was the greatest Czech-born player of them all, Martina Navratilova — who won a record nine singles titles at the All England Club and was seated next to Princess Kate in the Royal Box; and Jan Kodes, the 1973 champion.
PHILADELPHIA — Cade Townsend had no doubts where he wanted to land in the MLB draft.
The University of Mississippi right-hander hoped the Chicago Cubs would select him when their spot arrived at No. 23 in the first round Saturday.
Townsend got his wish. He became the Cubs’ first pitcher chosen with their top pick since going that route in back-to-back drafts with right-hander Cade Horton (No. 7) in 2022 and left-hander Jordan Wicks (No. 21) in 2021.
“I told my agent, told my family, this was my No. 1 pick for sure,” Townsend said. “It was surreal getting picked. I mean, that’s what you dream of (as) a little kid, and it’s just a new journey and the start of a new one. I’m super excited.
“I was looking for a good fit. Didn’t care what the pick was, didn’t care what the the money was. I really just want a team that’s a family and, really, who’s going to help support me to get to the big leagues? Because at the end of the day, that’s the only thing that matters is going to the big leagues.”
The Cubs selected two college hitters — Texas A&M outfielder Caden Sorrell and Florida State first baseman Myles Bailey — in the second round and their compensation pick for the Dodgers signing Kyle Tucker. They tapped into pitching again in Rounds 3 and 4 by taking Nebraska right-hander Carson Jasa and Northwestern State (La.) right-hander Dylan Marionneaux.
Vice president of scouting Dan Kantrovitz was pleased with how Day 1 of the draft played out.
“Going in we felt it was going to be slightly skewed towards more pitchers than hitters, and I wasn’t sure if that was just going to be one hitter or two hitters,” Kantrovitz said. “When a guy like Caden Sorrell falls to us, we weren’t going to miss the opportunity to grab him.
“With getting Cade up top, that really solidified our draft strategy and then allowed us to be a little bit flexible with two impact bats right after that and then following back up with two arms that we targeted going into the day.”
Townsend felt the Cubs’ family environment compared to what he experienced during his two seasons at Ole Miss. He also touted the organization’s process-oriented, data-driven approach, noting that’s similar to his, which is something he appreciates.
“There’s not much you can say with a 30-minute phone call, but it’s really good just to see how they work,” Townsend said. “What’s their process like? What’s our process to get better? I mean, that’s the only thing I really care about is, how do I get better? How do I improve every single day? And they had a clear plan.”
Townsend posted a 3.94 ERA in 14 starts this year with 88 strikeouts and 22 walks in 64 innings. Following his 2025 freshman season (6.35 ERA in 15 games/eight starts), Townsend felt he became more mature by working on his craft every day and credited Ole Miss pitching coach Joel Mangrum for his mentorship and showing him the path to get to the big leagues.
“How do I really improve every single day? You stack bricks, you’re going to build a wall,” Townsend said. “Really have blinders and earmuffs on, not really care about what anyone thought. Went to work every single day.”
The 21-year-old can touch 98 mph with his fastball and utilizes a five-pitch repertoire featuring a cutter, slider, curveball and splitter. He wants to improve his fastball command and execution, as well as throwing the pitch more, which should further elevate his secondary stuff.
“The spin is really my superpower — that’s what I tell everyone,” Townsend said. “I just have a weird innate ability to spin the ball and make the ball move left or right.”
The Cubs got to know Townsend at the draft combine in Arizona, which Kantrovitz described as an exceptional meeting. All of the organization’s interactions with Townsend left a great impression.
“We felt like what he brought to the table, both from an arm-talent standpoint as well as his makeup, and it made him a really good fit for our system,” Kantrovitz said.
The Cubs are betting on the power Sorrell and Bailey both possess, even with some of the swing and miss that accompanies it. Bailey’s season was cut short after just 26 games this year because of an ankle injury from sliding into second base that required surgery. Kantrovitz said Bailey’s recover is on track, though he won’t be able to get on the field this summer but is expected to be 100% by the end of the year.
“In Myles’ case, we feel good enough about the development of the hit tool up to this point and also into the future where we feel like he’s going to really get to it,” Kantrovitz said.
CINCINNATI — Phil Maton returned to the Chicago Cubs on Saturday after one appearance on his minor-league rehab stint.
The veteran reliever, who was placed on the 15-day injured list on June 26 with right knee tendinitis, has had a horrific start since signing a two-year, $14.5 million deal in the offseason to serve as a late-inning bridge to closer Daniel Palencia.
How much of Maton’s first-half struggles were due to his knee issues?
“It’s hard to know exactly,” manager Craig Counsell said before Saturday’s game against the Cincinnati Reds. “The knee has affected him, there’s no question about it. And I think he would tell you it hasn’t always prevented him from pitching, but it’s just there.
“So we’ve taken two tries now to try and get it behind him a little bit and put it in the background. I think it’s going to be there a little bit as we move forward, but hopefully we can keep it in the background.”
The Cubs designated Jake Woodford for assignment to make room for Maton after his shaky debut outing in Friday’s 4-0 loss. Woodford was signed to replace Bryse Wilson, who was designated for assignment after only two outings — one good and one bad. Wilson cleared waivers and was optioned to Triple-A Iowa.
That’s the sad state of the Cubs bullpen, which has been a revolving door since the start of the season with no signs of slowing down. The relief corps ranks 16th with a 4.14 ERA but is 23rd since June 11 with a 5.54 ERA..
Counsell wouldn’t say how he would use Maton coming off the IL.
“Everybody is the same right now,” he said. “That’s how we’re treating the bullpen. At times he’s going to have leverage innings. Maybe the next two days (before the break), probably not.”
Maton posted a 6.08 ERA in 30 appearances after a 2.79 ERA in 63 outings last year with the St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers. He was the biggest item on President Jed Hoyer’s offseason bullpen shopping list, which also included Hoby Milner, Hunter Harvey and Colin Rea, who re-signed and was moved to the rotation early on.
It’s not exactly the way Hoyer drew it up. Not counting Carson Kelly, the Cubs have used 26 relievers, including one-timers such as Woodford, Charlie Barnes and Ty Blach.
Now the most effective reliever has been Jacob Webb, who signed a one-year, $1.5 million deal. With Palencia and Milner out, Webb, Trent Thornton and Ryan Rolison have been Counsell’s most trusted relievers. Counsell’s most difficult task is getting the most out of a bullpen made up of journeymen pitchers.
“Webby has stepped up in some big situations for us,” Maton said. “But Couns always puts the guy out there that lines up best for those pockets. He’s done an outstanding job at that this year, so I imagine that’s what he’s going to continue to do.”
Maton won’t use the knee injury as an excuse but appreciated the Cubs giving him time to heal. He said he’s working on going back to his old mechanics that alleviated some of the pain. He was scheduled to make a second rehab outing Saturday, but the Cubs, who normally take a more conservative approach, were desperate for help.
“I felt ready to go,” he said. “There might be a need, but it was one of those situations where I told them I felt I was in a good spot mechanically, so if you guys need me I’m ready to go. I feel like I’m in a really good spot, so hoping that slingshots me into a better second half.”
It’s a do-over of sorts, though Maton knows he can’t erase the first-half numbers.
“I wish I could do it over, wish you could get takebacks on outings throughout the year,” he said. “But to me, it’s just try to put up as many zeros as possible down the stretch and try to do my job. As relievers, our numbers can get inflated by certain outings. It’s the nature of the game.”
Maton still has time to get back to his old self, and if we’ve learned anything about Counsell, he’s going to give struggling players with a good track record several opportunities to figure things out.
Bonus baby
Counsell wasn’t up to speed on the Cubs first-round draft pick Saturday, Mississippi pitcher Cade Townsend, leaving that to the scouting department. He didn’t remember much about his draft day, other than the bonus.
Counsell received $5,000 from the Colorado Rockies for being an 11th-round pick in 1992.
“Pat Murphy negotiated it for me. He was my agent,” Counsell said of the Milwaukee Brewers manager, who was then Counsell’s coach at Notre Dame. “He got it up from $2,500.”
What was Murphy’s cut?
“He did not take a cut,” Counsell said. “That was nice of him.”
Did Counsell buy anything with his five grand?
“You spend it on food, because you’re not getting paid, really,” he said, laughing.
Counsell made up for the miniscule bonus by becoming the highest-paid manager in history with a five-year, $40 million deal.
Murphy is also reportedly doing OK in Milwaukee, though he’s no longer an agent.
White Sox rookie center fielder Tristan Peters probably couldn’t dream up a better 24-hour period if he tried.
Friday night, he worked his way into Sox annals by becoming the seventh player in franchise history to hit for the cycle in a 14-1 win against the Athletics.
Then on Saturday morning, he learned he had been selected to the American League All-Star roster as a replacement, joining Sox teammates Miguel Vargas and Munetaka Murakami for the Tuesday game at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.
“I mean, it’s surreal,” Peters, 26, said before Game 2 of the series Saturday afternoon at Rate Field. “It doesn’t feel real at the moment. I can’t believe this is all happening. It feels like all at once. I’m just so grateful.”
Peters, who’s slashing .302/.356/.482, replaced Athletics first baseman Nick Kurtz, who went on the injured list Saturday with a right thumb sprain.
Sox manager Will Venable said the nod was well-deserved.
“He’s accomplished a lot this year and has had a lot of exciting moments,” he said. “Especially on the heels of last night, with a special performance, that this All-Star selection is obviously very special for him.”
Meanwhile, the Sox beat the Athletics 1-0 and go for the sweep Sunday to close out the first half of the season. Chase Meidroth hit an RBI double to left in the sixth inning to break a scoreless tie.
Athletics starter Gage Jump walked Colson Montgomery on a full count before serving up Meidroth’s double on a 96-mph fastball, but a collective pitching effort — five players combined on the four-hit shutout — and strong defensive play won the day for the Sox — especially a few timely putouts from Luisangel Acuña.
“It was huge,” Venable said. “That’s why he’s out there — his ability to defend at the shortstop position is obviously impressive. He’s been doing it all year and came up huge today with some really nice plays.”
Venable intended to give Peters the day off but needed him to pinch hit for Junior Pérez in the seventh, flying out to center, then stayed in the game on a defensive switch.
Peters has come a long way since the beginning of the season.
He told reporters Saturday that he wasn’t sure he’d make the opening-day roster — and he and wife Erin welcomed a baby girl, Elaine, during the middle of spring training.
Peters said he was stunned and speechless when he learned he was named an All-Star. His wife had a different reaction.
“She was still in bed, actually,” he said, laughing. “The baby’s been giving her a tough time. But she was so pumped — probably more than me.”
Peters said it has been tough balancing baseball and family, especially as new parents, but “she’s holding down the fort. She’s almost a single mom half the time I’m gone, (which is) so often.
“She’s a super mom, really. She lets me sleep at night, she takes care of the baby. She’s the real hero in this situation.”
While Erin kept home life in order, Peters worked on his game.
“I went into it (thinking) I’m going to try to make the most out of it, and just be who I am as a player too,” he said. “And I know there was a lot of bunting in the beginning and just trying to figure out who I am at a big level, and they (Sox coaches) give space for that too.”
Hitting coaches advised him on how to work on his mechanics, including correcting the lower half of his swing and turning on balls properly.
“They kind of joke like, ‘If you do this, you’ll be an All-Star,’” Peters recalled. “And I don’t know if they were kidding. It felt like kind of sarcasm. But (I) worked with them, and now that’s come true, and it’s just truly incredible.”
Peters entered Saturday’s game having racked up 20 doubles, three triples, six home runs, 35 RBIs and 37 runs scored in 89 games. He ranks first among MLB rookies (minimum 260 plate appearances) in slugging percentage and average, second in OPS and tied for second in doubles.
Peters is the Sox’s ninth rookie named to the All-Star Game, joining Murakami, Shane Smith (2025), José Abreu (2014), Ron Kittle (1983), Carlos May (1969), Tommie Agee (1966), Jim Busby (1951) and Minnie Miñoso (1951). He’s also the first Canadian-born Sox player to be named an All-Star.
“That was awesome,” Chase Meidroth said of his teammate’s recognition. “What a story he’s had, and anything’s possible. Keep grinding, keep working and that’s what he does. We’re all happy for him.”
The only downside to the All-Star selection: The Peters family had to change its vacation plans. “We had plans already with some friends on a lake house,” he said. It was by Grass Lake, near Antioch, if he recalls correctly.
“We got an Airbnb, but she was like, she was so pumped,” he said. “We’re like, ‘We’re going to Philadelphia. Don’t matter. We change our plans.’”
There was plenty of debate over which direction the Chicago White Sox would go with the No. 1 pick of the MLB draft.
In the end, the Sox looked to the west and selected UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky.
“You look at what he’s done throughout his baseball career, we had interest with him in high school and then to watch his college career unfold and see what he accomplished and the impact he had on his teammates in that program and to envision that type of influence within this organization is something that attracted us to select him at No. 1,” Sox general manager Chris Getz said Saturday at Rate Field.
As a top pick, Cholowsky knows he has joined select company.
“It’s pretty surreal,” Cholowsky said during a videoconference call.
Cholowsky, 21, slashed .320/.452/.636 with 10 doubles, 21 home runs, 60 RBIs, 73 runs and a 1.088 OPS in 60 games as a junior with the Bruins.
“He’s a quarterback on the field,” Getz said. “It just stood out. It really did. What he’s accomplished, he’s a famous player, a guy that was projected to be the overall No. 1 pick coming into this season. So there’s a lot of eyes and there’s a lot of critiquing and oftentimes there can be fatigue.
“In this particular draft, there were three players at the top (Cholowsky, high school shortstop Grady Emerson and Georgia Tech catcher Vahn Lackey). You can make an argument for any of them. But when we got to know Roch, and we have a really strong feeling of our foundation and what we are about, this felt like it was the best fit.”
The pick drew a big cheer from fans watching the video board at Rate Field before Saturday’s 1-0 win against the Athletics. And as Commissioner Rob Manfred announced Cholowsky as the top pick, the handful of Sox fans attending the draft at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia started cheering and twirling their MLB-issued towels to celebrate.
“It was very emotional the last few days,” Cholowsky said. “I was worried about it not working out. Getting the call from my agent that him and Getz were able to work something out today, I was jumping around my hotel room. There were a lot of tears.
“Being able to hear my name called, it was unbelievable.”
Cholowsky said watching the telecast of the draft that he “heard Roch and kind of lost it.”
Cholowsky hit .329/.448/.624 with 41 doubles, 52 home runs, 167 RBIs, 105 walks, 191 runs and a 1.072 OPS in 178 games over three seasons with UCLA. He became the third player named Big Ten Player of the Year in back-to-back seasons.
The consensus first-team All-American was ranked the second-best prospect in the 2026 class, according to MLB Pipeline.
“You’re talking about a special college player who the White Sox feel like can be better,” director of amateur scouting Mike Shirley said at Rate Field. “At the end of the day, Roch’s been the favorite. He’s that talented, he’s that gifted. We were super excited. He wants to win more than anyone I’ve ever seen at the college level.”
Cholowsky was recommended by Sox area scout Carlos Muniz.
The Sox went local with the Competitive Balance Round A selection (No. 34), drafting Nazareth infielder Landon Thome. The son of Hall of Famer Jim Thome, Landon hit .535 with seven home runs and 29 RBIs and was 49-for-50 in stolen-base attempts as a senior.
“We think it’s an elite hitter who’s going to grow into power, who’s going to continue to grow and develop his game rapidly,” Shirley said.
The Sox selected infielder Cole Prosek of Magnolia Heights High School in Mississippi in the second round.
“To be able to bring in Landon, one of the top left-handed high school bats, in addition to Prosek as well, we felt they were the best high school left-handed bats remaining in the draft,” Getz said.
It’s a draft that will forever have Cholowsky’s name at the top. He is the third No. 1 pick in Sox history, joining Danny Goodwin in 1971 and Hall of Famer Harold Baines in 1977.
Cholowsky visited the Sox in June and was in attendance for Braden Montgomery’s walk-off home run against the Atlanta Braves. He left the trip thinking the Sox felt like home.
“Being able to work it out in the long end, the tears were all happy tears,” Cholowsky said. “I’m very excited to be a part of it, I fell in love with the city while I was out there and very excited to get back.”
Jacob Gonzalez stepped in at first base for the Chicago White Sox when slugger Munetaka Murakami went on the injured list.
Gonzalez made progress throughout his 30 big-league games but was optioned to Triple-A Charlotte when Murakami returned from the IL on Friday.
It was a short return to the Knights for the 2023 first-round pick, who was traded along with reliever Brandon Eisert to the Pittsburgh Pirates late Friday for a Competitive Balance Round A selection (No. 34) in the upcoming MLB draft and left-handed reliever Jaden Woods.
The Sox added the No. 34 pick to their draft board and on Saturday selected Nazareth shortstop Landon Thome, the son of Hall of Famer and former Sox slugger Jim Thome. They took UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky with the No. 1 pick.
Woods, 24, will be assigned to Charlotte. He went 3-2 with a 4.84 ERA and 51 strikeouts in 35 1/3 innings during 27 relief appearances this season with Double-A Altoona and Triple-A Indianapolis in the Pirates system.
He began the season with Altoona before being promoted to Indianapolis on June 9.
Gonzalez, 24, slashed .244/.323/.360 with four doubles, two home runs, 17 RBIs and 11 runs in the 30 games with the Sox after being called up from Triple A.
Eisert, 28, was 2-1 with a 5.93 ERA and 32 strikeouts in 27 1/3 innings over 25 appearances (four starts) this season with the Sox.
The move boosted the Sox’s draft bonus pool to $20,489,500, making it the largest in the bonus pool era, according to MLB.com. This year’s No. 1 pick had a slot value of $11,350,600.
White Sox 1, Athletics 0
Athletics\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Wilson ss\t4\t0\t2\t0\t0\t0\t.282
Soderstrom dh\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t0\t.241
Langeliers c\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t3\t.257
Heim 1b\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.231
Kroda-Grauer 3b\t4\t0\t2\t0\t0\t0\t.439
Butler rf\t1\t0\t0\t0\t3\t0\t.199
Cortes lf\t2\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.277
a-Thomas ph-lf\t2\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.208
McNeil 2b\t2\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.226
b-Williams ph-2b\t2\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.272
Bolte cf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.266
Totals\t31\t0\t4\t0\t4\t6
Chicago\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Grichuk lf\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.248
Murakami dh\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t1\t.236
Vargas 1b\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.242
CMntgomery 3b\t3\t1\t0\t0\t1\t3\t.220
Meidroth 2b\t3\t0\t2\t1\t0\t0\t.272
BMntgomery rf\t2\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.220
Acuña ss\t3\t0\t2\t0\t0\t1\t.242
Perez cf\t2\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.156
c-Peters ph-cf\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.302
Romo c\t3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t3\t.133
Totals\t28\t1\t5\t1\t2\t11
ATH\t000\t000\t000\t—\t0\t4\t0 CHW\t000\t001\t00x\t—\t1\t5\t1
a-popped out for Cortes in the 7th. b-lined out for McNeil in the 7th. c-flied out for Perez in the 7th.
E: B.Montgomery (2); LOB: Athletics 8, Chicago 6; 2B: Kuroda-Grauer (4), Grichuk (10), Acuña (3), Meidroth (17); 3B: Wilson (1); RBI: Meidroth (31).
Runners left in scoring position: Athletics 5 (McNeil 2, Bolte, Heim 2). Chicago 3 (Perez, Grichuk, Acuña); RISP: Athletics 0 for 10. Chicago 0 for 6.
Runners moved up: Cortes; GIDP: Vargas.
DP: 1 (Kuroda-Grauer, McNeil, Heim).
Athletics\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Jump\t5 2/3\t5\t1\t1\t2\t7\t86\t3.51
Medina\t1 1/3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t12\t3.59
Harris\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t11\t3.43
Chicago\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Hudson\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t7\t2.20
Murphy\t1\t1\t0\t0\t1\t0\t21\t4.57
Fedde\t4\t2\t0\t0\t1\t3\t55\t4.15
Newcomb\t1 1/3\t1\t0\t0\t1\t1\t25\t2.52
Taylor\t1 2/3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t2\t22\t2.79
W: Fedde 5-6; L: Jump 3-4; SV: Taylor 4-7
Inherited runners-scored: Medina 1-0, Newcomb 1-0, Taylor 1-0; HBP: Medina (B.Montgomery).
ABS Challenge: Jump (Ball-Confirmed), Newcomb (Ball-Confirmed), Thomas (Strike-Overturned to Ball).
Umpires: Home, Gabe Morales. First, Doug Eddings. Second, Mike Muchlinski. Third, Edwin Jimenez.
T: 2:16; A: 22,742 (40,241).
Rays 6, Mariners 1
Seattle\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Crawford 3b\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.211
Arozarena lf\t2\t0\t1\t0\t2\t0\t.288
Canzone dh\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t2\t.264
Raleigh c\t2\t0\t1\t0\t2\t1\t.168
Naylor 1b\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t2\t.251
Raley rf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.229
b-Garver ph\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.190
Wilson rf\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.208
Young 2b\t4\t1\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.253
Robles cf\t2\t0\t1\t0\t0\t0\t.223
c-Mstrobuoni ph\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.192
Emerson ss\t3\t0\t0\t1\t0\t1\t.201
Totals\t30\t1\t6\t1\t4\t10
Tampa Bay\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Díaz dh\t5\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t.320
Aranda 1b\t4\t1\t3\t1\t0\t1\t.297
Caminero 3b\t2\t1\t1\t0\t2\t1\t.281
Mullins cf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.203
a-Vilade ph\t1\t1\t1\t3\t0\t0\t.261
Mesa rf\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.221
DeLuca rf-cf\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t.255
Simpson lf\t4\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t.282
Williamson ss\t4\t1\t4\t1\t0\t0\t.253
Palacios 2b\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.240
Fortes c\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.257
Totals\t35\t6\t12\t5\t2\t5
SEA\t010\t000\t000\t—\t1\t6\t1 TB\t011\t000\t31x\t—\t6\t12\t0
a-homered for Mullins, 7th. b-struck out for Raley, 8th. c-lined out for Robles,9th.
E: Rucker (1); LOB: Seattle 8, Tampa Bay 7; 2B: Young (14), Robles (3), Naylor (12), Caminero (14), Williamson (9), Díaz (17), Aranda 2 (17); HR: Vilade (7), off Speier; RBI: Emerson (20), Williamson (23), Aranda (62), Vilade 3 (31); SB: Caminero (2), Williamson (8); CS: Williamson (1); SF: Emerson; S: Robles; Runners left in scoring position: Seattle 5 (Crawford, Raley 2, Garver 2). Tampa Bay 6 (Simpson 2, Fortes, Díaz 2, Mullins); RISP: Seattle 0 for 6. Tampa Bay 3 for 13; Runners moved up: Mullins, Palacios 2; LIDP: Naylor; GIDP: Mullins; DP: Seattle 1 (Emerson, Naylor). Tampa Bay 1 (Aranda, Williamson, Aranda).
Seattle\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Gilbert\t6 2/3\t9\t4\t4\t2\t5\t96\t3.32
Speier\t1/3\t1\t1\t1\t0\t0\t5\t2.31
Rucker\t1\t2\t1\t0\t0\t0\t13\t6.17
Tampa Bay\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Jax\t5\t4\t1\t1\t3\t3\t69\t3.47
Booser\t2\t1\t0\t0\t0\t5\t30\t1.59
Cleavinger\t1\t1\t0\t0\t1\t2\t24\t3.58
Legumina\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t16\t3.89
W: Jax 5-6; L: Gilbert 7-6.
IBB: off Gilbert (Caminero).
Umpires: Home, Ron Kulpa. First, Derek Thomas. Second, Manny Gonzalez. Third, Tom Hanahan; T: 2:31; A: 22,597 (25,025).
Orioles 6, Royals 1
Kansas City\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Jensen c\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t2\t.240
Witt ss\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t.285
Caglianone rf\t4\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t.260
Thomas cf\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.225
Pasquantino 1b\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t0\t.222
Perez dh\t2\t0\t0\t1\t0\t2\t.209
Massey 2b\t3\t0\t1\t0\t0\t0\t.265
Loftin 3b\t3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.246
Collins lf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t.240
Totals\t29\t1\t2\t1\t2\t9
Baltimore\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Henderson ss\t4\t1\t1\t1\t0\t1\t.219
Rutschman c\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.253
Ward lf\t3\t2\t1\t1\t1\t1\t.256
Alonso 1b\t4\t2\t2\t2\t0\t2\t.253
Basallo dh\t3\t0\t1\t1\t0\t1\t.249
O’Neill rf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t.191
Mayo 3b\t3\t1\t1\t1\t0\t1\t.193
Holliday 2b\t2\t0\t0\t0\t1\t1\t.212
Taveras cf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.233
Totals\t29\t6\t6\t6\t2\t10
KC\t000\t000\t100\t—\t1\t2\t0 BAL\t010\t211\t01x\t—\t6\t6\t1
E: Holliday (3); LOB: Kansas City 4, Baltimore 1; 2B: Alonso (17); HR: Alonso (21), off Cameron. Mayo (12), off Cameron. Ward (6), off Cameron. Henderson (17), off Morgan; RBI: Perez (37), Basallo (45), Alonso 2 (64), Mayo (34), Ward (25), Henderson (42); SF: Perez.
Runners left in scoring position: Kansas City 2 (Loftin, Witt). Baltimore 0; RISP: Kansas City 0 for 2. Baltimore 1 for 1.
Runners moved up: Thomas.
Kansas City\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Cameron\t7\t5\t5\t5\t2\t9\t100\t4.89
Morgan\t1\t1\t1\t1\t0\t1\t14\t5.40
Baltimore\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Bradish\t6 2/3\t2\t1\t1\t2\t5\t96\t3.61
Wolfram\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t15\t4.88
Cano\t1/3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t4\t2.37
Wells\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t12\t3.02
W: Bradish 6-9; L: Cameron 5-7.
Inherited runners-scored: Wolfram 2-0; WP: Bradish.
ABS Challenge: Bradish (Ball-Confirmed), Collins (Strike-Confirmed), Wolfram (Ball-Overturned to Strike), Alonso (Strike-Overturned to Ball).
Umpires: Home, Marvin Hudson. First, Ryan Additon. Second, Ryan Blakney. Third, Nick Mahrley.
T: 2:10; A: 28,958 (45,971).
Red Sox 4, Mets 0
Boston\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Seigler 2b\t5\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.271
Rafaela cf\t5\t0\t1\t0\t0\t2\t.282
Abreu rf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t1\t.264
Durbin 3b\t3\t2\t2\t0\t1\t1\t.230
Yoshida dh\t3\t1\t1\t2\t1\t0\t.266
Mnasterio 1b-ss\t3\t1\t2\t2\t0\t0\t.226
Duran lf\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.193
Narváez c\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t1\t.188
Cheng ss\t1\t0\t0\t0\t1\t1\t.296
a-Gnzalez ph-1b\t2\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.250
Totals\t32\t4\t6\t4\t5\t9
New York\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Ewing cf-2b\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.276
Soto lf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t0\t.294
Lindor ss\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t0\t.208
Benge rf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t2\t.266
Polanco dh\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.181
Wagaman 1b\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t1\t.194
Alvarez c\t3\t0\t2\t0\t1\t1\t.254
Baty 3b\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t2\t.224
Short 2b\t2\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.149
b-Bichette ph\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t0\t.256
1-Taylor pr-cf\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.214
Totals\t29\t0\t3\t0\t7\t8
BOS\t000\t200\t020\t—\t4\t6\t0 NYM\t000\t000\t000\t—\t0\t3\t0
a-struck out for Cheng, 6th. b-walked for Short, 7th. 1-ran for Bichette, 7th.
LOB: Boston 7, New York 9; 2B: Rafaela (22); 3B: Monasterio (1); HR: Monasterio (5), off Peralta. Yoshida (3), off Myers; RBI: Monasterio 2 (15), Yoshida 2 (16); SB: Benge (15); S: Monasterio; Runners left in scoring position: Boston 5 (Gonzalez, Yoshida 2, Cheng 2). New York 4 (Ewing 3, Alvarez); RISP: Boston 1 for 8. New York 0 for 8; Runners moved up: Yoshida, Benge; GIDP: Polanco; DP: Boston 1 (Durbin, Seigler, Gonzalez).
Boston\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Rivera\t3 2/3\t1\t0\t0\t2\t3\t64\t0.00
Weissert\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t2\t12\t3.82
Morán\t1 2/3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t1\t25\t2.82
Slaten\t2/3\t1\t0\t0\t1\t2\t17\t5.64
Coulombe\t2\t0\t0\t0\t3\t0\t37\t4.50
New York\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Peralta\t4 1/3\t3\t2\t2\t5\t6\t92\t4.66
Brazobán\t2/3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t12\t2.76
Minter\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t2\t12\t1.42
Raley\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t11\t2.10
Myers\t2\t2\t2\t2\t0\t0\t23\t6.26
W: Morán 2-2; L: Peralta 5-8.
Inherited runners-scored: Weissert 1-0, Morán 1-0, Slaten 1-0, Brazobán 3-0; PB: Narváez (3); ABS Challenge: Peralta (Ball-Overturned to Strike), Peralta (Ball-Confirmed), Durbin (Strike-Overturned to Ball), Alvarez (Strike-Overturned to Ball), Weissert (Ball-Confirmed), Benge (Strike-Overturned to Ball), Morán (Ball-Confirmed), Slaten (Ball-Overturned to Strike), Ewing (Strike-Confirmed); Umpires: Home, Brock Ballou. First, Shane Livensparger. Second, Mark Ripperger. Third, Alan Porter; T: 2:57; A: 38,371 (42,136).
Late Friday: Reds 4, Cubs 0
Chicago\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Cw-Armstrng cf\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t3\t.293
Bregman 3b\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t3\t.235
Busch 1b\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t.230
Suzuki rf\t4\t0\t2\t0\t0\t2\t.270
Happ lf\t3\t0\t1\t0\t1\t2\t.221
Hoerner 2b\t3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.238
Conforto dh\t3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t3\t.243
Kelly c\t3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.274
Swanson ss\t3\t0\t1\t0\t0\t0\t.213
Totals\t31\t0\t4\t0\t1\t16
Cincinnati\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
De La Cruz ss\t5\t2\t2\t1\t0\t0\t.272
Stewart 1b\t3\t0\t2\t1\t0\t0\t.257
Steer cf-rf\t4\t1\t3\t0\t0\t0\t.247
Bleday lf\t3\t1\t1\t2\t1\t1\t.240
Suárez dh\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t3\t.202
Stephenson c\t4\t0\t2\t0\t0\t0\t.239
Marte rf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.195
Friedl cf\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.173
Arroyo 2b\t4\t0\t2\t0\t0\t1\t.250
Hayes 3b\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t.137
Totals\t35\t4\t13\t4\t1\t8
CHC\t000\t000\t000\t—\t0\t4\t0 CIN\t000\t010\t30x\t—\t4\t13\t0
LOB: Chicago 5, Cincinnati 9; 2B: Suzuki (14); 3B: De La Cruz (3); HR: De La Cruz (15), off Imanaga. Bleday (15), off Woodford; RBI: De La Cruz (44), Stewart (65), Bleday 2 (41); SF: Stewart.
Runners left in scoring position: Chicago 2 (Conforto 2). Cincinnati 3 (Suárez 2, Friedl); RISP: Chicago 0 for 5. Cincinnati 0 for 5; Runners moved up: Hoerner; GIDP: Marte; DP: Chicago 1 (Swanson, Hoerner, Busch).
Chicago\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Imanaga\t5\t7\t1\t1\t1\t5\t102\t4.17
Thornton\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t7\t2.51
Woodford\t2\t5\t3\t3\t0\t3\t43\t7.46
Cincinnati\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Greene\t7\t3\t0\t0\t1\t12\t93\t6.97
Burke\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t1\t12\t3.05
Pagán\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t3\t15\t6.06
W: Greene 1-1; L: Imanaga 5-8.
ABS Challenge: Imanaga (Ball-Overturned to Strike), Greene (Ball-Overturned to Strike), Imanaga (Ball-Overturned to Strike), Greene (Ball-Overturned to Strike), Greene (Ball-Overturned to Strike), Greene (Ball-Confirmed), Woodford (Ball-Overturned to Strike), Busch (Strike-Confirmed), Busch (Strike-Confirmed), Pagán (Ball-Confirmed).
Umpires: Home, Jim Wolf. First, Tyler Jones. Second, Alex MacKay. Third, Roberto Ortiz; T: 2:35; A: 30,878 (43,891).
Phillies 4, Tigers 2
Philadelphia\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Turner ss\t2\t0\t0\t1\t1\t1\t.236
Schwarber dh\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.252
Harper 1b\t4\t0\t2\t0\t0\t0\t.261
Marsh lf\t3\t1\t0\t0\t1\t1\t.304
Bohm 3b\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t3\t.216
Stott 2b\t4\t1\t2\t0\t0\t1\t.246
Realmuto c\t4\t1\t1\t2\t0\t1\t.200
Rincones rf\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.179
Hill cf\t3\t1\t1\t1\t0\t0\t.266
Totals\t32\t4\t7\t4\t2\t9
Detroit\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Vierling cf\t3\t1\t3\t0\t1\t0\t.209
McGonigle 3b\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.285
Dingler dh\t3\t0\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.265
Torkelson 1b\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t.210
Greene lf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t2\t.288
Valencia c\t4\t1\t2\t1\t0\t0\t.556
Lee 2b\t3\t0\t2\t0\t0\t0\t.255
a-Keith ph\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.248
Malgeri rf\t3\t0\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.261
b-Carpenter ph\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.224
McKinstry ss\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.195
Totals\t33\t2\t10\t1\t2\t7
PHI\t001\t300\t000\t—\t4\t7\t0 DET\t000\t010\t010\t—\t2\t10\t1
a-grounded out for Lee in the 9th. b-popped out for Malgeri in the 9th.
E: McGonigle (8); LOB: Philadelphia 4, Detroit 7; 2B: Harper (17), Realmuto (10); HR: Valencia (2), off Sánchez; RBI: Turner (33), Realmuto 2 (30), Hill (16), Valencia (3); SB: Hill 3 (10), Stott (17); CS: Harper (4); SF: Turner.
Runners left in scoring position: Philadelphia 4 (Turner, Bohm 2, Rincones). Detroit 3 (McGonigle 2, Valencia); RISP: Philadelphia 2 for 8. Detroit 0 for 6.
Runners moved up: Rincones, Torkelson; GIDP: Torkelson, McKinstry.
DP: Philadelphia 3 (Bohm, Stott, Harper. Stott, Turner, Harper. Turner, Stott, Harper).
Philadelphia\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Sánchez\t7\t10\t2\t2\t1\t7\t103\t2.62
Bowlan\t1\t0\t0\t0\t1\t0\t9\t3.03
Duran\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t8\t1.38
Detroit\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Mize\t5 2/3\t5\t4\t3\t2\t5\t97\t2.79
Anderson\t1 1/3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t19\t4.18
Holton\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t1\t9\t3.21
Jansen\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t1\t13\t4.56
W: Sánchez 11-4; L: Mize 4-6; SV: Duran 24-25
Inherited runners-scored: Bowlan 2-1; HBP: Bowlan (Dingler).
ABS Challenge: Torkelson (Strike-Confirmed), Anderson (Ball-Overturned to Strike); Umpires: Home, Vic Carapazza. First, Edwin Moscoso. Second, Nic Lentz. Third, Hunter Wendelstedt.
T: 2:26; A: 33,705 (41,083).
Yankees 4, Nationals 2
New York\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Rosario 3b\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t0\t.240
McMahon 3b\t3\t1\t1\t1\t1\t0\t.216
Rice dh\t2\t0\t2\t0\t2\t0\t.279
1-Caballero pr-dh\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.249
Grisham cf\t4\t1\t2\t2\t0\t1\t.238
Goldschmidt 1b\t4\t1\t1\t1\t0\t1\t.259
Bellinger lf\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t0\t.250
Domínguez rf\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t0\t.242
Chisholm 2b\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t3\t.219
Volpe ss\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.248
Sánchez c\t2\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.250
a-Wells ph-c\t2\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.151
Totals\t34\t4\t9\t4\t4\t6
Washington\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Wood rf\t5\t1\t3\t1\t0\t1\t.278
García dh\t5\t0\t1\t0\t0\t0\t.286
Mead 1b\t3\t1\t2\t1\t1\t0\t.245
Abrams ss\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t2\t.276
Lile lf\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t.249
Crews cf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t0\t.216
Vivas 3b\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t0\t.242
Millas c\t2\t0\t0\t0\t1\t1\t.185
b-Tena ph\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t1\t.232
Nuñez 2b\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t1\t.242
Totals\t33\t2\t7\t2\t5\t8
NYY\t000\t000\t040\t—\t4\t9\t0 WAS\t200\t000\t000\t—\t2\t7\t0
a-popped out for Sánchez in the 8th. b-pinch hit for Millas in the 9th.
1-ran for Rice in the 8th.
LOB: New York 7, Washington 9.
2B: Bellinger (18).
HR: McMahon (9), off Ribalta. Grisham (10), off Beeter. Goldschmidt (15), off Beeter. Wood (27), off Schlittler. Mead (16), off Schlittler.
RBI: McMahon (26), Grisham 2 (40), Goldschmidt (42), Wood (63), Mead (43); SB: McMahon (4).
Runners left in scoring position: New York 4 (Chisholm, Bellinger 2, Caballero). Washington 6 (Mead, Abrams 2, Nuñez 2, García).
RISP: New York 0 for 8. Washington 0 for 5.
Runners moved up: Goldschmidt, Wood, Crews.
GIDP: Goldschmidt, Millas.
DP: New York 1 (Goldschmidt, Volpe, Goldschmidt). Washington 1 (Vivas, Nuñez, Mead).
New York\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Schlittler\t6 2/3\t4\t2\t2\t4\t6\t99\t2.05
Headrick\t1/3\t2\t0\t0\t1\t1\t25\t1.55
Cruz\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t7\t2.25
Bednar\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t1\t11\t2.70
Washington\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Poulin\t1 2/3\t1\t0\t0\t1\t3\t31\t2.70
Mikolas\t4\t4\t0\t0\t1\t0\t59\t5.53
Cosgrove\t1 1/3\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t18\t0.00
Ribalta\t1/3\t1\t2\t2\t1\t0\t17\t3.90
Beeter\t0\t3\t2\t2\t0\t0\t10\t3.62
Krook\t1 2/3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t1\t21\t12.79
W: Headrick 5-1; L: Beeter 3-2, BS, 7-12; SV: Bednar 18-20
Inherited runners-scored: Cosgrove 1-0, Beeter 1-1, Krook 1-0.
ABS Challenge: Schlittler (Ball-Confirmed), Mikolas (Ball-Confirmed), Headrick (Ball-Confirmed), Tena (Strike-Confirmed).
Umpires: Home, Charlie Ramos. First, David Rackley. Second, Chris Guccione. Third, Nestor Ceja.
T: 2:56; A: 34,054 (41,376).
Guardians 4, Marlins 1
Cleveland\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Bazzana 2b\t5\t0\t1\t0\t0\t2\t.241
Rocchio ss\t5\t0\t2\t0\t0\t0\t.274
DeLauter dh\t3\t0\t0\t0\t2\t1\t.279
Manzardo 1b\t3\t1\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.214
Watson rf\t4\t1\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.208
Arias 3b\t4\t1\t3\t0\t0\t1\t.239
Halpin cf\t4\t1\t1\t0\t0\t3\t.172
Bailey c\t4\t0\t1\t2\t0\t2\t.183
Kwan lf\t4\t0\t1\t2\t0\t0\t.221
Totals\t36\t4\t11\t4\t2\t11
Miami\tAB\tR\tH\tBI\tBB\tSO\tAvg
Hicks dh\t3\t0\t2\t1\t1\t0\t.289
Lopez ss\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t1\t.339
Stowers 1b\t3\t0\t1\t0\t1\t0\t.241
Edwards 2b\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.301
Hernández lf\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t1\t.236
Conine rf\t4\t0\t1\t0\t0\t0\t.260
Marsee cf\t3\t0\t0\t0\t1\t1\t.198
Mack c\t4\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t.240
Sanoja 3b\t4\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t.268
Totals\t32\t1\t7\t1\t4\t4
CLE\t000\t200\t020\t—\t4\t11\t0 MIA\t000\t000\t100\t—\t1\t7\t1
E: Lopez (13); LOB: Cleveland 8, Miami 8; 2B: Kwan (10), Watson (4), Bailey (5), Mack (6), Hernández (8); RBI: Kwan 2 (16), Bailey 2 (15), Hicks (58); SB: Arias 2 (3), Halpin (3), Hicks (2), Kwan (5).
Runners left in scoring position: Cleveland 4 (Bazzana, Kwan 2, DeLauter). Miami 3 (Conine, Hernández, Stowers); RISP: Cleveland 2 for 12. Miami 2 for 7.
Runners moved up: Sanoja; GIDP: Bailey, Watson, DeLauter, Mack.
DP: Cleveland 1 (Bazzana, Rocchio, Manzardo). Miami 3 (Edwards, Lopez, Stowers. Sanoja, Lopez, Stowers. Lopez, Edwards, Stowers).
Cleveland\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Bibee\t6 2/3\t5\t1\t1\t4\t3\t94\t3.90
Armstrong\t1/3\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t5\t4.71
Aleman\t1\t1\t0\t0\t0\t1\t16\t1.29
Holderman\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t0\t11\t1.78
Miami\tIP\tH\tR\tER\tBB\tSO\tNP\tERA
Pérez\t6\t8\t2\t2\t2\t6\t99\t3.78
Gibson\t1\t0\t0\t0\t0\t2\t14\t5.73
Kempner\t2\t3\t2\t2\t0\t3\t42\t2.92
W: Bibee 3-9; L: Pérez 5-7; SV: Holderman 1-1
Inherited runners-scored: Armstrong 1-1; HBP: Kempner (Manzardo).
ABS Challenge: Stowers (Strike-Confirmed), Bibee (Ball-Overturned to Strike), Lopez (Strike-Overturned to Ball), Aleman (Ball-Confirmed).
Umpires: Home, Chad Whitson. First, Chad Fairchild. Second, Bill Miller. Third, Brian Walsh.
T: 2:50; A: 16,070 (37,446).
MLB draft: The White Sox selected UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky with the first pick of the MLB amateur draft. Cholowsky was a Golden Spikes finalist at UCLA and had a 1.088 OPS with 21 homers and 60 RBIs in his junior season. He was the Big Ten Player of the Year. The Rays selected Texas high school shortstop Grady Emerson with the second pick and the Twins took Georgia Tech catcher Vahn Lackey third. The Giants selected right-handed pitcher Jackson Flora — a noted fried chicken aficionado — out of UC Santa Barbara with the No. 4 pick. The Pirates took outfielder Derek Curiel from LSU with the fifth pick. Louisville outfielder Zion Rose went sixth to the Royals and Oak Grove High School (Mississippi) outfielder Eric Booth Jr. went seventh to the Orioles. The Athletics drafted Georgia Tech outfielder Drew Burress with the eighth pick, the Braves took Virginia outfielder AJ Gracia with the ninth pick and the Rockies selected Kentucky shortstop Tyler Bell 10th.
Pirates: Esmerlyn Valdez hit his third home run of the day, and the Pirates edged the NL Central-leading Brewers 3-2 on Saturday to sweep a doubleheader. The Pirates won the first game 7-6, as Valdez hit two home runs — including a go-ahead grand slam in the seventh inning — and drove in six runs.
Mets: Bo Bichette was held out of the Mets’ lineup on Saturday for a second straight day because of soreness in his legs and right ankle, and the infielder may sit through the All-Star break.
Athletics: Athletics slugger Nick Kurtz, who was set to start at first base for the American League at next week’s All-Star Game, went on the 10-day injured list with a right thumb sprain.
Brewers: Brewers left-handed pitcher Kyle Harrison has gone on the 15-day injured list with tightness in his throwing forearm.
Twins: Royce Lewis hit a two-run homer and sparked the go-ahead rally with a seventh-inning double Saturday as the Twins beat the Angels 5-3. Joe Ryan allowed two runs and six hits over six innings in his final start before heading to Philadelphia for Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
Rays: Ryan Vilade hit a three-run homer, Ben Williamson posted a career-best four hits and Jonathan Aranda had three more and an RBI to give the Rays a 6-1 win over the Mariners on Saturday afternoon.
Guardians: Tanner Bibee threw 6 2/3 solid innings, Steven Kwan and Patrick Bailey hit two-run doubles and the Guardians beat the Marlins 4-1 on Saturday.
Red Sox: Andrew Monasterio and Masataka Yoshida hit two-run homers as the surging Red Sox played after a night of normal rest and extended their winning streak to eight games with a 4-0 victory over the Mets on Saturday.
Yankees: Trent Grisham’s two-run homer in of the eighth inning gave the Yankees another comeback victory over the Nationals’ bullpen, 4-2 on Saturday, giving Aaron Boone his 750th win as the Yankees’ manager.
Giants: Tyler Mahle won for the first time since mid-April, Casey Schmitt hit a tiebreaking three-run homer in the sixth inning and the Giants beat the Rockies 4-2 on Saturday. Mahle (2-8) allowed one run, five hits and three walks over seven innings. The 31-year-old right-hander had been 0-5 in nine starts since beating the Dodgers on April 22.
LONDON — Jannik Sinner was still struggling to rediscover his rhythm a month after his meltdown at the French Open and Novak Djokovic was lurking in the Wimbledon semifinals.
Sure, Sinner had won his opening five matches of his title defense at the All England Club. But none of those performances resembled the way that Sinner awed the tennis world earlier this year during a 30-match winning streak.
So how did the top-ranked Sinner suddenly rediscover the form that enabled him to completely overwhelm Djokovic — the seven-time Wimbledon champion — during Friday’s highly awaited encounter on Centre Court?
The answer lies in a return to familiar gound.
Instead of continuing to toil away on Wimbledon’s grass courts, Sinner spent Wednesday practicing on an indoor hard court, the top-ranked player’s team said.
Hard courts are the surface where Sinner has won three of his four Grand Slam titles and the indoor setting was reminiscent of where Sinner learned to play while growing up in a small Alpine village in the Italian Dolomites.
The decision by his two coaches, Darren Cahill and Simone Vagnozzi, enabled Sinner to regain the timing that has made him the strongest and most feared baseline player in the sport.
“He’s reminded himself just how much that ball can explode off his racket,” said Andre Agassi, who was also coached by Cahill in his career.
Agassi noted how Sinner was “swinging with a full conviction” against Djokovic.
The improvement displayed against Djokovic was a stark contrast from Sinner’s opening five matches.
Sinner twice had to come back from a set down in a five-set marathon against Miomir Kecmanovic in his opener; he was pushed to two tiebreakers by 48th-ranked Nuno Borges in the second round; dropped his serve twice against Jenson Brooksky in the third round; had to play another tiebreaker against Japanese qualifier Shintaro Mochizuki in the round of 16; and was also tested by Jan-Lennard Struff in the quarterfinals.
Against Djokovic, Sinner led 40-26 in winners, committed only 15 unforced errors to Djokovic’s 23 and saved the only break point he faced with an ace.
“Was a good old blowout,” Djokovic acknowledged.
Djokovic had beaten Sinner over five sets in their previous meeting in this year’s Australian Open semifinals.
This time, Djokovic never really threatened and it was finished in three sets.
“He was just a level or more better than I was,” Djokovic said.
Sinner hadn’t displayed that much confidence since the opening two sets and six games of the third set against Juan Manuel Cerundolo in the second-round of Roland Garros in late May — before he wilted in a Paris heat wave and was eliminated in stunning fashion.
Now, he’s favored to seal his second straight Wimbledon title against French Open champion Alexander Zverev in Sunday’s final.
Auto racing
NASCAR Cup Series: Quaker State 400 Available at Walmart Lineup
After Saturday qualifying; race Sunday; At EchoPark Speedway, Hampton, Ga.; Lap length: 1.54 miles
P\tNO\tDRIVER\tMK\tMPH
1.\t12\tRyan Blaney\tF\t179.912
2.\t22\tJoey Logano\tF\t179.702
3.\t5\tKyle Larson\tC\t179.406
4.\t3\tAustin Dillon\tC\t179.394
5.\t7\tDaniel Suárez\tC\t179.359
6.\t48\tAlex Bowman\tC\t179.226
7.\t9\tChase Elliott\tC\t179.203
8.\t2\tAustin Cindric\tF\t179.191
9.\t1\tRoss Chastain\tC\t178.977
10.\t6\tBrad Keselowski\tF\t178.729
11.\t43\tErik Jones\tT\t178.683
12.\t97\tShane Van Gisbergen\tC\t178.660
13.\t17\tChris Buescher\tF\t178.465
14.\t77\tCarson Hocevar\tC\t178.413
15.\t47\tRicky Stenhouse Jr.\tC\t178.378
16.\t10\tTy Dillon\tC\t178.361
17.\t21\tJosh Berry\tF\t178.292
18.\t71\tMichael McDowell\tC\t178.264
19.\t60\tRyan Preece\tF\t178.212
20.\t19\tChase Briscoe\tT\t178.195
21.\t34\tTodd Gilliland\tF\t178.155
22.\t23\tBubba Wallace\tT\t178.098
23.\t54\tTy Gibbs\tT\t177.983
24.\t42\tJohn H. Nemechek\tT\t177.829
25.\t88\tConnor Zilisch\tC\t177.698
26.\t24\tWilliam Byron\tC\t177.664
27.\t16\tAJ Allmendinger\tC\t177.624
28.\t11\tDenny Hamlin\tT\t177.363
29.\t35\tRiley Herbst\tT\t177.306
30.\t33\tAustin Hill\tC\t177.215
31.\t45\tTyler Reddick\tT\t177.091
32.\t20\tChristopher Bell\tT\t177.017
33.\t41\tCole Custer\tC\t176.995
34.\t38\tZane Smith\tF\t176.949
35.\t51\tCody Ware\tC\t176.476
36.\t4\tNoah Gragson\tF\t176.207
37.\t78\tBJ McLeod\tC\t 174.653
38.\t66\tChad Finchum\tF\t.000
C-Chevrolet; F-Ford; T-Toyota
Former Heat teammates Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro had a brief verbal and physical altercation at a practice facility for the NBA’s Summer League in Las Vegas on Friday.
Adebayo struck Herro at least once during the encounter.
Herro was traded to the Bucks earlier this month in the deal that brought Giannis Antetokounmpo to the Heat, where he’ll play alongside Adebayo, the Heat captain.
The Heat said they were aware that an incident took place and declined further comment. Herro said to reporters, “my only comment is no comment.” Herro attended that game; Adebayo was not present for the contest.
Herro had evidently made some critical comments about Adebayo — and the three-year, $166 million extension that Miami gave him in 2024. Herro is believed to have made those comments in direct messages to someone on social media, and screenshots of those conversations eventually went public.
Auto racing: Team Penske Fords claimed the front row spots for Sunday night’s NASCAR Cup Series race at EchoPark Speedway. Ryan Blaney won the pole with a lap time of 30.815 seconds at 179.912 mph on Saturday.Blaney’s teammate, Joey Logano, was second with a lap time of 30.851 seconds at 179.702 mph.
College basketball: Gonzaga starting point guard Mario Saint-Supery is returning to Spain. On Saturday, EuroLeague squad Valencia announced that it had signed Saint-Supery, a point guard who earned all-West Coast Conference freshman honors after averaging 8.6 points per game last season, to a long-term deal.
Golf: Haeran Ryu is in the LPGA record book with the lowest round in a major at 60. She’s also in control at the Evian Championship. The South Korean made 11 birdies at Evian Golf Resort to build a three-shot lead as she goes for her second straight major. The 60 breaks the LPGA major record of 61 held by three players, all of them at the Evian Championship. The men’s record for a major is 62 held by four players at three majors.
NFL: The Khosia family ownership group, including Vinod Khosia, has entered into a formal agreement to purchase the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks, according to the estate of Paul Allen. The sale price is $9.612 billion.
Odds
MLB
Favorite\tLine\tUnderdog
American League\t Sunday
at Baltimore\t-156/+128\tKansas City
at Tampa Bay\t-133/+109\tSeattle
at Minnesota\t-137/+113\tLA Angels
Athletics\t-118/-104\tat Chicago WS
at Texas\toff/off\tHouston
National League
Milwaukee\t-113/-109\tat Pittsburgh
Chi. Cubs\t-132/+108\tat Cincinnati
at St. Louis\t-137/+113\tAtlanta
at San Fran.\t-154/+125\tColorado
at LA Dodgers\t-212/+171\tArizona
Interleague
NY Yankees\t-114/-104\tat Washington
Cleveland\t-117/-105\tat Miami
Philadelphia\t-112/-110\tat Detroit
Boston\t-122/+100\tat NY Mets
Toronto\t-127/+105\tat San Diego
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Jude Bellingham scored in the third minute of extra time to lift England past Norway 2-1 and into the World Cup semifinals for the first time since 2018.
Bellingham’s goal was his second of the game — he also had an equalizer late in the first half. The Real Madrid star is now tied with England teammate Harry Kane with six goals in this tournament, behind the eight of France’s Kylian Mbappé and Argentina’s Lionel Messi. He scored twice in the round of 16 as England beat co-host Mexico.
England, winner of the 1966 World Cup and facing pressure to return to the title match, is now one win away from getting there. The Three Lions will face either Argentina or Switzerland, who were set to play Saturday night in Kansas City, Missouri.
Andreas Schjelderup scored in the 36th minute for Norway, a squad that reached its first quarterfinals and took the internet by storm with its “Viking row” and the charisma of 6-foot-5 striker Erling Haaland.
Haaland — the Manchester City star who had seven goals in this tournament — was held without a goal for the first time in the World Cup. He was subbed out on Saturday for Jorgen Strand Larsen in the second half of extra time.
Norway nearly went ahead 2-1 in the 56th minute when Torbjørn Heggem put a rebound past goalkeeper Jordan Pickford after a corner kick. Following a video review, the goal was disallowed because of a foul by Haaland in the box. Haaland was also denied by Pickford on a point-blank header in the first half.
Schjelderup, making just his second start of the tournament, fired a shot that caromed off the right post and into the net to stun an England team that had dominated possession to that point. Bellingham’s equalizer from close range elicited a roar from that crowd that included Mick Jagger and England great David Beckham.
Schjelderup, who set up both of Haaland’s goals in Norway’s round of 16 win over Brazil, celebrated by stretching his arms wide and looking at the crowd as his teammates lifted him onto their shoulders. Meanwhile, Kane sat near midfield, grabbing his leg and looking toward the officials. No foul was called.
Moments before Bellingham evened the score, a Norway goal kick resulted in the ball appearing to make contact with an aerial camera cable before landing at the feet of England’s Elliot Anderson. The ball was eventually played to Bellingham, who beat Ørjan Nyland with a low shot to the far post. By rule, if the ball had been noticed hitting the cable, play would have stopped and a drop ball would have been utilized to determine possession.
There was a brief moment of silence before the match in honor of Jayden Adams, the 25-year-old midfielder for South Africa whose death was announced earlier Saturday.
Caleb Wilson never moves faster than when he’s angry. Especially at himself.
The rookie had messed up. Midway through his Friday debut for the Chicago Bulls in the NBA Summer League, he tried to get too fancy with a behind-the-back pass. “Trying to be sexy,” he said after the game. The Memphis Grizzlies capitalized as they had all night, taking off toward the other end for a breakaway. So Wilson ran mad.
Javon Small had a running head start when he snatched up the ball behind the top of the key. Wilson was a full body length deeper and stuck on the opposite side of the court. It didn’t matter. He closed the gap in eight steps. By the time Small launched himself for a layup, Wilson already had planted two feet in the paint, lofting upward to soar above the smaller guard.
Hand hit leather a half-second after the shot was taken. The ball rattled against the backboard, ricocheting out of bounds as the crowd roared in response. Wilson, a 6-foot-10 forward, almost buckled to his knees as he landed, pausing for a moment to catch his breath under the basket and survey the landscape of his redeemed error.
“You’ve got to make up for it,” Wilson said. “I had to go do it. It had to be done.”
Minutes after recording one of the highest-scoring rookie debuts in summer league history, Wilson didn’t want to talk about his 35 points. He didn’t want to talk about the fact he made seven 3-pointers despite taking only 27 in his entire college career. For Wilson, the main thing is always the main thing.
“We lost,” the rookie said, followed with a shrug.
Wilson wasn’t satisfied. He turned the ball over six times. It was the first thing he mentioned in the locker room to his teammates, the first note on his performance given to the media in the holding area outside the court at the Thomas & Mack Center. He gave up too many offensive rebounds. His four missed free throws could have decided the game. Yet even in his frustration, another emotion seeped through the cracks: relief.
Wilson missed basketball. It sounds silly to say at this point. Of course he did. Twenty weeks and a day separated his last game in a North Carolina jersey and Friday’s debut at summer league. Two fractures — one to his left hand, the other to his right thumb — reduced his short-lived NCAA career to only 24 games. Wilson spent the most important days of his lone year at North Carolina stuck on the sidelines, waiting for the next step and watching his college dreams slip away.
Some days, it felt as if he would never get back on the court. But the time passed anyway. Now that he’s here — in Las Vegas, with the Bulls — Wilson’s enthusiasm often bubbles over. It’s not quite nerves. But sometimes, when he steps on the court or pushes downhill in transition or pauses at the top of the key before initiating a play, Wilson feels a jittery rush of anticipation from his head to his toes.
On Friday, that wave of emotion swelled so intensely that Wilson cried before taking the court, struck by the long absence of basketball and the welcome relief of its return.
“It just felt like I’ve been waiting so long for this opportunity,” Wilson said. “I’m just glad I got to come out here and play.”
‘He’s hunting these guys’
The first impression is complete. Now, the work begins.
Wilson craved this since he made the decision in middle school to push for an NBA career. He talks often about his lack of work ethic when he was younger. Wilson is referring, of course, to himself as a 10-year-old who often railed and rebelled against his father Jerry’s insistence that he needed to practice more. As a kid, Wilson liked basketball. Loved it even. But the work didn’t come easy at first.
“I wanted to be good, but I didn’t know what it took,” Wilson told the Tribune. “My dad used to push me to work hard, but I didn’t really want to listen.”
When asked what type of 10-year-old does have a strong work ethic, Wilson just laughed and shook his head. That’s not the point. Not really. What matters is that he found it, molded it into something that served him better.
By his teenage years, Wilson’s competitiveness began to burn through any lingering uncertainty about devoting all his free hours to basketball. In high school he didn’t feel athletic enough to keep up with his peers, so he began a daily regimen of jumping rope for 15 minutes straight. Over the next three years, the regimen paid off. Wilson developed a springy bounce, bounding from the 3-point arc to the rim with a hardly contained explosivity. He recorded a 34.5-inch vertical leap at the draft combine, the seventh-best in the 2026 class.
Athleticism is now synonymous with Wilson’s game. It’s the rest of his game that he’ll need to prove in his rookie season with the Bulls. Wilson was considered the rawest prospect out of the top-four options in this year’s draft. Every detail of his game from his shot to his ballhandling to his defense must be proved, especially in light of his absence from the NCAA postseason. And this speculation has only added more weight to the rookie’s gravitational pull as a potential star.
For coach Tiago Splitter, most of this season will be spent tamping down the lofty expectations placed on Wilson by fans, the media and himself. He wants summer league and the ensuing regular season to serve as a learning process, not a field test for any of his rookies. But Splitter also knows that it’s hard to keep the majority of the NBA from jumping to conclusions over these early performances in Las Vegas.
“Some people are going to be judged by those four, five, six games — whatever it is,” Splitter said. “I don’t think it’s fair, but it is what it is.”
The most blinding spotlight is focused on Wilson’s stature against the other players picked before him in the draft: AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer. The league wasted no time capitalizing on the interest in this group, scheduling all four players against each other in the opening games of summer league.
To Wilson, most of this attention feels fabricated — especially his inclusion in all the hubbub. For most of the predraft process, he was left on the outside looking in as major media partners fixated on the top trio rather than a “Big Four.” Wilson doesn’t mind a little extra incentive to compete against the three opponents. At the same time, he has made an effort to release himself from any pressure or expectations created by his draft position.
“I feel like that’s a media-pushed narrative,” Wilson said. “In the beginning of the year, I wasn’t even a part of the ‘Big Four’ or whatever. I feel like that’s all something that’s been created by other people to try to stir up some type of drama. We’ll all play against each other and those will be competitive games. But that’s not something I really think about. When we play basketball, it’s basketball.”
Some of this is a carefully crafted front, a facade that belies the intense competitiveness that has driven Wilson to this point. Wilson always says he just wants to win. What that means, in reality, is that he wants to beat everyone else so badly that he can hardly contain it.
Understanding this desire is crucial to understanding Wilson. When North Carolina lost to Duke in the ACC Tournament, Wilson changed the lock screen on his iPhone to a picture of himself walking into the game with his thumb in a cast, a reminder of the lowest moment in his career. At the draft combine, he admitted to keeping a list of every player he wanted to beat in his one year of college. After Friday’s game, he described Boozer as one of the “few guys in my draft class that I actually respect.”
“Caleb is hunting everybody,” fellow Bulls rookie Dailyn Swain said after Friday’s game. “He won’t say it, but we know it. We can see it in his mentality pregame, during the game. He’s hunting these guys.”
There is another list. A longer one. It contains all of the players Wilson is truly excited to play against. He’s itching for his first matchup against Victor Wembanyama, just to figure out what it’s like to play against a 7-4 on-ball behemoth. As an Atlanta native, he’s eager to take on Anthony Edwards and prove he can hang with the best from his hometown. He has known Jalen Johnson for years, giving added incentive for his first game against the Atlanta Hawks.
Kevin Durant, LeBron James — the list stretches long, past every childhood hero who now has become his colleague and opponent. Wilson doesn’t feel these matchups will pile up extra pressure in his rookie season. They’re fun.
For the rookie, the concept of competition must continue to be a source of joy throughout his first season in the NBA. Wilson wants to keep his temperament light. He’s an avid acolyte of author Ryan Holiday, studying books such as “The Daily Stoic” and “Courage is Calling” to ground himself in a more resilient mindset. Those practices became a necessity during his time away from the court. They remained an invaluable source of guidance once he turned to the rigors and pressures of playing under an increasingly bright spotlight.
For the next week — and the next season — most focus will land on Wilson’s ability to develop his shot, defend at a high level and develop as a playmaker. But he feels the true secret to his success as a rookie will be the curiosity and tenacity honed over those teenage years as he grew into a competitor.
“Although I feel like I’m prepared for the situation of being a great player in the NBA, I know that there’s going to be tough times and tough days,” Wilson said. “I try to keep my mind clear because it’s all been a process. And nobody’s good from the jump.”
With time comes patience
The morning of his last day on campus in Chapel Hill, N.C., Wilson posted on his Instagram story: “Rams @ 5:30. Bring ur 5 against mine.”
For most of his freshman year, Wilson fielded eager requests from North Carolina students for a chance to play against him. He often brushed off the idea with a laugh or a promise to lace up once the season was over. That night in April, Wilson followed through.
He held court with a small crew of friends at the Ram’s Head Recreation Center, taking on regular North Carolina students in full-court scrimmages and 1-on-1 battles. Wilson spent his last night of college dunking over classmates, flexing and laughing as he rained down one-handed slams over business majors, finding a little piece of joy on the court once again.
It was fun yet bittersweet. Wilson went to North Carolina with big dreams. He knew his tenure would be short. Still, he believed one year provided enough time to make an impact. He wanted to win the ACC, then an NCAA championship. He wanted those victories to be declarative, the type of dominance that would lift North Carolina onto a pedestal it had slipped off in recent years.
Instead, he spent those final weeks of his only college season watching. Waiting. North Carolina lost to Duke in the ACC Tournament semifinals, then exited in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. His coach got fired. There was nothing Wilson could do about it. He still can’t convince himself that it wasn’t his fault. So even as he enjoyed one final night as a star on campus, Wilson couldn’t shake his disappointment.
“I was really sad,” Wilson said. “I was leaving college. I didn’t really feel like I accomplished everything I thought I was going to when I went there.”
Weeks later, Wilson arrived in Chicago with a similar goal. The two programs aren’t all that similar. North Carolina won a national championship in 2017, but is now struggling to find a new identity without Hall of Fame coach Roy Williams at the helm. The Bulls, meanwhile, have been stuck in a morass of mediocrity since Wilson was in elementary school, a disappointment made only starker by the sharp contrast to the receding glory days of the ’90s.
But for Wilson, the overarching concept is the same. Both North Carolina and the Bulls represent once-great programs in need of revitalization. And on both teams, Wilson sees himself as a natural catalyst for that transformation.
The Bulls can offer one luxury that didn’t exist for Wilson in college — time. This doesn’t all have to happen at once. The Bulls are budgeting years for this rebuild to take shape. Wilson has time to make mistakes and experiment with his style of play. No part of this process needs to be rushed.
Wilson isn’t always patient. He’s 19. He wants to be great. He wants the Bulls to be great. But he knows what he’s getting into with the Bulls. He embraced the idea of leading a rebuild long before his name was called on draft night. And now he’s shouldering the responsibilities of reimagining the franchise with an eagerness that obscures any doubt about the future.
“I know I’m young,” Wilson said. “I have a lot of work I can do for myself. I know that. But in all honesty, I’m excited for the opportunity to be a part of something new. It’s a new start, new coaches, new front office. I feel like I’m in the forefront of that being the top pick. I know that’s something I can do — make something better from the start.”
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Dear Eric: I have had a friend “Tillie,” for 35 years, and I love her dearly. We have been through a lot together and helped each other through many tough times. But Tillie has changed over the past few years. Essentially, she has become what I would call a “taker.”
For example, she looks to others to treat her to lunches but never offers to purchase even an appetizer for the rest of the lunch group. If a member of the group has a gift card for an establishment, when the bill comes, we will all apply the gift card to the total tab, then divide the remainder of the bill among the group. When she has a gift card, she waits for her share of the bill to be tallied, then applies the gift card to her share only.
The last straw was when we got tickets for a local theater. She asked me to drive (involving not only gas but paying tolls). She requested we park in a specific lot because she has trouble walking and wanted to be near the theater, which cost nearly double as it would have had we parked in a lot further away.
When we were leaving and it came time to pay for parking, she didn’t offer even a dollar to offset the cost for parking. Even her sister has said Tillie is always holding her hand out for something.
Now a few of us have tickets for another event, and she is already asking me to drive to the theater and is discussing a meal afterward. I’m sure she’ll want special parking (and the premium price to go along with it) again. The other friends are all wondering how to deal with this greediness. It is the cost, but it’s also the principle. We want to continue to include Tillie, but we are at a loss as to how to address this.
— Tapped Out In The Midwest
Dear Tapped Out: It’s possible Tillie is experiencing economic insecurity or having trouble making ends meet, while still wanting to be involved socially. Obviously, it would be better for everyone if she was more upfront about her needs, but that can be hard, understandably. One solution is to talk through the costs of an event beforehand and come to agreement about shared costs.
For instance, you could bring up the parking situation from the last event and tell her that you’ll be happy to give her a ride, but you want to make sure she’s willing to split the expense with you.
It’s probably best to address this on a case-by-case basis, even though as a group you’ve noticed a pattern.
Dear Eric: How do I convince my adult children to call me about once a week or 10 days?
I’m 82, and they are 54, 52, and 44. I know they love me and my husband and always step up if we need help. I really miss them and feel like I don’t have a sense of their daily lives.
They don’t live in the same state we do, so visits are very rare, about once a year. My daughter’s visits are even fewer since she doesn’t like where we live. (Many here are racist.)
I have told them exactly how I feel. My youngest is the only one who calls, about once a month. I call them individually about once a month, or text each. I don’t see this changing.
I’m afraid this won’t change in my lifetime. I find it depressing, even though my life is full and often fun with friends.
— Phone Home
Dear Phone: I’m sorry you’re experiencing this. It’s frustrating that you’ve done the best thing to do in these situations — i.e., you communicated clearly and told them what you need — and they still haven’t stepped up. A phone call is not a hard ask.
You might try being even more proactive by telling each to pick a day (or even day and time) that works for them for a weekly phone call. Say that this is a non-negotiable.
On the day, you might text them a reminder: “Remember, today is Monday, and we have our phone call. I’m looking forward to it!”
I know that this is even more work for you, and it’s work that you shouldn’t have to do. However, it may be that your children aren’t taking your wants seriously.
If they can’t or won’t agree to this, then at least you’ll have the opportunity to ask why. If there are deeper issues in your relationship, they can more easily be resolved if you know about them.
But if they are simply forgetting or taking you for granted, they need to hear clearly how their actions are coming across to someone they love.
Send questions to eric@askingeric.com.
Copyright 2026. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency
It’s possible Tillie is experiencing economic insecurity or having trouble making ends meet, while still wanting to be involved socially.
It’s tempting to ignore Megyn Kelly’s latest rant, given her long and storied history of inane rants.
From insisting in 2013 that both Jesus and Santa are white (despite Jesus Christ being born in the Middle East and Santa being born in your imagination), to downplaying sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes because his victims were 15 and not “like, 8-year-olds” (her words), Kelly has repeatedly reminded us not to take her seriously.
However.
After the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that allows the Department of Homeland Security to end temporary protected status for Haiti and Syria, Kelly took ranting to new levels of awful.
“We don’t want you,” she said on her podcast, “The Megyn Kelly Show.” “We don’t care if you’re offended. Get out. Go home. Go back to (expletive) Haiti.”
Temporary protected status was created in 1990 to provide sanctuary for people fleeing war, natural disasters and “extraordinary and temporary” conditions. The 2010 earthquake in Haiti that killed more than 200,000 people qualified the nation and its people for the status, until last month. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling could send 350,000 people back to Haiti.
“We know our country is better than yours,” Kelly said to her podcast audience. (Which I guess she thinks includes Haitians tuning in for her takes?) “That’s because we filled it with our work ethic and our culture and our values. You being here only dilutes it for us, those who built it and live it.”
That’s a whole lot of we-ing and us-ing for someone who surrendered the moral and logical authority to speak for others a long, long time ago.
It’s also a whole lot of cherry picking history, given how profoundly our work ethic and culture and values are shaped by immigrants, including Haitians. Given that “those who built it and live it” are, and have been since the nation’s founding, immigrants. Given that everything from blue jeans to hamburgers to the theory of relativity were brought to us by immigrants.
Chicago was brought to us by immigrants — a Haitian immigrant, in fact. The city’s founding father, Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable, was born in present-day Haiti around 1745 and immigrated to the United States in the 1770s. He first arrived in New Orleans before heading up the Mississippi River and settling the city that now bears his imprint and, in so many spots, his name.
Without the contributions of immigrants, we wouldn’t have the Pulitzer Prizes. (Joseph Pulitzer arrived in the U.S. from Hungary in 1864.) We wouldn’t have the public library system championed by Andrew Carnegie, who immigrated from Scotland. We wouldn’t have the vocabulary for understanding grief, provided by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, an immigrant from Switzerland. We wouldn’t have the science proving chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) destroy the ozone layer, discovered by Mexican-born chemist Mario Molina.
Our sports teams — college and professional — would be shells of their current selves. Our restaurants and bakeries and cafes and food trucks and cookbooks would be barren and bland. Our artwork, our music, our novels, our films, our poetry, our dances couldn’t begin to illuminate the human condition without the breadth and depth and beauty of immigrants’ contributions.
The degree to which immigrants have shaped American culture and values is so thorough that trying to quantify or qualify them is like trying to unswirl paint colors.
And why would you want to?
To prop up some ill- informed, maladjusted, fearful worldview? To turn down your own humanity so the world’s tragedies don’t harsh your mellow? To convince yourself that the privileges you enjoy are a birthright you’re entitled to, rather than an opportunity you’re squandering when you hoard them?
I don’t really want to get inside the head of Kelly. I’ll never understand what compels a person with a platform like hers to spread the kind of vitriol she spreads, nor do I hope to.
But I will say this. A whole lot of us reject her rhetoric. A whole lot of us have communities and friendships and families and workplaces and houses of worship and neighborhood gems and whole lives, really, made richer, brighter, smarter, kinder, healthier, more joyful, more illuminating, more worth savoring because of what people from all over the globe have brought to them.
Heidi Stevens is a Tribune Content Agency columnist. You can reach her at heidikstevens@gmail.com, find her on X at @ heidistevens13 or join her Heidi Stevens’ Balancing Act Facebook group.
The team shuffles onto the bus outside their senior living community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, wearing game-day jerseys that feature an American flag with white pins and a red bowling ball. They are the UV Okies, a local sensation.
Just a half-mile down the road await the underdogs, the Burgundy Place Strikers, who are angling to dash the team’s 8-0 streak.
In this Tulsa-wide league for seniors, the athletes have traded hardwood floors and smooth gutters for the digital lanes of Nintendo Wii Sports bowling.
The Okies — residents of the University Village senior living community — have finished five seasons with a clean sweep and are on yet another winning streak. Would they win this away game against the Strikers, then their final match the following week, to complete a six-peat?
On this recent Thursday in June, their hopes are pinned on Phyllis Wimer, known as Phyllis Killer or Phyllis the GOAT for the many strikes she bowls; Charlene “the Grasshopper” Giles, whose hop gives her some extra oomph as she releases the ball; “Marvelous” Marcia Ness, who describes herself as a “tough old broad,” ready to bowl after recovering from a broken wrist and back; and “Rollin’ ” Ron Demaree, who grips the lower-left handlebar on his motorized wheelchair to propel himself upward and forward for more power in his roll.
If the Okies are nervous about a possible upset, they aren’t showing it.
“We’re going to go in there and smoke ’em,” says “Dandy” Don Alcorn, 73, another teammate.
Senior citizens and video games may seem as natural a pairing as Generation Z and paper phone books. But in introducing Wii bowling to their residents nearly 20 years ago, staff at senior communities in Tulsa saw an opportunity to create a league that would bring people together.
When the Okies first joined the city league more than a decade ago, they didn’t win a single match, said Cecelia Basarich, 83, a former University Village resident and player. They began studying the techniques of more successful teams and practiced on dusty Wii consoles resurrected from some of their children’s garages. Residents organized an in-house league that competed for 100 Grand candy bars.
Now, the team has 40 players some seasons, who compete internally for eight spots for each week’s league game.
And while the Okies have become fierce competitors, they play for other reasons, too.
“There are some things I do where I feel ageless,” Giles, 75, said. She added: “It’s like I could just as well be 13 standing up there. It’s fun to have those things.”
Wii bowling helps them socialize and form friendships, navigate the aches and pains and grief and loss of aging, and encourages them to try new things. “This is the way older people survive,” Pat Winkle, known as “Nana Pat,” 87, said.
Some players also said their bowling triumphs made their children and grandchildren proud.
At Burgundy Place for the second-to-last league game, the home team wore gray team T-shirts, and posters declaring “Love Love Bowling” were plastered on the doors and walls of a recreational room that would serve as the game’s electronic alley.
Alcorn lined up his shot in the Okies’ virtual lane. His teammates waved blue and red pom-poms and shouted, “Show them where you’re from!”
He held out his right arm, his hand wrapped around a Wii Remote, and he leaned slightly to the right. He swung his right arm backward, then forward, his left arm soaring skyward with it.
The synthesized clattering of bowling pins against wood filled the room, and the word “Strike” flashed across the television screen.
When he first started playing, Alcorn had to unlearn the techniques and stances he knew from real-life bowling.
“That won’t work,” he said. “You’ve got to go up and out to get the strike.”
In front of a second television screen, Wimer let the ball rip. Eight pins scattered across the digital lane, leaving two standing side-by-side in the corner.
“I knew as soon as I let go of the ball that it wasn’t going to do what I wanted to do,” Wimer, 95, said before crushing the last two pins for her only spare of the game.
Though they may be dominant on the screen, the Okies are also good sports. Throughout the game, they offered advice to their Burgundy Place rivals, and each team cheered for the other’s strikes.
Still, the Okies were ahead, and they needed to maintain their lead over the game’s final round to remain undefeated.
In one lane, Ron Pogue, 82, lifted the remote with both hands out in front of him to steady his shot. He took a deep breath before bending his knees and swinging his right arm back, driving it forward with force.
“Good ball!” his teammates cheered as he hit a strike.
The Okies had secured another victory.
The players congratulated one another, and then Phyllis Killer and Charlene the Grasshopper and Marvelous Marcia and Rollin’ Ron and the rest of the Okies boarded the bus back to University Village.
On another afternoon, the Okies won their final game of the season, ending with a 10-0 record.
Next year, the aging Wii consoles will be retired, and the league will switch to another video game system. For now, the UV Okies will soak in the glory and pride of another season as the unbeatable senior Wii bowlers of Tulsa.
Q: My son’s father and I separated eight months ago, and it’s taken a while for us to get adjusted. One thing I have noticed is that my son is unorganized around the house, and his teacher recently told me he is very unorganized at school. I have trouble getting him to settle down and do his homework. He’s also very forgetful and doesn’t seem to hear me when I tell him something. I think he may have ADHD, and I’m thinking about putting him on medication. What’s good ex-etiquette?
A: First, slow down before jumping to a diagnosis.
The behaviors you describe — forgetfulness, difficulty focusing, disorganization, emotional distraction and trouble settling down — can absolutely be associated with ADHD.
But they can also be associated with stress, grief, anxiety, disrupted routines and emotional adjustment after major family changes like separation and divorce.
Children often experience divorce differently than adults realize. Even when parents believe things are “calmer now,” children may still be trying to make sense of two homes, changing schedules, emotional tension, new routines and uncertainty about the future. That emotional overload can show up behaviorally long before children can verbalize what they are feeling.
That doesn’t mean you ignore the problem. It means you approach it thoughtfully.
Good ex-etiquette starts with recognizing that major medical or psychological decisions should be discussed with the other parent whenever possible.
Even if you strongly suspect ADHD, this should not become a unilateral parenting decision or a conflict about “what’s wrong” with your son.
Talk with his teacher. Ask whether these behaviors are new or whether they existed before the separation. Is he struggling socially? Is he distracted, anxious, sad, impulsive or overwhelmed?
You should also talk with his father. Not to accuse or diagnose, but to compare observations. Your son may have ADHD. Or he may be a child struggling to regain emotional balance after his family changed. Either way, he needs parents who approach the situation thoughtfully, collaboratively, and with compassion rather than panic. That’s good ex-etiquette.
Like the Winter Olympics, Masters Tournament and Formula 1 races before it, the World Cup is inspiring some young people to try a new sport and others to imagine themselves on an international stage someday. Researchers even have a name for the motivating influence of major sporting events: the “demonstration effect.”
For many parents, though, such excitement can present daily challenges and weighty decisions.
How much time and money should families put into a sport a child could outgrow after one season? How can parents tell whether an interest will last? And how can they distinguish between encouragement and too much pressure?
Here’s what parents and academic experts say about supporting children in healthy ways and giving them some agency over their participation.
Give kids lead in sports experience
When children discover a new sport, adults are tempted to invest in equipment, lessons and competition early on. But experts say a slower approach gives families time to determine if a newfound interest is likely to stick, since children often cycle through hobbies as they grow.
Instead of committing to full seasons or ongoing lessons right away, consider more affordable, less time-intensive ways for children to explore sports, such as playing with friends or attending camps or clinics.
Learning about nearby coaches, programs and leagues from other families can help parents make the best decisions for their children, said Travis Dorsch, the founding director of the Families in Sport Lab at Utah State University. Just as important, he said, is learning about the sport and finding ways to participate that allow the child to lead.
“If it is soccer, parents should go down to the park, take a ball and kick it around with their kids, show them that you care about what they care about,” Dorsch said.
One of the biggest challenges for some parents is resisting the urge to relive their own athletic ambitions through their children, says JJ Rauchwarger, 39, a youth baseball and basketball coach in Oregon who played collegiate basketball in Arizona. They may measure their children’s performance against their own unmet goals, raising expectations or adopting a coaching mindset that can shape how children see themselves, she said.
A way to keep hopes in check is by emphasizing the importance of staying active and healthy, she said.
“I already had my career. It was 20 years ago. What matters is my little one scored his first basketball this year in little tiny top basketball, and he was stoked beyond measure,” Rauchwarger said. “My oldest one figured out how to one-up a layup and hit the free throw. That is way cooler than anything I ever did.”
Rauchwarger suggests parents treat sports as a fun activity that helps younger children become more well-rounded people, whether or not it puts them on a path to becoming the next Lionel Messi, LeBron James, Simone Biles or Shohei Ohtani.
“When we specialize early, we, as parents and coaches, put too much pressure on it,” she said. “I’m all for accountability and expectations. But that means are you being a good teammate? Are you putting forth your best effort? Are you showing up with a positive attitude?”
Some parents worry their children will miss out on important opportunities if their athletic development is not fostered from an early age, Dorsch said. Between potential scholarships, name, image and likeness payments, and professional contracts worth millions of dollars, it can be easy to forget that fun is supposed to be part of the youth sports experience, he said.
“Most parents want what’s best for their kids and are just trying to operate as best as they can within the system,” he said.
Know when they’re ready for next level
Nick Asinjo, 14, is a defender for Cincinnati United Premiere, a travel soccer club that plays year-round, requires tryouts and has an emphasis on achievement. Nick, who lives in Dayton, Ohio, said he decided in sixth grade that he wanted to focus on soccer after coaches, teammates and family members encouraged him and he saw his own potential in the sport.
“I want to get better. I see the pros, I see how they live and how they play, and it motivates me to go out there and be better,” he said.
While parents provide transportation, pay fees and organize schedules, children should ultimately determine how much time and energy they want to devote to a sport, according to experts. Healthy motivation comes from creating an environment where young athletes feel a sense of autonomy, competence and connection with their teammates, according to Dorsch.
Nick’s mother, Tess Mitchner Asinjo, 51, said it became clear her two children were serious about sports after years of participation. When they began asking for extra training and looking for ways to improve, she said it signaled they were ready for a deeper commitment.
Tamara McLeod, chair of the Department of Athletic Training at A.T. Still University in Mesa, Arizona, said that kind of inner drive is an important sign. Choosing to specialize in a single sport and compete year-round on a traveling team can be expensive and time- consuming. Over time, the demands can be stressful for athletes and their families.
Some children and teenagers thrive under those conditions, especially when their desire to excel is self-driven, McLeod said. But as families invest more time and money, some may feel compelled to continue pursuing increasingly competitive opportunities, even if a child’s interest begins to wane.
External pressure in the absence of sincere engagement also can put too heavy a physical and emotional load on some children. Early symptoms of injuries from repetitive movements are often easy to overlook but can worsen to the point of requiring lengthy recovery periods or surgery.
Emphasize growth over elite outcomes
Regardless of how much talent children exhibit early on, experts recommend helping them keep sports in perspective. Most teenagers will not have careers or livelihoods based on sports, so emphasizing personal growth and enjoyment over elite outcomes is most often both constructive and realistic, experts say.
Of the nearly 8 million students participating in high school sports, only about 560,000 will go on to compete for universities and colleges that are members of the NCAA, according to data from the governing body for college athletics and the National Federation of State High School Associations. Among those, a fraction will compete at the professional or Olympic level.
The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee’s American Development Model encourages parents and coaches to prioritize long- term development over early competitive success.
The framework used by many national sport governing bodies recommends that children sample multiple sports, particularly before age 12, emphasizes skill development and enjoyment over winning, and encourages adults to monitor training loads and allow for adequate rest and recovery.
Dear Kid Whisperer: I came to see a parent workshop you did, and I used the strategies that you taught.
It has changed my life and my relationship with my daughter. The problem is, I am divorced from her father, who has shared custody. He doesn’t have these strategies; he is mean, and he yells at her a lot.
I try to tell him how to do what I have learned, and I get frustrated when my daughter reports to me about how he yelled at her because she acted out in ways that she never tries with me anymore.
How do I get her dad to use these wonderful strategies?
Dear Reader: You don’t.
Don’t spend a single second trying to get him to do anything that you are doing. Let that ship sail. Remove it from your mind.
No human parent wants to take unsolicited parenting advice about what they are doing wrong from others, especially an ex! (You may have been on the other side of this if your mother-in-law has ever been kind enough to inform you of your parental shortcomings.)
Instead, allow your ex to fail at being a parent. Because of your immersion in behavior management skill instruction, and because of his lack of behavior management skill instruction, your life with your daughter will become better. His will become worse.
Allowing your ex to fail may be difficult, as your ex is co-raising your kid, but he’s going to fail anyway. Having constant fights and disagreements about his parenting style just adds another layer onto the dysfunction, as it will impact your relationship negatively. The constant argument may even be more damaging overall than the fact that he’s not doing a good job with your daughter.
From now on don’t engage, fix or advise. Try to start fresh with an apology.
Here’s how I would do it with your ex. You are likely to have this conversation on the phone, so let’s make- believe a phone call.
Kid Whisperer: I am really sorry for getting on your case about the way you raise our child. From now on, I won’t bother you with my opinions on parenting. I’ll just ask that you do the same for me.
Ex: Uh … is this a wrong number?
Kid Whisperer: From now on, you raise our child the way you want to, and I will raise our child the way I want to.
Ex: OK, well, you should know that your daughter threw a fit yesterday at the store. She’s out of control. It was really embarrassing. I had to yell at her over and over in front of everyone!
Kid Whisperer: Ugh. That sounds hard.
(Long pause) Ex: Yeah. It was.
Kid Whisperer: OK, I’ll pick her up at 2 today. See you soon!
Fight the urge to mention that since you started learning these strategies, your daughter has not acted like this with you once. He may, hopefully, over time, realize that you are succeeding where he is failing, and will come to you for help.
This is, unfortunately, the only realistic chance that he will come over to your new and effective way of parenting.
Behavioral consultant Scott Ervin, M.Ed, is a parent and former teacher and principal. He is the author of “The Classroom Behavior Manual: How to Build Relationships, Share Control, and Teach Positive Behaviors.”
Dear Miss Manners: My husband and I are in our 80s now, but we have been married only 20 years. This is a second marriage for each of us.
People are frequently asking us how long we have been married. I feel sure that they want to hear a good story about the cute couple being together for 60 years.
After hearing our answer of 20 years, more intrusive questions are asked: “How did you meet? How long did you date? Did you each own a home?”
While I feel certain the inquiries are meant to be charming, I feel uncomfortable. I often give the vague answer of “Seems like forever.”
How do I keep these well-meaning people from asking intrusive questions without being rude myself?
Gentle Reader: Among the trials of old age, being considered adorable is surely a minor one.
And while Miss Manners understands that you feel patronized, she is going to ask you to put up with it — not, however, to the extent of reciting your marital history to anyone who asks.
As you are aware (and have experienced), the lifetime marriage is, for whatever reasons, not as common as it used to be.
People are nostalgic about it, and therefore touched when they think they see evidence of its survival.
In addition, they believe that people are flattered to be asked to talk about themselves — which many people are, although not everyone.
Furthermore, they think they have chosen a pleasant topic.
“How long have you been married?” is not in the same intrusive category as, for example, “Why aren’t you married?”
You have only to turn around that assumption. “Twenty years,” you can say, “and how about you?” Or, for singles, “Do you encounter many long marriages these days?”
You will have easily disabused them of the notion that yours is a lifetime romance, and, with any luck, gotten them started on talking about themselves.
Dear Miss Manners: I belong to a casual group of friends who share a common interest in music. One member sent an email to the group to let us know of a downturn in her health that would limit her participation in the group.
Most of the members responded to her email using the “reply all” option. I responded directly to her, expressing my concern without using “reply all.”
Another member of the group expressed surprise she had not seen any message from me to this person. I replied that I had responded directly, which is my usual practice in such situations.
I now wonder if “reply all” is the only way to avoid the impression among the group that I do not care about other members’ significant life changes. Has “reply all” become a way of keeping score?
Gentle Reader: Evidently. But it does not mean you have to play the game.
Doing kind things without being publicly recognized for them is still an option in this attention-seeking world.
Miss Manners hopes you find the inner fortitude to stick with it.
Dear Miss Manners: I am a 37-year-old woman who moved back to my small hometown, where I sporadically run into an old high school teacher. I’ve greeted her each time as “Mrs. Jones.”
While out with some old classmates, we again ran into Mrs. Jones, and I noticed that all of them warmly addressed her by her first name. They told me later that she’d insisted on it years ago.
But she’s never instructed me to do the same, even though she would have had ample opportunities to do so by now.
Truthfully, I feel a bit odd continuing with the formality when nobody else does — especially because the age difference between a 37-year-old and a 52-year-old now feels rather minor. My husband is nearly her age.
Is there a way to ask, “May I call you Julie?” Or should I assume that, regardless of her instructions to others, I am already calling her by the name she prefers me to use?
Gentle Reader: She would have asked you to call her by her first name, but you never turned in that assignment second quarter of sophomore year. Miss Manners didn’t want to be the one to have to tell you.
But seriously, the safer option is to stick with the more formal address until asked and, if anyone else notices, to do the cowardly thing and pretend that you, too, prefer that — out of respect for someone who was important to you at a younger age.
To send a question to the Miss Manners team of Judith Martin, Nicholas Ivor Martin and Jacobina Martin, go to missmanners.com or write them c/o Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.
Decades later, Samar Kabouli still fondly recalls gathering with women in her family and sipping cardamom-spiced coffee as they embroidered fabric with colorful threads in traditional Palestinian patterns.
Born in Lebanon to Palestinian refugees, Kabouli had never seen her parents’ homeland. But more than just making pretty designs, the threads in her needle were stitching a connection to her heritage.
It’s known as “tatreez,” and Kabouli, 48, started doing the traditional form of Palestinian embroidery in her teens to make money. Besides an economic lifeline, tatreez has provided her with a bridge to the land her parents fled during the 1948 mass displacement that Palestinians call their Nakba, or catastrophe.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled their homes in present day Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. Israel refused their return.
Kabouli’s work allows her to send a message of resilience, of survival.
“We’re still here,” she said. “All what has been happening in Gaza … and we’re still standing, and we’ll not forget the cause.”
From refugee camps to stitching circles and from museum halls to online classes, many in the Palestinian diaspora communities worldwide engage with tatreez as far more than a decorative aesthetic.
They’re finding in it a celebration of cultural heritage, a bridge to their homeland and dispersed communities and — with its myriad embroidered symbols — a visual language of storytelling. To many, refugees or not, it’s become a symbol of Palestinian identity and pride, a vehicle for documenting history and a form of resistance.
“We had a lot of people who came and they’re like, ‘OK, we want to do a T-shirt with a Gaza chest or we want to do a scarf with the Gaza motif,’ ” said Ali Jaafar, general manager of Inaash Association, where Kabouli works.
The Lebanese organization provides Palestinian women in refugee camps in Lebanon with much-needed income through tatreez, while also aiming to help preserve and promote the heritage. It sells embroidered fashion, home decor and art pieces, and showcases the art form in exhibitions and museums.
Efforts to preserve and raise awareness about tatreez in Palestinian communities at home and abroad are part of a larger push to safeguard a heritage and connections to a history and a place that many fear are at risk of being erased.
“Palestinian tatreez is an identity and a document of our presence in every Palestinian village and town,” said Maha Saca, founder and director of the Palestinian Heritage Center in Bethlehem in the Israeli- occupied West Bank, adding that old embroidered thobes, or dresses, show the presence of Palestinians in particular locations before the dispersal of many.
“The Palestinian woman has written the story of her village through motifs from her surrounding environment and her beliefs,” Saca said. “We’re struggling through culture and saying we have roots.”
The Palestinian embroidery art form was added in 2021 to UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
In New York, Lina Barkawi, whose small business teaches tatreez, said the “constant fight for liberation and having a Palestinian identity that’s recognized globally is really what has been driving a lot of this documentation.”
In Arabic, tatreez refers to embroidery in general as well as the specific Palestinian form, which is often a social practice taught through generations by grandmothers and mothers. Some seek formal training.
With motifs that Palestinian women had historically adopted from their surroundings, the old embroidered thobes can offer clues through stitched patterns, design and color about facets of a woman’s personal story, her environment and regional identity, Saca said.
In the Palestinian context, such connections to time and place gain added importance as testament to what was, she said. “How do we have a Jaffa thobe if we hadn’t been in Jaffa?” she said. “We write history on our thobes.”
There’s also an element of continuity. Saca said her grandmother’s embroidered wedding thobe bears the hallmarks of Bethlehem dresses, and that her own granddaughter’s baptism dress included embroideries copied from that dress.
Tatreez also can be political, both through preservation and creation.
“Just being able to have some of the dresses from pre-1948 is a political act,” Barkawi said.
There’s also the making of the “intifada thobe” that included embroidered political and Palestinian symbols, such as the flag. It’s linked to the “first intifada,” or uprising, which erupted in 1987 against Israel’s occupation and was met with a fierce Israeli response.
Born in the United States to a Palestinian father and Panamanian mother, Barkawi said learning about tatreez deepened her Palestinian identity.
Embroidering her first thobe took two years. Barkawi incorporated motifs with personal meanings, such as palm trees that represent her name in Arabic. She added orchids, the national flower of Panama, for her mom.
Technically imperfect, it was the perfect dress for her Islamic marriage ceremony: “I embedded my story as a Palestinian in the diaspora into this dress.”
In Lebanon, Kabouli, too, once dreamed of owning a tatreez piece for her wedding trousseau. She couldn’t afford one.
After their parents died, an older sister had turned to tatreez with Inaash to help support the large family. Kabouli learned from her.
Now a production supervisor at Inaash in Beirut, Kabouli sees her younger self in the women working in refugee camps in Lebanon. The vibrancy of tatreez often contrasts with harsh living conditions in camps amid employment and other restrictions the refugees face. Contending with power cuts, women, eager to finish a piece and get paid, may work on rooftops to grasp the last ray of sunlight, Jaafar said.
Besides the income, Kabouli said doing tatreez can be grounding, almost meditative.
She has another yearning: to see her parents’ homeland. They came from an area in what’s now Israel.
For now, tatreez provides her with hope.
“I don’t feel like I am far away. I keep working on Palestinian heritage, following the cause,” she said. “It connects me to my homeland, especially since we’re deprived of it.”
Luke walked beside me, one hand curled around my arm, the other tapping a gentle rhythm with his white cane. We were crossing the Taj Mahal’s grounds just after sunrise, the air already balmy and faintly perfumed. From the scattered murmur of tourists, Luke said he could sense a grand, open space around us. I described the Persian-style gardens — reflecting pools, clipped shrubs, stone walkways in perfect symmetry. Then I read aloud a sign: “Don’t make direct eye contact with monkeys.”
Near the mausoleum’s entrance, the ground changed — rough sandstone yielding to cool marble, smooth beneath our feet. I guided Luke’s hands to the white facade. As his fingers roamed, Luke recalled the photographs he’d seen as a child, before retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary eye disease, gradually narrowed his vision and then, at 18, took it away.
“I get the impression of something opulent and magnificent,” he told me.
Inside, we joined the flow of tourists circling the tombs of Shah Jahan and his beloved, Mumtaz Mahal. Their voices echoed beneath the dome, drawn out into long, soft reverberations. In the past, this space carried recitations of the Quran — with acoustics meant to evoke the sound of paradise.
What does it mean to travel somewhere new and not be able to see it? That question led me on a 10-day journey through northern India’s Golden Triangle with Traveleyes, a British tour company that pairs visually impaired and sighted travelers.
So much of the language we use around travel — sightseeing, scenic vistas, must-see lists — assumes that the world is best, or only, understood through the eyes. But as writer Pico Iyer wrote to me in an email before the trip: “Travel is not about seeing the sights so much as opening oneself up to the unfamiliar — a matter of perception and vision in a deeper sense.”
For years, whenever I returned from a trip abroad, a friend of mine would ask: What did it smell like? I always fumbled for a meaningful answer. What layers of experience — what deeper kind of vision — had I been missing?
Amar Latif, a British entrepreneur, founded Traveleyes in 2004 to address the lack of accessible travel options for blind and visually impaired people. After losing most of his sight by age 18 because of retinitis pigmentosa, Latif struggled to travel independently. Mainstream tour companies often rejected him, insisting he bring a caregiver and excluding him from more adventurous activities like hiking and skiing. Those exclusions pushed him to create something of his own: a company that would allow blind travelers to explore the world without relying on friends or family. “Friends and family switch off,” he told me. “They’re not as eager to describe things.”
Traveleyes runs on a simple but radical model: It pairs blind and sighted travelers as equal companions. Sighted participants assist with navigation and describe visual details — in exchange for a discounted trip — while blind travelers bring a fresh perspective that often deepens the experience for both. The company promises “a truly multisensory travel experience,” with itineraries designed to engage all five senses.
No prior experience was required — just a friendly attitude and a willingness to describe what you saw. Each day, I’d be paired with a different visually impaired traveler — referred to as a “VI” — and together we’d find our rhythm.
I met the group at a hotel in New Delhi. On our first day I was paired with Daniel, 38, a software consultant from Oxford, England. It was his 12th Traveleyes trip; he’d previously visited Romania, Bhutan and Jordan. Daniel had several eye conditions, including nystagmus, which causes involuntary eye movement and makes it difficult to focus or judge depth.
As our tour bus crawled through Delhi’s snarling traffic, Daniel reflected on how blind people make sense of the world. “Everyone builds the world in their own way,” he said. Some rely on the spatial qualities of sound, others on scent, or even the feel of air moving around them. “Even sighted people use some combination of these elements,” he pointed out. “But when you’re deprived of one, you compensate with the others — and everyone does that differently.”
The next day, on our drive to Agra, I was paired with Candie, a blind woman from Seattle who works in taxpayer advocacy at the Internal Revenue Service. Born with glaucoma, she could once detect light and the presence of large objects, but her vision gradually deteriorated. A decade ago, at 40, she had one eye removed and now has an ocular prosthesis.
At a truck stop cafeteria where we had lunch, I described the triangular structure of a samosa and the ingredients in dal, then used clock-face references to guide Candie to each item on her tray. She paid for the meal, carefully handling the rupee notes — colorful, textured bills adorned with traditional Indian motifs and Gandhi’s portrait at the center. I described those to her, too.
I was beginning to notice how speaking these details aloud sharpened my perception. Things I might have otherwise overlooked or skimmed past — the kind of prosaic elements that quietly define a place, like the black-and-white stripes on New Delhi’s curbs or the mandala murals painted on highway overpasses — became more visible to me when I put them into words. In naming them, I was also etching them into memory.
We eventually arrived in Ranthambore, a town in Rajasthan near a national park that was once the private hunting grounds of the Jaipur royal family. Today, it’s considered one of the best places in India to spot wild Bengal tigers. Before our safari, in the hotel gift shop, I placed a tiger figurine in Candie’s hands. She ran her fingers along its long torso and stout legs, tracing the raised stripes.
“Oh wow,” she said. “It’s much longer than I’d thought!”
We toured the park in an open-topped bus, its diesel engine rattling as we bounced along rutted dirt tracks that wound through dry forest, open meadows and rocky outcroppings. Every so often, our driver stopped at the sight of antelope, sambar deer or a quick-moving mongoose. Channeling David Attenborough, I narrated for Candie as a peacock fanned his feathers in a slow, deliberate courtship display.
The next day, I experienced my own version of that thrill aboard an auto rickshaw in Bundi, a hillside town known for its blue-painted houses and ancient step wells. I was paired with Chris, an accessibility specialist for the British government. Highly expressive with his eyes, Chris explained that he had optic nerve hypoplasia, a congenital condition that left him with a “pinhole- camera-type view of the world.”
I closed my eyes as we climbed toward Bundi’s palace, perched above the town. The sudden jolting turns, the rush of wind, the blare of horns and the shifting smells — spices, incense, street food, exhaust, cow dung — turned the ride into a visceral blur of motion, sound and scent. I felt every brake, every bump and sway.
Chris described it much the same way. “I feel all the micromovements — it’s like a 1970s fairground ride,” he said as we twisted up the road.
Over the course of the trip, I’d heard a few visually impaired travelers grumble that some of the sighted participants were being too heavy-handed in their approach to guiding — “overwarning and overcautioning,” as one put it.
As we boarded the bus to Udaipur the next day, Suzy, our tour manager, announced that some VIs felt as if they were being “passed around like furniture,” with items taken from their hands as if they were children. The issue was clear: Sighted guides sometimes forget that their VI companions are independent adults. “I’m another human being,” Susan, a VI from San Francisco, told me. “I’ll say what I need. When someone sees themselves as a helper, the whole relationship gets skewed.”
Traveleyes promotes guiding as companionship, not caregiving — someone to explore with, to share a drink at the hotel bar with, not someone to manage.
“It’s a little like a complex dance routine,” Chris told me. “You have to learn each other’s moves and try not to tread on each other’s toes, but you also have to give each other room to learn and grow.”
On the last day of our tour, in Jaipur, we stopped at a community-run elephant park. Suzy guided Candie up to one of the elephants.
Candie reached out, wrapped her arms around the elephant’s thick leg and slowly traced her hands along its limber trunk. I asked what it felt like.
She paused. “Honestly,” she said, “like a tall, obese man with a big, hairy leg.”
For the ultimate summer party in France, visit over July 14 — Bastille Day, the country’s national day. This holiday is celebrated with gusto, all-night parties, picnics and fireworks. And the fun permeates the country, from tiny towns to Paris.
The day marks the symbolic start of the French Revolution that brought down the monarchy.
In 1789, France was under the tyranny of its king, bishops and nobles. The corrupt monarchy spent lavishly, while the people suffered in poverty. The Bastille, with eight towers and 100-foot-high walls, was an intimidating fortress that had long functioned as a prison — epitomizing the callous oppression of King Louis XVI. In the streets of Paris, a revolution simmered.
On the morning of July 14, an angry mob gathered around the Bastille’s main gates while the king’s troops hunkered down inside. Two citizens scaled the huge wall, cut the chains of the drawbridge and brought it crashing down. The mob poured through and was met with gunfire. Dozens were killed, and hundreds wounded. Nevertheless, revolutionaries stole ammunition, opened dank dungeons, brought prisoners into the light of day, then paraded victoriously through Paris. The Revolution had begun.
Virtually no trace of the original Bastille fortress remains on today’s square; the revolutionaries dismantled it brick by brick. But the spirit of the Revolution lives on in that location, and on that date.
Today, the Revolution is celebrated every year on what we now call Bastille Day — although festivities actually begin the night before, on July 13.
Paris hosts the biggest and most iconic Bastille celebrations, with a huge open-air block party located on the square where it all began — now called Place de la Bastille — where tens of thousands crowd around the statue of Winged Liberty.
This is the main Parisian celebration, but I prefer the parties that take place on smaller neighborhood squares. Here, bars, cafés and outdoor stages feature acts big and small as food, drink and music spill out into the street.
Most of these are firemen’s balls, sponsored by local fire stations to benefit charities. For a small donation, tourists and locals alike are welcome to join the fun. The last time I celebrated in Paris, the first thing I thought in the middle of all that chaos and intensity was, “Boy, I hope the fire marshal doesn’t come by.” And then it occurred to me that we were at the fire station … and he was probably here in the crowd partying.
The next morning, on July 14, festivities take on a more sober and patriotic tone. Thousands line the Champs-Elysées — Europe’s most renowned boulevard — for a grand military parade. The parade route itself is a reminder of the Revolution. It starts at the towering Arc de Triomphe — built to honor the Revolution’s high-water mark, when France’s citizen-army triumphed over Europe’s monarchies — and ends at Place de la Concorde, a grim reminder of the Revolution’s darkest days. Here, a tall obelisk pierces the sky, marking the spot where once stood the most gruesome and feared symbol of the Revolution: the guillotine.
The finale of Bastille Day unfolds on the big Champ de Mars, the field where the first Bastille Day anniversary took place in 1790. The Revolutionaries marked the occasion with a festival they called “La Fête de la Fédération.”
They gathered on the Champ de Mars, reflected on the incredible changes of the previous year, and, in jubilation, shouted what had long been kept inside. Members of every social class joined in to mingle as equals, hugging and kissing. Fireworks lit up the night, and once-starving people feasted on rich food and fine wine. That first Bastille Day was a heady celebration of their newfound freedom: Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!
These days, some 500,000 revelers gather on the lawn at the Champ de Mars park and spend the day picnicking with baguettes and wine at the base of the Eiffel Tower — which was built on this site in part to mark the 100-year anniversary of the French Revolution. When darkness falls, all eyes turn to the tower. The lights come on and it glitters and glows with golden lights. Fireworks sparkle with the French flag’s colors: blue, white and red.
The Storming of the Bastille transformed more than just France. It inspired many other nations to demand liberty — to progress from medieval oppression to modern democracy. Anyone with a sense of history can recognize the enormous debt the world owes to those brave Parisians who stormed the Bastille to fight for a government of the people. It’s a cultural rallying point, symbolizing freedom of all kinds.
If you’re in France on Bastille Day, join the proud locals in their sheer joy of personal liberty. In fact, wherever you are on le 14 Juillet, lift a glass to freedom and declare, “Vive la France!”
Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. Email him at rick@ricksteves.com and follow his blog on Facebook.
Tony nominated singer and actor Melissa Errico said she remembers being unsure at first when she was asked to join the cast of “Les Misérables.”
“I had to drop out of Yale to do it (which) sounds more dramatic than it was,” said the Broadway star. “I was cast as Cosette on the national tour while still a student. Suddenly, I had a choice between the life I was planning and the life that had come knocking at the door. I took a leave of absence, packed a suitcase and joined the company. It was thrilling and terrifying. I was young enough to think adventure was a perfectly reasonable life plan. Looking back, it may have been the moment I learned that sometimes you don’t find your path, the path finds you.”
This interview with Errico — who was visiting London for Wimbledon with her husband, Patrick McEnroe, who provides tennis commentary — has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: What are some must-do things at Wimbledon, outside of watching tennis?
A: The Cannizaro House for tea. Wimbledon Common for a long walk. And the Wimbledon Village Stables, because horses somehow make every place feel more civilized. Everyone should visit this historic place (with) horses tucked into ancient buildings (and) flowerpots beneath the windows. It’s simply enchanting.
Q: What is your favorite vacation destination?
A: Greece. The light is different there. The sea feels ancient. The food is simple and perfect. There is history everywhere, but it somehow never feels heavy.
Q: When you tour, do you have free time for sightseeing?
A: I try to do at least one thing in every city. In Las Vegas I recently visited the Mob Museum, which was unexpectedly fascinating. In Carmel, Indiana, I loved visiting the wonderful Great American Songbook (Foundation that) Michael Feinstein helped create. In Phoenix, I performed at the MIM — the Musical Instrument Museum — and spent an hour wandering through extraordinary collections of instruments from around the world, like a 15th- century guitar or Duke Ellington’s actual piano. Sometimes, the venue itself becomes the destination.
Q: Where have you been to where you wanted to stay longer?
A: Rome. Every time I leave Rome, I feel I’ve only begun to understand it. Rome haunts me for some reason. I have dual citizenship. Maybe I should flip the switch and give in to my Roman nature.
Q: Where would you like to go that you have never been to before?
A: Morocco. I’ve imagined it for years. It feels like a place where stories are still wandering around looking for listeners. My oldest daughter is planning to go. It’s funny to watch your own fantasies pass down to your children.
Q: What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from your travels?
A: That people are far more alike than different. Audiences may speak different languages or come from different cultures, but everyone responds to beauty, longing, humor, memory, music and love. Travel has made me less certain about stereotypes and more certain about human nature. I’ve also learned that kindness is an international language. Everyone can laugh. Sometimes it’s good to have very little language in common. You look for the fun.
Q: When you go away, what are some of your must-have items?
A: My eyeglasses. At this stage of life, they are less an accessory than a survival strategy. A simple black dress. Sandals that look elegant but can still hike. My ukulele. And scarves. Scarves are my latest discovery. Pack three to six of them and you can transform your look, change your hairstyle, and travel with almost no extra weight. I somehow failed to appreciate scarves until this year.
For more from the reporter, visit www.jaehakim.com.
I booked two first-class, round-trip tickets through the Hawaiian Airlines app for my wife, Linda, and me to travel from Honolulu to Haneda, Japan. I received written confirmations for both tickets almost immediately. Both were purchased, one after the other, using the same credit card. When we arrived at the airport in Honolulu, an agent told me that I had a ticket, but my wife’s had been voided.
No one could tell us why. Her seat had already been sold to someone else. The agent told us that to get my wife on a later flight, I’d have to buy her a completely new ticket. The new ticket cost $575 more than the original I’d already paid for. I was assured at the airport that I could contact the customer relations department for a refund.
Hawaiian first insinuated that my credit card was declined. I’ve spoken at length with my credit card issuer, Chase, and it’s adamant that it didn’t decline the charge for my wife’s ticket. (Why would it decline one ticket and not the other when both were purchased on the same card at the same time?) Then Hawaiian tried to deflect blame to a third-party booking channel, even though I booked directly on its app and had the confirmation to prove it. In another email, a representative admitted that our tickets were being treated as a direct booking from Hawaiian.
Since neither I nor Chase took any action to void my wife’s ticket, the fault lies with Hawaiian. I only want reimbursement for the extra amount I was required to pay. Can you help?
— James Phillips, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii
A: Hawaiian should’ve honored your wife’s confirmed ticket. Full stop. When an airline’s system experiences a ticketing error — which this obviously was — it should have two immediate priorities: First, alert the passenger. Second, fix the problem at no cost to the customer.
What an airline shouldn’t do is void a confirmed reservation without notice, sell the seat to someone else, then charge you a premium to get her on another flight. The airline’s response to you was even worse. Blaming a nonexistent “third party” or, even more absurdly, your credit card, was a classic runaround.
You did exactly what I always recommend: You kept a meticulous paper trail. Your documentation was flawless. When a company gives you a nonsensical answer, you must continue to push for a logical one in writing — which you did. When front-line customer service fails, the next step is to appeal to the executives. I publish the executive contacts for Hawaiian on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.
Based on the correspondence that you shared, it looked as if Hawaiian was doubling down on its mistake, so we took a two-pronged approach. My advocacy team and I decided to contact the airline on your behalf. We presented your clear documentation and asked for a review. You also filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation.
This worked. I heard back from a senior resolution coordinator at Hawaiian, who apologized and admitted that the previous agent’s responses “didn’t provide a fair resolution,” adding that the agent was “coached regarding this case.”
Hawaiian admitted that its system canceled Linda’s ticket by mistake. It refunded the entire fare difference and issued a $250 travel voucher to both you and your wife. This is a textbook case of why you should never accept a company’s first “no,” especially when it defies logic.
Christopher Elliott is the chief advocacy officer of Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit organization that helps consumers resolve their problems. Contact him at elliott.org/help or chris@ elliott.org.
This was men’s fashion season. The women were everywhere.
They walked the co-ed Paris runways at Amiri and Ami. At Vetements, women modeled many of the “menswear” looks, and Sharon Stone closed the show in thigh-high boots.
Inside fashion, none of this was eyebrow-raising.
The gender blur was not happening on the margins. It was built into the recent Paris Men’s Fashion Week, where a multibillion-dollar luxury industry shows what it thinks men will want next.
It has reached menswear advertising, too.
A pregnant Rihanna became the face of Pharrell Williams’ first Louis Vuitton men’s campaign in 2023, appearing on a giant Paris billboard with her baby bump exposed and arms full of Vuitton bags.
“It’s not something completely new,” said Joseph McBrinn, art historian at Ulster University.
Women have paraded through menswear collections for so many seasons that it barely registers with fashion insiders anymore — even as a Gen Z mainstream, only now catching up to the gender-bending David Bowie flaunted in the 1970s, treats it as the cutting edge.
In recent decades, he said, fashion has moved “from very binary understandings of gender and fashion to something which is today very fluid” — reflective, he added, of how younger people now think.
Deeper confusion: They do not always travel together
At Issey Miyake’s IM Men, by the brand’s account, the cast was entirely male — yet the show still read as androgynous.
The border between his and hers keeps eroding, on the body and on the calendar. It has not vanished, and its erosion owes as much to money as to gender.
“Androgyny only works because people understand what is being crossed,” said Andrew Groves, menswear systems professor at the University of Westminster.
The real story is not that menswear has escaped its rules, but that designers are finding new freedom inside one of fashion’s narrowest rule books, Groves added.
The runways look like they are erasing gender; the categories are exactly what make the gesture legible.
Men’s clothes borrowed freely from womenswear
For Jonathan Anderson, Dior’s first designer to oversee both its men’s and women’s lines, models wore pearls, pink and sheer blouses with soft bows at the throat; the collection, he told reporters, was about how he “connects with the feminine.”
At Saint Laurent, men bared their chests in second- skin tops, wore briefs cut from leather and walked in transparent shoes lifted from the women’s runway.
The house opened Paris Men’s Week, and its menswear push is not only aesthetic: Saint Laurent has reportedly set a target of doubling men’s sales by 2030.
Many houses have folded men’s and women’s collections into one co-ed runway. Once provocations, such shows became a calendar strategy by the late 2010s — part creative, part convenient, mostly commercial.
When Anthony Vaccarello took over Saint Laurent in 2016, he scrapped its separate menswear show and sent men down the women’s runway, restoring a men’s show only in 2018; Vetements and Balenciaga merged theirs around then too.
“I don’t think having men and women on the same runway means a greater belief in nonbinary genders,” said Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “That’s really more of an economic thing.”
One show costs less than two
A mixed approach consolidates the media moment and lets a designer tell a single story. That matters in a luxury market under pressure — it has been a weaker period for the sector in the past couple of years.
Women already buy menswear, which helps explain why Ami, founded in 2011 as a men’s brand, added womenswear.
The blurring of the clothes is the older story. Long before “nonbinary” was common usage, Yves Saint Laurent put women in men’s tailoring in 1966, Bowie smudged the line in the 1970s and Jean Paul Gaultier sent men out in skirts in the 1980s. Fashion ran years ahead of the language.
Suzy Menkes, the veteran fashion critic, sees the history stretching even further back.
Men once wore “the most dramatic, precious, glamorous and priceless jewels,” she noted, without doubting that they were suitable for men. The 20th century, she said, narrowed that idea of male dress before fashion began reopening it.
The exchange has never been equal: A woman in a man’s suit is, 60 years on, unremarkable; a man in a skirt or heels still reads as transgression.
“Women’s bodies are still consumed in ways that men’s bodies are not,” McBrinn said.
Men, he added, “can still be seen as deviant” when they cross the line.
Off the runway, the moment is volatile: combative online masculinity, “manosphere” influencers like the Tate brothers, a wave of anti-trans laws.
Last year, J.Crew set off an uproar by marketing a pink sweater to men — even as Dior, Paul Smith and Willy Chavarria sent pink down their own runways. The fight was cultural, but not only: reports said pink apparel sellouts rose 17% year-on-year in spring- summer 2025.
Menkes said color is part of the same story. Postwar Europe helped harden the idea that some colors were “suitable” for men, she said, and it took “a surprisingly long time” for shades such as lilac or pale pink to be accepted as male choices.
Steele said openness to androgyny crested in the 1920s, the ’70s and the ’90s, then receded each time.
“Everything is moving to the right,” McBrinn said. “Fashion may go back to being much more entrenched within gender binary” — perhaps, he warned, within five to 10 years.
stakes run past runway
After years of expanding legal protections for LGBTQ+ people, progress is reversing in many countries, with transgender people at the center of the fight.
“We are seeing tremendous backlash internationally against trans people,” Steele said.
In the end, Steele said, the runway matters less than the office and the dinner table. People shift when they see androgynous clothes on friends, colleagues or men around them. Increasingly, they are just clothes.
When you have a battery that can do small tasks such as charging your smartphone, filling your pool floats and jump-starting your car, you have a winner. That’s why you can’t beat the Gooloo 6000A portable battery.
It’s easy to call this the ultimate portable battery to keep in every vehicle. Beyond providing emergency assistance, its power and versatility make it an invaluable tool to have on hand wherever you go. Whether you’re on the road, at work or heading to the beach, it’s ready when you need it most.
It is powered by a 24,000 mAh internal battery that holds its charge on standby for up to 24 months. Use the included jumper cable clamps to jump-start a battery in all gas vehicles and up to a 12-liter diesel engine, according to Gooloo. Fortunately, I didn’t have a dead battery to test it, but they state it can bring a dead battery to 100% in 1.4 hours and can have a vehicle running with as little as 7 minutes of charging. Included attachments work with the 160 PSI tire inflator. Connect the nozzle to the tire, turn on the battery and select the inflation rate on the digital display. The display also shows real-time battery levels. There is a triangular red SOS light, a strobe light, and a 400-lumen flashlight, which would be great for nighttime roadside assistance.
On the side are USB-A (18 watts) and USB-C (30 watts) ports for charging devices from the high-capacity power bank via USB. The flashlight and 12-volt jump-start power are right under them and easy to access. The LED display is on the front with the power button and controls to set the different functions.
The easy-to-use 6000A has 10 built-in safety features, including protection against overcharging and short-circuiting. There’s an auto-off feature to ensure tire inflation won’t over-inflate.
And just in time for summer fun, all your pool blow-ups can be inflated in a matter of minutes, poolside or on the beach.
Find it at us.gooloo.com for $149.99.
H2O Audio has recently launched the Tri Run open-ear, bone-conduction Bluetooth headphones, designed for runners, cyclists and any fitness enthusiast. They are part of the Tri Series lineup and feature a durable design for tough, wet conditions, with an IPX8 waterproof rating.
In the past few years, bone- conductive headphones have become more mainstream. They are designed with an open-ear design and sit outside your ears. They transmit sound through vibrations in your skull bones, directly into your inner ear. Unlike over-ear headphones and earbuds, which rely on your eardrums to hear sound, this technology bypasses them altogether, transmitting sound through the bones in your face.
The advantage of the open-ear design is that it allows you to hear your content through the headphones while also letting you hear environmental sounds, like traffic.
This might sound crazy if it’s new to you, but what you won’t find crazy is how great these are. As mentioned, each ear has a speaker, which sits outside your ear, and what you hear from the Tri Run is nothing but great sound. H2O Audio designed the Tri Runs to set a new standard for open-ear performance with enhanced bass and crisp detail. And they achieved just that.
Since they’re designed for endurance activities, they feature a soft, flexible frame with an ergonomic and secure fit that rests comfortably around the back of your neck.
Bone conduction speakers are positioned on each end of the frame, delivering audio while providing a secure, comfortable fit for extended wear. The battery life is rated for 6 hours of playtime before a proprietary 4-pin magnetic USB wireless charge. The Tri runs are app-free to operate. Physical buttons on the headset are easy to access for controlling on/off, selections, pairing, answering calls and volume.
Although they are IPX8 waterproof-rated, they are not for swimmers, as Bluetooth does not provide a reliable signal underwater.
Find it at h2oaudio.com for $99.99.
Dear Answer Angel Ellen: I thought I had heard of everything and yet … the latest runway look, I read, is hair that’s “deliberately unbrushed, unkempt, frizzy.”
Really? Am I supposed to believe this and appear in public looking like I just rolled out of bed? Is this for real? Has the whole world gone upside down?
— Lola T.
Dear Lola: I too read that story in the New York Times and asked myself, “Is this a real hairstyle?”
Like my sisters and sister-in-law, I have unruly, curly hair — which gives new meaning to “frizzy.” It is a frequent topic of our group texts. Their reaction when I texted them the story? Each cited a different quote from the story that they couldn’t believe was legit.
Deb replied, “ ‘depression hair’ LOL. As they said in the story, ‘finally, something attainable’!!!”
Joan wrote back on the group text, “Don’t know about you all, but I’m ‘oozing confidence’ because ‘I truly don’t care’ ” now how my hair looks.
Claire wrote, “Finally, I can revel in my ‘wild tangled mane’ now that hellish hair is a fashion must.”
Here’s my advice to reader Lola who posed the question in the first place: Yes, the story accurately reports that tangled, matted, frizzy rat’s nest hairstyles did show up on runways and on some women at the recent Met Ball. However, it’s utterly ridiculous for the rest of us. Don’t go there!
Dear Answer Angel Ellen: This is not a burning question, but why do some zippers zip and unzip in two directions? I just got a mid-knee down coat on sale and it can be unzipped from both the top or the bottom or both at the same time.
— Stephen C.
Dear Stephen: Thanks for the question, Stephen, because I now know a lot more about zippers. What your coat has is a two-way separating zipper. This enables you to unzip from the bottom while the top part of the coat stays cozily zipped, or vice versa. So you can unzip from the bottom for comfort (or, say, while driving) or to reach in your pants pocket without unzipping the whole coat.
Your kind of zipper has two “sliders,” the hardware that goes up and down when you yank the “pull.” Both sliders have to be in the down position, however, to separate the two sides of your coat.
You didn’t ask but … there are two kinds of zippers, closed and open. If the two sides of the zipper cannot be completely separated, in most cases it’s a closed-end one-way zipper, such as the fly on a pair of pants or the zipper on the back or side of a dress.
Angelic Readers
Readers were eager to share their cleaning tips with Charles M., who asked if he could wash his linen shirts even though the tag says “dry clean only.” I said many of these can be washed but then you have to iron them because linen wrinkles badly in the washing process. Not so, writes Barbara S.: “I almost never iron my linen pieces, and I wear them a lot. After regular washing, put them in the dryer for five minutes to soften the wrinkles. Take them out and flick them several times like you do a dishtowel or a sheet. Then lay them flat or hang flat on the back of a chair (I use my porch chairs) or on a clothes rack. They come out great!”
Katherine G.’s method: “My solution to the wrinkles in a linen shirt is to spray it wet in the shower to eliminate the wrinkles and then let it dry naturally on a hanger right there in the shower stall with the water off.”
Gerry R. writes: “I have a better idea than washing linen garments. I recommend using: Dryel At-Home Dry Cleaner Kit (6-pack). You add the sheet to your dryer; set for 20 minutes on medium. The garment comes out perfect. I have been using this product for years. I home clean my coats, bed spreads, almost anything you would take to the cleaners. I don’t use them on men’s suits. It costs about $11 a box at most grocery stores, Walmart, Target or you can order on Amazon.”
Send your questions and rants — on style, shopping, fashion, makeup and beauty — to answerangelellen@gmail.com.
Shirley Jennett, a retired nurse, loves her spacious ranch-style house in Denver, with its big backyard and gazebo.
“I want to stay here,” she vowed. “And die here.”
She might pull that off. In relatively good health, Jennett still drives to lunch with friends, does her own housekeeping and grocery shopping, and plows through a book a day, usually a mystery. But her children worry about her living alone at 89, especially since she has had a couple of falls.
Enter her new housemate, Susan Beese. Despite working four days a week in retail, Beese could no longer afford her nearby one- bedroom apartment as the rent topped $1,500 a month. She moved out, first staying with friends and then in what she delicately called “a senior women’s facility.”
Now Beese, who is 79, pays Jennett $800 monthly for a bright two-bedroom space, with a bath and a kitchen, on the lower level of her house. As part of the agreement the housemates worked out, she helps plant and water Jennett’s garden, takes out the trash and cooks occasional meals.
“It’s been a lifesaver,” Beese said. Jennett even welcomed her dog.
Meet the real-life Golden Girls. In the much-loved 1980s sitcom, still in perpetual reruns, the four wisecracking women who share a house in Miami met through an ad on a supermarket bulletin board.
In Denver, the housing matchmaker was Sunshine Home Share Colorado, a local nonprofit that Alison Joucovsky, a senior services administrator, founded in 2016 when the problem became urgent.
“My phone was ringing off the hook,” she said, recalling anxious pleas from older residents spending most of their Social Security checks on rising rent or facing yearslong waiting lists for subsidized senior housing.
Home sharing “is a really efficient way to create affordable housing and to support older people who want to age in place,” Joucovsky said.
Carefully vetting both “home providers,” who may be rattling around in family houses now too big and too empty, and “home sharers” seeking reasonable rents, Sunshine facilitated 31 shares last year, a record for the nonprofit.
“The cost of developing and building new housing is astronomical, and so is the length of time it takes,” said Laura Fanucchi, president of the National Shared Housing Resource Center and an administrator with HIP Housing, a home-share organization in San Mateo County, California. “Why not make use of existing housing stock?”
About 55 organizations around the country offer these services — and demand is growing, driven by housing shortages, rising rents and sales prices that affect both the old and the young.
Legislators in several states are working to promote home sharing as an option. (Personal care is not part of these arrangements.)
The need is acute. About one-third of households headed by someone 65 or older were “cost-burdened” in 2024, according to an analysis by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. That means they spent more than 30% of their income on housing.
Although nearly 80% of those people were homeowners, the center found, an increasing proportion are still paying off mortgages or home equity loans, and most contend with higher taxes, utility and maintenance costs and insurance premiums.
“A lot of the people calling me to complain about property taxes and inflation are senior citizens on fixed incomes whose children have left, and maybe their spouse has died,” said Pennsylvania state Rep. Abby Major, a Republican, who has co-sponsored a bill that would facilitate home sharing. “They’re a single older adult living in a four-bedroom house.”
Yet most don’t want to relocate. Even if they do, many older adults will find that downsizing has also become prohibitively expensive, as home prices rise and very low interest rates become a memory.
Younger people are similarly cost burdened, including 37% of those aged 25 to 34, and 31% of those 35 to 44, the Joint Center has reported. Home sharing can benefit both older homeowners who need income and people of any age in search of lower-cost housing.
To help increase their reach, some home-share programs now supplement or replace the traditionally labor-intensive matching process with online platforms. (For-profit companies like Nesterly or Roommates.com also facilitate shared housing.)
“It’s like online dating, except that people who have rooms can meet people who need rooms,” said Candice Smith, executive director of HomeShare Oregon. “And it’s a lot more secure.”
HomeShare’s online platform has drawn close to 7,000 providers and seekers over five years.
Further support has come from the city of Portland, which this year announced a pilot program to pay $1,000 to homeowners who make a spare room available (or $1,500 for two rooms) through qualified home-share programs.
In addition, legislators in several states have introduced or passed bills that prohibit municipalities from unduly restricting homeowners who want to rent spare rooms to nonfamily members. Sponsors in Pennsylvania and Connecticut actually call them Golden Girls bills, and they’ve drawn bipartisan support.
Home sharing can’t solve the housing crisis, its fans acknowledge. But it could make a dent, potentially unlocking thousands of spare bedrooms across the country without requiring new construction that would change the character of neighborhoods.
Admittedly, matching homeowners with those who want to rent a room becomes a delicate process. Home-share staff members typically interview the individual parties, run background checks, verify incomes, coordinate initial phone calls and meetings, and mediate if problems later arise.
They also help applicants sift through the myriad lifestyle preferences that can torpedo a match. “Living together isn’t easy,” Fanucchi said. Will the home provider accept smokers, pets, visitors? Does the sharer work from home? Or need to park a car? Who sets the thermostat?
Sometimes the agreement includes a “service exchange,” in which the newcomer does chores such as snow shoveling, shopping or some meal preparation in return for reduced rent.
Jenlyn and Larry Boyer, for instance, have lived in their ranch house in suburban Broomfield, Colorado, for 31 years and never want to leave. But Jenlyn Boyer, who is 80, has “gotten unsteady” and uses a walker. Her husband, 70, suffers chronic fibromyalgia pain and needs a wheelchair.
Because they now pay for tasks that they used to undertake themselves, and because inflation has undermined their finances, “I had an epiphany,” Jenlyn Boyer said. “We need more help and we need more money.”
Earlier this year, through Sunshine Home Share, they met a 46-year-old graduate student whose monthly rent had doubled to an unmanageable $2,000.
The student moved into their furnished downstairs bedroom/family room with a bathroom, a small refrigerator and a microwave. In exchange for about 10 hours of dishwashing a month, she pays a reduced rent of $600.
The additional income has helped the Boyers cover expenses like van repairs and wheelchair batteries. But they also enjoy chatting with their new housemate.
“She turns out to be just a gem,” Boyer said. “We laugh together a lot.”
A six-bedroom, 13,171-square-foot Tudor mansion on Sheridan Road in Winnetka that was designed by the architectural firm of Mayo & Mayo sold on June 26 for $7.8 million.
Mayo & Mayo was a well-known father-and-son firm that designed a number of mansions along Chicago’s North Shore. Built in 1926, the mansion was renovated down to the studs after the seller, Joseph Cacciatore, paid $3.05 million for it in 2023. The mansion has 6 1/2 bathrooms, Hope’s windows, Waterworks plumbing fixtures, high ceilings, intricate woodwork, original details, and a kitchen with custom cabinetry, marble countertops and Miele and La Cornue appliances. Other features include a lower level with a theater room and a gym, and a primary wing with a customizable walk-in wardrobe room and a built-in service bar.
Outside on the 1.04-acre property are a new 60-foot-long pool with space for outdoor entertaining, along with a Lannon stone cabana with a full bath and a lounge.
“The village of Winnetka should award these sellers a restoration award…as not only did the (sellers) maintain the architectural integrity of this beautiful Mayo & Mayo estate, their flawless renovation sets a new standard of commitment to preservation,” listing agent Jena Radnay of @properties told Elite Street. “This house was very lucky as the vision the sellers brought to the table was beyond incredible. There should be building permit incentives to those who go this route as it’s these homes that make the North Shore, the North Shore.”
Asked where her clients are headed next, Radnay said “they love to rehab, so I wouldn’t be surprised if something with Lake Michigan as their backyard would be the next one that I would be so fortunate to sell for them, making it their third renovation as they only purchase homes with architectural significance.”
The mansion had been listed in early 2025 for just below $10 million. Most recently, it had been available for $8.7 million.
The mansion had a $109,904 property tax bill in the 2024 tax year.
Public records do not yet identify the buyer.
Compound in west suburban Big Rock, first listed for $6.3M, is being marketed in an auction: A compound on 138 acres in far west suburban Big Rock was marketed in an auction that ended on June 30 after having been listed for $6.3 million.
Located in southwest Kane County, the estate on Hinckley Road includes an all-stone and brick, 11,100-square-foot house that was built in 2004 and that has high ceilings, a library, an office, an elevator, a first-floor primary bedroom suite and a kitchen with Viking, Bosch and Thermador appliances. The mansion’s lower level has a 101-foot indoor driving range, a 12-foot wet bar and a safe room.
The compound has a 7,082-square-foot heated garage with 16-foot ceilings that can store more than 30 vehicles, or more than 60 vehicles with lifts. The estate also has leased farmland and a separate guest house.
The property first was listed on May 20 for $6.3 million. Now, it’s being offered in an auction. Bids are being accepted through June 30, and the current high bid is $2 million, listing agent Michael LaFido of LPT Realty told Elite Street.
“It’s the first time this property ever was (put up for sale),” he said. “The house is a custom, all-stone and brick home, and the collector’s garage is so versatile for whoever — a car collector or anyone else. And it has these cool old storage buildings on the rear of the property. There are endless possibilities.”
In recent years, high-end sellers have struggled to reap the amount they desire by selling their residential properties via auction. The highest-profile example of that was retired basketball great Michael Jordan’s efforts to sell his Highland Park estate, which first was listed at $29 million in 2012. He tried a late 2013 auction with a $13 million reserve price that was not a success, revealing that no buyer anywhere was willing to pay $13 million for it. He finally sold the mansion 11 years later via more traditional selling means for $9.5 million.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
Q: I am a unit owner in a condominium association. Our condominium declaration restricts leasing to 25% of the units at any one time. If the unit is solely occupied by someone other than the unit owner without payment of rent or if the unit is occupied by a relative, for instance, is it considered a leased unit?
A: Leasing restrictions contained in a condominium association’s declaration and bylaws are held valid by the courts. The terms of a leasing restriction exclusively depend on the language contained in the leasing restriction itself. There is no provision in the Condominium Act or Illinois law that imputes leasing restrictions in condominium instruments.
Many leasing restrictions contain express provisions about occupants and when occupants other than a unit owner will be deemed a leased unit. Generally speaking, in the absence of language in the leasing restriction stating otherwise, relatives of a unit owner living in the unit or an occupant who is not paying rent would not be considered tenants, and would not deem the unit leased.
Q: I live in six-unit, three-story condominium association. Each two condominium units on the same floor have the same unit percentage. A unit owner of one condominium unit felt their unit percentage should be less than the other unit on their floor because the other unit has an additional storage area that is part of their unit, and thus, wants to have their percentage interest in the common elements decreased. Is the disgruntled unit owner entitled to have a lower unit percentage?
A: Section 4(e) of the Condominium Act governs how percentage interests in a condominium association are set by the condominium developer, and how they may be revised by the unit owners thereafter. Percentage interests are computed based upon the value of each unit in relation to the value of all the units as a whole when the association was created, not square footage. Thus, two units initially set at the same price at the time of the creation of the association would properly have the same unit percentage despite the fact they have slightly different square footages. Additionally, after unit percentages are set, Section 4(e) states that unit percentages shall remain constant unless 100% of the unit owners agree to an amendment to revise them. Therefore, unless all unit owners agree to a unit percentage change (and it is unlikely any unit owner will voluntarily agree to pay more in perpetuity), the disgruntled unit owner is not entitled to decrease their unit percentage.
Q: I am a board member of a small, self-managed condominium association. All unit owners have historically paid their assessments on time; however, we have a new unit owner that is delinquent in the payment of assessments. What do we need to know to collect delinquent assessments?
A: Section 9.2 of the Condominium Act grants condominium boards the legal right to collect assessments and recover legal fees and costs incurred for the collection, and condominium declarations and bylaws also expressly contain that remedy. Condominium associations must follow the statutory requirements of the Illinois Eviction Act to collect unpaid common expenses.
Additionally, it should be noted that the Illinois legislature recently approved amendments to the Condominium Act and Common Interest Community Association Act that will significantly impact how condominium and common interest community associations pursue collection of unpaid assessments. The legislation will become law if it is either signed by the governor or not vetoed by the governor by Aug. 17, 2026.
It is expected the legislation will become law shortly and the effective date for the new law will be Jan. 1, 2027.
The approved legislation requires Illinois condominium and community associations to adopt a policy concerning the collection of unpaid assessments and requires that such policy be delivered to prospective purchasers of units. Failure to have a properly adopted policy will be an impediment to an association from successfully pursuing legal action to collect unpaid assessments. For a condominium association, a copy of the collection policy must be provided with the 22.1 disclosure, and for a community association, a copy of the collection policy must be provided with the disclosures pursuant to the Section 1-35 of CICAA.
At a minimum, the policy must address the following: when assessments are due and when they are considered late; late fees and interest charges; fees for returned checks; payment plan availability and terms (if offered); the timeline before referral to legal counsel; how payments are applied to outstanding balances; and a description of the association’s legal remedies for unpaid assessments.
Got a question for the Condo Adviser? Email ctc-realestate@chicagotribune.com.
Are you thinking of rolling up your sleeves so you can complete a large DIY project?
I can assure you it requires extraordinary amounts of diligence, discipline and determination to complete a long-term DIY project.
The rewards are almost hard to measure. You can look at your completed job and feel enormous pride. This only happens if you finish the job, and the last 20% of the work can often consume 80% of the overall time you spend.
I feel a few stories of what I’ve done, plus DIY projects I’ve watched from a distance, might be of great help to you. My first big DIY job was bringing back to life a three-bedroom FHA- repossessed house I bought at auction for $8,000.
I was 23 years old. Energy flowed out of my body like sweat on a blistering hot day. It seemed to me that I never got tired. I borrowed enough money to hire several helpers for three months.
I was able to get the house live-in ready in four months. I was working on the job 60 to 70 hours a week. I often worked on it seven days a week.
Once my wife and I moved in, there were a few small odds and ends to do, but I got all those done in short order. I sold the house a year later for a handsome profit.
I then bought a five- bedroom house that needed lots of work. It took months of full-time labor to get it move-in ready. After that, I did all sorts of improvements to enhance the exterior.
My lovely wife wanted a fish pond, a retaining wall with a privacy fence, and a brick patio set on a concrete base. These projects unfolded over a period of five years.
Each of these outdoor projects took hundreds of hours of work. I did these in the evenings and weekends when I wasn’t out working for paying customers. My first child was still a few years away, so my wife and I were able to work on these things together with no newborn or toddler underfoot.
Your first takeaway should be that a big project is going to consume all of your free time. How much time can you really devote to a DIY project each week for months on end? Will you have a helper or two? If not, how are you going to do things that require a second set of hands?
What about tools? I happened to have many of the tools I needed because I used them in my work for paying customers. You can rent many tools now that I never had. The issue is you need to be very productive when you rent them. If not, you’ll soon pay in rental fees what you could have spent for a new or used tool.
Keep in mind that you can now sell a used tool with ease using any number of online websites that host marketplaces. It might make more sense to purchase a tool, care for it, then sell it once you’re done with it.
Be honest about your age, health and stamina. I can assure you that I get just as tired now as I did when I was 22, but I only get done about 25% of what I did all those years ago. How is your balance? Have you lost your nerve working eight, 15 or 30 feet off the ground? I can tell you I used to mimic Spider-Man walking up on steep roofs. Those days are long gone.
Think about your learning curve. I was lucky. Each day at work, I was surrounded by subcontractors who had mastered a craft. I was able to glean from them, through sight and conversation, the secret tips and tricks for getting pro results. I doubt you have this luxury.
You do have thousands of free online videos you can watch, as well as ones provided by the manufacturers of many products. Be sure to watch those before you even start a project.
What will happen if you can’t finish the project?
I know of a homeowner who has been without a working kitchen for over 15 years. My guess is you’re starting the DIY project because you don’t have the money to hire a pro.
If so, how will you pay to have a pro step in should you not be able to complete the project?
My kids have given me the moniker “dream crusher.”
Sitting around the kitchen table, I’d ask them very simple questions about things they wanted to do. I’d always help them, but I’d share all the things they hadn’t yet thought of.
As adults, they now appreciate it, but back then I had an abundant supply of wet blankets to throw over grandiose ideas.
Shirley Jennett, a retired nurse, loves her spacious ranch-style house in Denver, with its big backyard and gazebo.
“I want to stay here,” she vowed. “And die here.”
She might pull that off. In relatively good health, Jennett still drives to lunch with friends, does her own housekeeping and grocery shopping, and plows through a book a day, usually a mystery. But her children worry about her living alone at 89, especially since she has had a couple of falls.
Enter her new housemate, Susan Beese. Despite working four days a week in retail, Beese could no longer afford her nearby one- bedroom apartment as the rent topped $1,500 a month. She moved out, first staying with friends and then in what she delicately called “a senior women’s facility.”
Now Beese, who is 79, pays Jennett $800 monthly for a bright two-bedroom space, with a bath and a kitchen, on the lower level of her house. As part of the agreement the housemates worked out, she helps plant and water Jennett’s garden, takes out the trash and cooks occasional meals.
“It’s been a lifesaver,” Beese said. Jennett even welcomed her dog.
Meet the real-life Golden Girls. In the much-loved 1980s sitcom, still in perpetual reruns, the four wisecracking women who share a house in Miami met through an ad on a supermarket bulletin board.
In Denver, the housing matchmaker was Sunshine Home Share Colorado, a local nonprofit that Alison Joucovsky, a senior services administrator, founded in 2016 when the problem became urgent.
“My phone was ringing off the hook,” she said, recalling anxious pleas from older residents spending most of their Social Security checks on rising rent or facing yearslong waiting lists for subsidized senior housing.
Home sharing “is a really efficient way to create affordable housing and to support older people who want to age in place,” Joucovsky said.
Carefully vetting both “home providers,” who may be rattling around in family houses now too big and too empty, and “home sharers” seeking reasonable rents, Sunshine facilitated 31 shares last year, a record for the nonprofit.
“The cost of developing and building new housing is astronomical, and so is the length of time it takes,” said Laura Fanucchi, president of the National Shared Housing Resource Center and an administrator with HIP Housing, a home-share organization in San Mateo County, California. “Why not make use of existing housing stock?”
About 55 organizations around the country offer these services — and demand is growing, driven by housing shortages, rising rents and sales prices that affect both the old and the young.
Legislators in several states are working to promote home sharing as an option. (Personal care is not part of these arrangements.)
The need is acute. About one-third of households headed by someone 65 or older were “cost-burdened” in 2024, according to an analysis by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. That means they spent more than 30% of their income on housing.
Although nearly 80% of those people were homeowners, the center found, an increasing proportion are still paying off mortgages or home equity loans, and most contend with higher taxes, utility and maintenance costs and insurance premiums.
“A lot of the people calling me to complain about property taxes and inflation are senior citizens on fixed incomes whose children have left, and maybe their spouse has died,” said Pennsylvania state Rep. Abby Major, a Republican, who has co-sponsored a bill that would facilitate home sharing. “They’re a single older adult living in a four-bedroom house.”
Yet most don’t want to relocate. Even if they do, many older adults will find that downsizing has also become prohibitively expensive, as home prices rise and very low interest rates become a memory.
Younger people are similarly cost burdened, including 37% of those aged 25 to 34, and 31% of those 35 to 44, the Joint Center has reported. Home sharing can benefit both older homeowners who need income and people of any age in search of lower-cost housing.
To help increase their reach, some home-share programs now supplement or replace the traditionally labor-intensive matching process with online platforms. (For-profit companies like Nesterly or Roommates.com also facilitate shared housing.)
“It’s like online dating, except that people who have rooms can meet people who need rooms,” said Candice Smith, executive director of HomeShare Oregon. “And it’s a lot more secure.”
HomeShare’s online platform has drawn close to 7,000 providers and seekers over five years.
Further support has come from the city of Portland, which this year announced a pilot program to pay $1,000 to homeowners who make a spare room available (or $1,500 for two rooms) through qualified home-share programs.
In addition, legislators in several states have introduced or passed bills that prohibit municipalities from unduly restricting homeowners who want to rent spare rooms to nonfamily members. Sponsors in Pennsylvania and Connecticut actually call them Golden Girls bills, and they’ve drawn bipartisan support.
Home sharing can’t solve the housing crisis, its fans acknowledge. But it could make a dent, potentially unlocking thousands of spare bedrooms across the country without requiring new construction that would change the character of neighborhoods.
Admittedly, matching homeowners with those who want to rent a room becomes a delicate process. Home-share staff members typically interview the individual parties, run background checks, verify incomes, coordinate initial phone calls and meetings, and mediate if problems later arise.
They also help applicants sift through the myriad lifestyle preferences that can torpedo a match. “Living together isn’t easy,” Fanucchi said. Will the home provider accept smokers, pets, visitors? Does the sharer work from home? Or need to park a car? Who sets the thermostat?
Sometimes the agreement includes a “service exchange,” in which the newcomer does chores such as snow shoveling, shopping or some meal preparation in return for reduced rent.
Jenlyn and Larry Boyer, for instance, have lived in their ranch house in suburban Broomfield, Colorado, for 31 years and never want to leave. But Jenlyn Boyer, who is 80, has “gotten unsteady” and uses a walker. Her husband, 70, suffers chronic fibromyalgia pain and needs a wheelchair.
Because they now pay for tasks that they used to undertake themselves, and because inflation has undermined their finances, “I had an epiphany,” Jenlyn Boyer said. “We need more help and we need more money.”
Earlier this year, through Sunshine Home Share, they met a 46-year-old graduate student whose monthly rent had doubled to an unmanageable $2,000.
The student moved into their furnished downstairs bedroom/family room with a bathroom, a small refrigerator and a microwave. In exchange for about 10 hours of dishwashing a month, she pays a reduced rent of $600.
The additional income has helped the Boyers cover expenses like van repairs and wheelchair batteries. But they also enjoy chatting with their new housemate.
“She turns out to be just a gem,” Boyer said. “We laugh together a lot.”
Address: 4219 N. Winchester Ave., Chicago
Price: $ 2,150,000
Listing date: May 26
This six-bedroom, 3½-bath brick home in North Center has an open floor plan with living and entertainment space on the main level. In the kitchen are Sub-Zero, Miele and Viking appliances, an oversized island, a pantry, plus a breakfast nook. Next door to the kitchen is a family room with a glass NanaWall system that opens to a deck featuring retractable screens, a heater and an outdoor TV. The backyard also includes a basketball hoop and sports court. On the second floor are four bedrooms, with a primary suite that features a vaulted ceiling and a walk-in closet. On the lower level is a recreation room with a wood-burning fireplace, two more bedrooms, a hall bath and a mudroom. Additional features include custom closets, skylights, solar panels, and an in-ground watering system for the front yard. This home is completed by a 2½-car garage.
Listing agent: Jennifer Ames, Ames Group Chicago at Engel & Völkers Chicago, 312-440-7525
Some listing photos are “virtually staged,” meaning they have been digitally altered to represent different furnishing or decorating options. To feature your luxury listing of $1,000,000 or more in Chicago Tribune’s Dream Homes, send listing information and high-res photos to ctc-realestate@chicagotribune.com.
“This is a collection of political, advertising and subject (i.e. birds, animals, etc) pin buttons,” Janet Vanderpool wrote in her note asking for an appraisal.
“They were collected by my mother’s late uncle (1897-1980). She inherited them from him, and now I have inherited them from her. There are more advertising and subject buttons than are in the pictures. These are just a sample. Could the Theodore Roosevelt campaign buttons be real?” she wrote.
She brought a portion of the collection to DuMouchelles gallery and auction house in Detroit recently to find out. There, Bob DuMouchelle took a closer look at the numerous buttons of all kinds displayed in a shadow box, hoping to give her more information and a current value.
Among the many buttons of all sizes were ones that read “I chew Rex Pepsin gum,” “In Memoriam Queen Victoria,” “I like Ike” “Goldwin and Miller,” “Sweet Caporal Cigarettes,” even “Mt. Clemens Carnival of Fun.”
Vanderpool gave DuMouchelle additional information at the appraisal event held at the gallery.
“She found them when she cleaned out his estate,” she explained, adding that her uncle was a first-generation American. She’s now cleaning out her mother’s estate and trying to decide what to do with them.
“What intrigued me the most were the campaign buttons,” she said to DuMouchelle at the event.
He said her instincts were good. “People love political buttons,” he said of the collecting specialty, adding that many people like them because they are small, don’t take up a lot of space and “don’t break the bank” to purchase.
And it’s an enduring topic. “Politics today is such a heated topic, but it always has been.”
He admired the Theodore Roosevelt pin, saying that it looked original.
“The problem with these is that while they don’t cost a lot to purchase initially, they also don’t have a huge value despite their historic significance. Her collection — at least the ones she brought to the event — would bring about $75 to $125 at auction, more in a retail store,” he said.
DuMouchelle marveled over the many historic moments commemorated in the pins, including the Roosevelt campaign pin. He added that Roosevelt spoke for more than an hour after surviving a shot to the chest in Milwaukee while a presidential candidate in 1912. The speech manuscript and steel glasses case in his pocket are credited for slowing the bullet and saving his life.
DuMouchelle said the collection would appeal to other button enthusiasts and could be split up or sold as a group.
Either way, they are a snapshot of history, he commented, adding, “these are really fun.”
About this item
Item: Button collection
Owned by: Janet Vanderpool
Appraised by: Bob DuMouchelle
Estimated value: $75 to $125 at auction
A six-bedroom, 13,171-square-foot Tudor mansion on Sheridan Road in Winnetka that was designed by the architectural firm of Mayo & Mayo sold on June 26 for $7.8 million.
Mayo & Mayo was a well-known father-and-son firm that designed a number of mansions along Chicago’s North Shore. Built in 1926, the mansion was renovated down to the studs after the seller, Joseph Cacciatore, paid $3.05 million for it in 2023. The mansion has 6 1/2 bathrooms, Hope’s windows, Waterworks plumbing fixtures, high ceilings, intricate woodwork, original details, and a kitchen with custom cabinetry, marble countertops and Miele and La Cornue appliances. Other features include a lower level with a theater room and a gym, and a primary wing with a customizable walk-in wardrobe room and a built-in service bar.
Outside on the 1.04-acre property are a new 60-foot-long pool with space for outdoor entertaining, along with a Lannon stone cabana with a full bath and a lounge.
“The village of Winnetka should award these sellers a restoration award…as not only did the (sellers) maintain the architectural integrity of this beautiful Mayo & Mayo estate, their flawless renovation sets a new standard of commitment to preservation,” listing agent Jena Radnay of @properties told Elite Street. “This house was very lucky as the vision the sellers brought to the table was beyond incredible. There should be building permit incentives to those who go this route as it’s these homes that make the North Shore, the North Shore.”
Asked where her clients are headed next, Radnay said “they love to rehab, so I wouldn’t be surprised if something with Lake Michigan as their backyard would be the next one that I would be so fortunate to sell for them, making it their third renovation as they only purchase homes with architectural significance.”
The mansion had been listed in early 2025 for just below $10 million. Most recently, it had been available for $8.7 million.
The mansion had a $109,904 property tax bill in the 2024 tax year.
Public records do not yet identify the buyer.
Compound in west suburban Big Rock, first listed for $6.3M, is being marketed in an auction: A compound on 138 acres in far west suburban Big Rock was marketed in an auction that ended on June 30 after having been listed for $6.3 million.
Located in southwest Kane County, the estate on Hinckley Road includes an all-stone and brick, 11,100-square-foot house that was built in 2004 and that has high ceilings, a library, an office, an elevator, a first-floor primary bedroom suite and a kitchen with Viking, Bosch and Thermador appliances. The mansion’s lower level has a 101-foot indoor driving range, a 12-foot wet bar and a safe room.
The compound has a 7,082-square-foot heated garage with 16-foot ceilings that can store more than 30 vehicles, or more than 60 vehicles with lifts. The estate also has leased farmland and a separate guest house.
The property first was listed on May 20 for $6.3 million. Now, it’s being offered in an auction. Bids are being accepted through June 30, and the current high bid is $2 million, listing agent Michael LaFido of LPT Realty told Elite Street.
“It’s the first time this property ever was (put up for sale),” he said. “The house is a custom, all-stone and brick home, and the collector’s garage is so versatile for whoever — a car collector or anyone else. And it has these cool old storage buildings on the rear of the property. There are endless possibilities.”
In recent years, high-end sellers have struggled to reap the amount they desire by selling their residential properties via auction. The highest-profile example of that was retired basketball great Michael Jordan’s efforts to sell his Highland Park estate, which first was listed at $29 million in 2012. He tried a late 2013 auction with a $13 million reserve price that was not a success, revealing that no buyer anywhere was willing to pay $13 million for it. He finally sold the mansion 11 years later via more traditional selling means for $9.5 million.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
Ask most people which job sites are the most demanding on one’s back, and they will likely mention warehouses, delivery trucks or construction sites. Yet, according to Christine Goertz, PhD, a professor in musculoskeletal research at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, they’re picturing the wrong risk entirely.
Lower back pain ranks among the top reasons why employees miss work — and is a leading cause of workers’ compensation claims.
It’s one of the most common and most misunderstood conditions that impacts millions of Americans.
It’s also become one of the most expensive conditions to treat in the U.S. Lower back and neck pain costs around $134 billion in direct healthcare expenditures, according to Goertz.
“Employers, in a lot of ways, are more affected by low back pain than anyone else other than the patients who are suffering from it because it leads to both absenteeism and presenteeism, and insurance premium costs,” Goertz told Inc.
Goertz said that lower back pain causes an uptick in both absenteeism and presenteeism — when employees show up to work, but struggle to focus due to pain. She said that presenteeism costs an estimated $2,000 per person annually in the U.S.
Workers who are most at risk are those who stand, walk or drive for long periods of time, which she defined as anything over two hours without a break. Those who are exposed to vibration are also at risk, such as pilots and truck drivers.
However, Goertz also noted that the greatest occupational risk may just be with office workers. Staying still for long stretches of time is itself a risk factor — regardless of one’s posture or ergonomic setup.
The 5-minute habit to combat back pain
A recent study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that the desk job doesn’t have to lead to back pain. The study found that employees who stood up and moved for five minutes every hour were healthier overall.
Goertz said this goal is far more realistic than subscribing to a dramatic workout regime. Her advice was to start small, building movement into the day gradually — rather than overhauling a routine all at once. “Don’t jump up from the couch and do 200 squats,” she said. “Instead, start with where you’re at and just start moving a little bit more each day.”
What actually works to fix it?
Oftentimes, patients are looking for a quick fix. As a result, they may turn to corticosteroid injections, opioids and other prescription medications. However, these remedies were also associated with being more likely to transition from acute to chronic pain.
“You are very likely to get your corticosteroid injection paid for by insurance, even though the studies and the guidelines consistently show that they don’t work very well for most people,” Goertz said.
A recent study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, a peer-reviewed journal, found that actually working through acute lower back pain is one of the best ways to solve it.
Avoiding prolonged rest and managing with simple strategies, like heat application, will be more effective than relying on intense fixes.
The gap between what the evidence supports and what insurance typically covers, Goertz said, is where employers come in.
“Employers have a huge opportunity, especially self-insured employers, to help make sure that their employees have access to the right treatment at the right time,” she said. “A lot of times, what the science recommends and what the guidelines recommend does not line up with what insurance companies are most likely to pay for, and that needs to change. Employers can really help make that happen.”
As a knowledge worker who spends a lot of time on the internet, I struggle with distractions and information overload. I’ve tried a lot of practices to stop doomscrolling, some of which have worked. For example, I now read a nonfiction book first thing in the morning and a fiction book before I go to bed. This means I no longer start my morning and end my day staring at my phone.
But I was still struggling to stay off screens when waiting in line, commuting or exercising. I found myself getting sucked into a rabbit hole of rage-bait when I’m on the train. I also had the habit of queuing up a couple of podcast episodes before heading to the gym. It got to the point where coming up with story ideas felt like pushing a boulder up a hill. Given that this is an activity that typically gives me joy, I knew something had to change. After all, my livelihood (and sanity) depends on it.
Going on a complete digital fast wasn’t possible for me. I could, however, try to reduce the information I was consuming to see if that would provide space for creativity. For a week, I made it a goal to consume information via the internet only if it was for research purposes. I also committed to letting my mind wander during times when I would typically listen to a podcast or mindlessly use my phone. In short, I tried to engineer more moments of boredom.
Result: improved creativity and reduced anxiety
I saw immediate results. I came up with several ideas during a single train ride, and one afternoon when I was really struggling to extract any creative thought, I closed my laptop and stared out of my home office window. My mind started wandering. Eventually, my brain started asking a series of questions that I was able to turn into solid story ideas.
I also noticed improvement in my stress and anxiety levels. This was unsurprising, given that social media seems to thrive on anything sensational and controversial. Based on what I experienced, I’d assumed that my creativity was due to my injecting a little bit of boredom into my day. But when I questioned academics and researchers who studied boredom, the relationship between the two turned out to be a little complicated.
The relationship between boredom and creativity
Dr. James Danckert, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo in Canada, says that there is no positive relationship between boredom and creativity. He coauthored a research paper that found the two may in fact be incompatible.
“What you’ve actually done in your own experiment kind of confirms it,” he says. “You’ve disconnected from stressful things and allowed yourself space to think — not to be bored. Creativity is a great solution to boredom, but the logic does not work the other way around; boredom does not make you creative — if anything, it leads to poorer performance on creativity tasks.”
Daniel Hermens, a professor of youth mental health and neurobiology at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, takes a nuanced view. In an article he cowrote for The Conversation, he argued that boredom can be beneficial in small doses because it can be a counterbalance to living in a world that has normalized overstimulation.
“Boredom can be a circuit-breaker,” he says. When you feel comfortable with a little bit of boredom and allow your mind to wander, you’re more likely to seek novelty in a positive way. You might engage in creative pursuits, for example, rather than seek short-term dopamine rewards, like social media scrolling.
mind-wandering and stillness
Hermens does point out that people often confuse boredom with mindfulness. The difference is that one has a positive connotation, while the other one has a negative connotation. Heather C. Lench, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Texas A&M University, says, “It seems to be a common assumption that boredom means nothing to do.” But that’s not necessarily true.
“Boredom only occurs if the environment you’re in and what you’re doing does not align with your goals,” she says. A person can feel bored when they’re being still while nothing is happening, she explains, just as they can feel bored in a stimulating environment, like a party.
Perhaps by reducing my content consumption, I was actually creating the space for mindfulness. That’s not to say I didn’t experience boredom; I definitely did. But since I didn’t make the option to seek short-term rewards available, I sought novelty by thinking through things, and also letting myself ask random questions. My brain got used to having “unfilled time,” as Hermens refers to it. And my default response was to let my mind wander.
The downsides of too much boredom
I also recognize that I experienced only fleeting moments of boredom. “You don’t want to have a brain that’s constantly stimulated by information every time it’s awake,” says Hermens. “Equally, you don’t want to have a brain that’s understimulated and not social every time it’s awake.” This can lead to rumination, which is a feature of depression.
Little did I know that I would soon experience involuntary boredom. In the past couple of days, I’ve been hit with an unpleasant cold. That means I’m experiencing a pretty high dose of boredom, and I’ve definitely felt some of its negative effects. I’ve also resorted to mindless scrolling at times when my symptoms are at its worst.
Hermens assures me that the fact that I’m questioning my habits is a positive sign, so I’m hopeful that I can go back to a significantly reduced screen time. That is, when I’m not stuck at home with a fever.
meaningful actions and habits
Lench says she is conducting further research to figure out how we can train our brains to respond to boredom positively. But I’ve personally learned one big lesson: If I want to invite more creativity into my life, I need to commit to habits and practices that make it easier for me to do so. One of those habits is letting my mind wander. This is especially important whenever I get the urge to listen to another podcast or check social media.
Says Lench, “Creativity does seem to take time, effort, and focus. Boredom can be a driver toward investing that effort in something novel and different. But it’s not guaranteed. Like any habit, when you practice channeling boredom into something creative, it will become easier and easier to pick up something creative when you’re bored — instead of something easy and distracting.”
The regulations associated with inherited IRAs and IRA rollovers are complex. Unfortunately, many mistakes are irreversible.
In a recent monthly column, IRA expert Ed Slott discussed some of the mistakes that can easily be made but cannot be fixed, and they can be very expensive.
Spousal rollovers
Only a surviving spouse can roll over an inherited IRA into their own IRA account. However, if the surviving spouse has not reached age 59 1/2, and needs immediate access to the account, they should not roll over the entire inherited account into their own account. They have the option to maintain some of the assets in the inheritance as an inherited account, and roll over the remaining inheritance into their own IRA.
Using this alternative, they have access to assets in the inherited account without incurring a 10% early withdrawal penalty.
If the inheritance was from a traditional IRA, the withdrawn funds would be taxable, but there would not be an early withdrawal penalty. When the surviving spouse reaches 59 1/2, they could then rollover the remaining assets in the inherited account into their own IRA.
Only one IRA rollover per year allowed
IRA regulations permit only one allowable rollover in a 12-month period. If a second rollover is attempted in that period, the second rollover is considered an excess contribution and must be removed.
Any pre-tax dollars will be taxable, and subject to a 10% early withdrawal penalty if the owner of the account is younger than 59 1/2. This regulation also applies to 60-day rollovers; only one 60-day rollover per 12 month period is allowed.
Same property rollover restriction
Only the same property withdrawn from an IRA can be rolled over to another IRA. If you only withdrew cash, only cash could be rolled over into another IRA.
For example, assume you withdrew a common stock holding with a value of $100,000 from your IRA and distributed to a nonqualified brokerage account with the intention to subsequently rolling the assets into another IRA. If you sold some of the common stock from the brokerage account to prevent a price drop, you would not be able to roll over the proceeds of the sale and the remaining common stock into another IRA.
In this example, the $100,000 initial value of the distribution would be considered an “excess contribution” and would be taxable. Only if you rolled over all of the same property of your initial distribution would you be allowed to do a non-taxable rollover.
Recharacterization of Roth conversion not allowed
Under current regulations, you cannot do a Roth conversion and then change your mind. You cannot “undo” a Roth conversion after you do the conversion. You will be subject to the taxable income associated with conversion.
In addition you could be subject to IRMAA surcharges, Social Security taxes, and possibly other tax deductions could be lost.
Don’t do a Roth conversion unless you are positive you understand the consequences. You can’t change your mind.
You can’t change the terms of a 72(t) distribution
Individuals who retire prior to age 59 1/2 can avoid early withdrawal penalties if they establish a plan that results in a series of substantially equal periodic payments, as documented in Section 72(t)(2)(A)(iv) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Plan and stick to the initial distribution schedule. When you establish this plan, you are agreeing to a fixed annual distribution for at least five years, or until age 59 1/2, whichever is longer.
If you change the amount of the agreed upon yearly payment, or add additional funds to the account, you will be subject to an early-withdrawal penalty for all the distributions you received prior to age 59 1/2.
Bottom line: Mistakes with rollovers, retirement plan inheritances and 72(t) distributions can be very costly. If you are considering any of the options discussed in this column, and you don’t think you understand these regulations, consider using the services of a qualified financial planner before making major decisions.
Elliot Raphaelson welcomes your questions and comments at raphelliot@gmail.com.
Trump Accounts are now open — and should be viewed on a financial, not political, basis.
There’s an old saying: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!” It applies to this newly created product, designed to build assets and an interest in investing for young children.
With the official launch on July 4, if you have a child under the age of 18, you should investigate the opportunity — regardless of your politics.
If you have a child born between Jan 1, 2025 and Dec. 31, 2028, you are eligible for a special $1,000 bonus from the government. The child will need his or her own Social Security number to qualify.
This investment is designed to grow funds for your child, not to support a political party or the president. Keep your emotions in check and look at the financial reality.
Smart money philanthropists, including Michael Dell and Ray Dalio, have set up foundation money to contribute to Trump Accounts on behalf of children of low-income families. The money in the accounts will be invested in broad-based stock market index funds, designed to track the growth of the American economy.
How to get started
The website for these accounts is TrumpAccounts.gov. There you will follow simple steps to set up an account for your child, or separate accounts for each child. The first step is to fill out IRS Form 4547. There is a link to do that at the website.
Note: This is an IRS form, so you will need to have established an Id.me account to access your IRS account. The only other information needed is your child’s name, address and Social Security number.
You’ll then receive an activation email to finalize the account. You’ll also want to download the app at TrumpAccounts.gov that allows you to track the account and the investments you add to it.
A total of $5,000 can be contributed to each child’s account, each year. The money can come from family, friends and employers. (Contributions of up to $2,500 per child toward the $5,000 limit are not treated as income to the parent/employee.)
Parents or legal guardians open and manage the account, maintaining control until the child turns 18. The money inside the account grows tax-deferred until it is withdrawn.
Withdrawing money from a Trump account
The money must stay in the Trump Account until the child reaches the age of 18. At that point it is designed to be used for a child’s future goals such as higher education or starting a business. (There may be penalties for early withdrawal or for some uses of the funds.) At withdrawal, ordinary income taxes may be triggered.
Comparison with 529 plans
A child can have both a 529 college savings plan and a Trump Account. But you should understand the differences.
With a 529 plan there is a far higher contribution limit than the $5,000 per year for a Trump Account. Parents, grandparents and others can contribute substantial amounts to the 529 plan, with limits set by each state.
Money comes out of the 529 plan tax free if it is used for educational expenses — unlike Trump Accounts, from which withdrawals are taxable as described above.
And if the child doesn’t need all the money in a 529 plan, perhaps because of scholarships, the money can be used by other children in the family. Or up to $35,000 in excess 529 plan funds can be converted over a few years into a Roth IRA on a tax-free basis. Trump Accounts do allow Roth conversions, but they may trigger taxes.
Bottom line
If you are in a position to save for your child or grandchild’s college education, a 529 college savings plan offers the opportunity for much larger tax-free growth of funds toward that goal. But there is no reason, assuming you can afford it, not to have both accounts — a significant bet on both your child’s future and the future of America. And that’s the Savage Truth.
Terry Savage is a registered investment adviser and the author of four bestselling books, including “The Savage Truth on Money.” Terry responds to questions on her blog at TerrySavage.com.
A growing number of Americans are turning to side hustle businesses to keep up with inflation and supplement their income. But some cities have more people embracing these extra jobs than others.
While side businesses are being launched by every generation, Gen Z is especially busy with them. A 2025 survey by Intuit showed that two-thirds of people between the ages of 18 and 35 have started or plan to start a side hustle as an additional source of income.
So it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that cities which attract younger people are especially side-hustle intense.
The Top City for Side Hustles
Plasma, a financial technology company that offers stablecoin-based accounts, ran the numbers on where the most people are incorporating side hustles into their week — and what jobs are proving the most popular. Miami was the clear leader, with 21,422 people with side hustles per 100,000 residents.
Statewide in Florida, there are more than 3.1 million people who have a side gig, making it the fifth largest in side-hustle popularity per capita, according to the report. Texas took top honors in that particular ranking with 13,181 people with side hustles per 100,000.
Atlanta was the second busiest city when it came to residents with side gigs, though its numbers underline Miami’s lead over the rest of the nation. Out of every 100,000 residents in the Georgia capital, 11,876 currently have a side hustle. Statewide, nearly 1.2 million people do, ranking the Peach State ninth nationwide.
In terms of sheer numbers, California had the most people taking part in side gigs, with more than 3.5 million. When adjusted for percentage of total population, though, the state only ranked 11th nationally.
Delivery and rideshare side gigs were the overwhelming favorite in most of the 20 cities on the list, leading 17 cities.
Here’s how the Top 10 shook out:
Miami
Atlanta
Los Angeles
New York City
Nashville, Tennessee
Dallas
Denver
Washington, D.C.
Chicago
Boston
Choosing the Best Side Business for You
If you’re looking for ideas on a side hustle business to start, Intuit has some helpful research on which side businesses are most in demand by city.
For instance, personal fitness and vacation rentals side hustles are in high demand in Panama City, Florida, while online tutoring side gigs were in high demand in Miami, Houston, and Huntsville, Alabama.
Quite a few well-known companies got started as side hustles, including Groupon, Twitter, Craigslist, and Instagram (which started as an app for whiskey lovers). So you may eventually turn your side gig into a full-time business.
Many experts and entrepreneurs recommend hanging onto your full-time job for as long as you can while building your business on the side, in order to give yourself a longer runway (and hang onto benefits like health insurance). That requires a high level of self-discipline.
“Time management is a significant issue, particularly if you’re juggling a side hustle with a full-time job,” says Josh Jones, chief revenue officer at Kapitus, a New York-based small business lender told Inc. earlier this year. “To address this, setting a realistic schedule and sticking to it should be the number one goal. This disciplined approach will help you make steady progress without becoming overwhelmed.”
Shopping for furniture or a new car is fun, or at least it can be. Shopping for long-term care insurance is, well, less fun.
But it’s an exercise you may need to go through eventually, given that Medicare won’t cover the cost of long-term care. And if you don’t buy insurance, you could face very high costs, depending on the type and amount of care you need.
Data from CareScout puts the yearly median cost of a nonmedical in-home caregiver at $80,080 in 2025. For assisted living, you may be looking at $74,400 a year.
Gasping already? Wait, it gets worse. If you end up needing a nursing home, you could be looking at $114,975 a year for a shared room and $129,575 per year for a private room. And these are just typical costs. Reading between the lines, if you want a few extra amenities at a nursing home or assisted living facility, you could pay even more. You might also pay more by virtue of your ZIP code.
That’s why it’s a good idea to put long-term care insurance in place. But it’s also important to buy it at the right age and approach that decision strategically at different ages.
Buying long-term care insurance at 50
Age 50 marks a major retirement-planning milestone: you can start making catch-up contributions to an IRA or 401(k). Reaching that age might also prompt you to consider long-term care insurance. But you may have one big question on your mind: Am I starting too soon?
Michael Murray, AIF, CPFA, and president at Peabody Wealth Advisors, says no.
“The window between 50 and 60 is really the sweet spot for long-term care planning,” Murray insists. “You’re still insurable, premiums are manageable, and you’re making a proactive decision rather than a reactive one.”
Phillip Battin, president and CEO of Ambassador Wealth Management, agrees.
“Consumers in their early 50s are generally in the best position to secure coverage because premiums are lower and underwriting is more favorable,” he says. “At that stage, buyers should focus on affordability over the long term and whether inflation protection is sufficient to keep pace with rising care costs decades into the future.”
Inflation is an extremely important factor to be mindful of when buying long-term care insurance at or around 50, since healthcare costs can rise faster than average costs. CareScout found that the median cost of assisted living rose 5% between 2024 and 2025 alone.
When reviewing your policy options, check for an inflation rider or cost-of- living adjustment. Just know that the more generous the inflation adjustment, the higher your premiums might be.
The tricky thing is that at 50, you may be in good enough health that it’s hard to imagine ever being in a position where you’d need long-term care.
But Murray says that attitude could lead you to delay an extremely important financial decision.
“Many Gen X families are already experiencing long-term care firsthand, helping aging parents while still supporting their children,” he says. “Most people don’t think about long-term care until they’re in the middle of it with a parent or loved one. By then, the options are usually more limited and more expensive.”
Buying long-term care insurance at 55
Many Gen Xers in their mid-50s are already facing an uphill battle with retirement planning. A good 54% think they won’t be financially prepared to stop working when the time comes, according to Northwestern Mutual.
Given that only 16% of Gen Xers feel they’ve saved enough for retirement, according to Schroders, this cohort generally isn’t in a strong position to self-insure for long-term care. So if you’ve reached your mid-50s without a particularly robust nest egg, it’s important to look at long-term care insurance options sooner rather than later, Murray says.
“Gen X is arguably the most exposed generation when it comes to long-term care,” Murray explains. “They have fewer pensions, less margin for error, and more competing financial priorities.”
Even scarier is that Murray is seeing more and more cases where just a few years of care can erase decades of savings.
On a positive note, age 55 is by no means “late” in the context of buying long-term care coverage. Pattin calls it the “sweet spot.”
“Prospective buyers should ask themselves an important question,” Battin says. “If they delay another five or 10 years, will coverage still be affordable, or obtainable at all? Health changes can quickly impact eligibility, and delaying the decision can significantly increase premiums.”
Findings from the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (AALTCI) underscore the importance of signing up early. The group found that in 2024, the average annual premium for a $165,000 policy with no inflation adjustment was $950 for a single male when purchased at age 55. That same policy purchased at age 60 carried a $1,200 premium instead. At 65, it spiked to $1,700.
Buying long-term care insurance at 60
At age 60, long-term care premiums can start to soar. But it’s certainly not too late to buy a comprehensive policy, Battin insists.
At that point, though, Battin says the conversation shifts from optimization to risk management.
“Underwriting standards typically become more stringent, premiums increase significantly, and buyers may be forced to balance desired coverage levels with overall affordability,” he cautions.
Battin also says that some buyers at 60 may want to consider hybrid life and long-term care policies.
“These products appeal to many consumers because they address the ‘use it or lose it’ concern associated with traditional standalone long-term care insurance,” he explains. “If care is needed, the policyholder can access benefits to help cover expenses. If not, beneficiaries still receive a death benefit.”
As with buying a traditional long-term care policy, if you’re considering hybrid coverage, Battin suggests favoring insurance that offers an inflation rider.
Even at 60, “Without that protection, policyholders risk purchasing coverage today that may be inadequate when they actually need care,” he insists.
Buying long-term care insurance at 65
If you’re first starting to shop for long-term care insurance at 65, you may be a little late to the party.
As Battin explains, “By age 65, long-term care insurance becomes a far more selective and expensive purchase. Approval is no longer guaranteed, and many applicants face significantly higher premiums or outright declines due to health conditions.”
Battin also warns that if you’re buying long-term care coverage for the first time at 65, you may end up “forced into partial self-funding strategies or reduced coverage levels.”
That may explain why only 15% of U.S. adults ages 65 and over have long-term care insurance, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. That’s a problem, because an estimated 70% of adults who reach age 65 end up needing some type of long-term care.
The AALTCI also reports a denial rate of about 38% among people who apply for long-term care insurance between ages 65 and 69.
“Unfortunately, this is also the age when the financial consequences of inaction become most apparent,” Battin says.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth applying at 65. You may just need to gear up to pay more.
Apply sooner if you want that coverage
Although buying long-term care insurance in your 50s means paying those premiums for more years, waiting is clearly risky. If you’ve saved millions and can fall back on self-insuring, you might consider waiting. Otherwise, you may want to make long-term care insurance shopping a priority during the first half of your 50s, along with boosting retirement plan contributions and paying off debt.
“Long-term care planning is one of the most overlooked components of retirement preparation, and, if ignored, can also be one of the most financially disruptive,” Battin says. “The cost of waiting is often far greater than the cost of planning.”
You never know what will strike a chord with readers — be it credit cards, allowances, buying a teen a car or Trump Accounts. That’s why I like to share readers’ thoughts, questions and concerns in this column from time to time.
In this marketplace of ideas, most of the feedback I receive is positive, occasionally urging me to dig deeper on a particular topic — like this comment from John Ahern after my recent column on whether purchasing life insurance for your child is worth the money.
“Life insurance is actually death insurance, but misnamed for marketing purposes,” he said. “Perhaps the parent should consider using the funds toward getting better and more comprehensive healthcare insurance for the child instead of getting paid if the child dies.”
Several readers wondered if the new Trump Accounts that provide $1,000 for eligible children born between 2025 and 2028 will be expanded. “I was offered to open one for my child while filing my taxes this year,” one reader said. “My daughter was born in 2011, so I thought it a bit odd.”
Even if your child is born outside the eligibility window, you can still open an account. You’re just not eligible for the kickstart from Uncle Sam. Still, you never know if the eligibility rules will change, especially given the politics at play.
My recent column about young summertime entrepreneurs coming up with a catchy slogan to promote their business elicited a lot of interesting feedback from readers who shared their favorite slogans.
“Years ago, my former wife and I did a cross-country tour, supporting ourselves by washing windows for businesses,” said Marc Lebovitz. “Our slogan, on makeshift business cards, was ‘Your pane is our pleasure.’ We didn’t do that many windows, but got lots of chuckles!”
And this one from Colleen Meredith: “I always enjoy a clever use of words in advertising,” she said. “My sister always said that the Nike slogan should have been ‘Just Look Like You Do It.’ ”
Jane Burton offered this keeper: “The best slogan I ever saw was for a septic pumping service. It was, “We’re No. 1 in the No. 2 business!”
Finally this gem from Stuart Rudy: “I was a woodworker for years, producing scores of unique wall pieces, using only the ‘natural colors of the wood’ rather than paint,” Rudy said. “Although it was just a hobby, I had many showings in the Chicago area, so I needed a business card. I called my little endeavor ‘Wooden Hue.’ ”
Readers always have something to say about allowances. “We started giving our daughters allowances — now 23 and 33 — when they turned 3,” wrote Keith Gatling. “Why that age? Because that was when they started Sunday school and got their own little offering envelopes. We wanted the money they gave to be theirs from their own banks and not simply money that we gave them to put in the envelope.”
On the importance of teaching kids’ money smarts: “Schools should definitely start teaching this in class, along with classes in plumbing, electrical, etc.,” said Elaine Kujawa. “Finally got my 27-year-old grandson to invest his large savings so he can retire like his father. My son did at age 56.”
Questions, comments, column ideas? Send an email to sbrosen1030@gmail.com.
In a world of keyboards, voice memos, and AI-generated notes, the most powerful tool available to women founders might be sitting in a drawer collecting dust — their pen.
I write my daily task list by hand every single morning because my neurospicy brain requires it. If it is not written down, it does not exist. Out of sight, out of mind is a symptom of ADHD. Also, our brains are not file cabinets.
What I did not know until recently is that writing with pen and paper, even something as simple as a to-do list, does something far more significant than keeping me organized. It actually changes how my brain works.
The science behind that is worth every woman founder’s attention.
What happens in your brain when you write by hand
In 2024, researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology published a landmark study in Frontiers in Psychology that measured brain activity in 36 university students while they handwrote and typed the same words. The difference was striking.
When participants wrote by hand, their brains lit up across multiple regions at once. Areas linked to attention, memory, language and sensory processing all worked together. When they typed the same words, that cross-brain activity all but disappeared.
“Handwriting activates more connections across these different dimensions compared with typing,” said cognitive researcher Robert Wiley.
A 2025 review in the medical journal Life looked at 30 brain imaging studies comparing handwriting and typing and found the same thing. Writing by hand engages the parts of your brain responsible for movement and spatial awareness in ways typing simply does not.
The physical act of forming each letter by hand — including the pressure, the movement, and the feel of it — creates a connection between your hand and your brain that makes information stick. When you write by hand, your brain works harder. When you type, it takes a shortcut.
Why this matters for women founders specifically
The cognitive benefits of writing by hand match almost perfectly onto the skills women founders use every day and the ones that are hardest to sustain under pressure.
Memory and retention matter when you are carrying the entire context of your business in your head — every client relationship, deadline and strategic decision.
Attention and focus matter when you are a solopreneur with no one to filter the noise. Creative problem-solving matters when you are the only person in the room responsible for figuring out what comes next.
The Frontiers in Psychology study found that the brain connectivity produced by handwriting is specifically linked to the kind of deep cognitive processing that supports learning, creativity, and long-term memory formation.
Typing, on the other hand, engages surface-level processing. You get the words down, but the thinking stays shallow.
For women founders who are constantly context-switching between client work, business development, marketing and operations, shallow thinking is a liability. Deep thinking is the whole game.
Lexus has provided many wins over the years for consumers, chief among them being sedan success with the IS.
Regardless of what others say, this is not an upscale Toyota Camry. The Lexus IS adds the luxurious flare consumers demand and provides power and style while maintaining comfort, exactly what Lexus consumers demand.
With a history of dependability and excellent resale value, the Lexus brand continues to deliver to its buyers, and the 2026 Lexus IS 350 F Sport is no different.
Packed with plenty of power from its 3.5-liter V-6 engine producing 311 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque, the Lexus IS 350 F Sport has no problem getting up and going. Paired with an eight-speed automatic transmission and rear wheel drive, this sedan is ready to run.
On our tester, we noticed a slew of standard and upgrade features. Dual exhaust, F-SPORT suspension tuning, LED headlamps and rain-sensing wipers were just a few of the standard features. We also saw 19-inch BBS forged alloy wheels, triple beam headlights, Mark Levinson premium audio, power moonroof, and upgraded technology safety features such as front-cross traffic alert, lane-change assist and traffic jam.
And since it’s a Lexus, we have to mention the comfort and sportiness. Its overall stance, leather F Sport seats, aluminum F Sport pedals and ambient illumination make the IS 350 a really great sedan option for those in the luxury market.
All in all, the Lexus IS 350 F Sport is an icon in the luxury sedan market. Its unique design and upscale features make it stand out from the competition.
Additionally, for a luxury sedan with a base price under $50K, the Lexus IS 350 F Sport is easily the one that deserves to be in your garage.
Grasso’s Garage is here for you! Are you in the market for a new car? I would be happy to provide my honest input. All you have to do is email me: marc.grasso@ bostonherald.com.
MSRP: $47,950
MPG: 19 city / 27 highway / 23.1 as tested
As tested: $57,688
Mercedes-Benz is reaching for an increasingly familiar playbook in the luxury auto market: evolve aggressively without starting over.
The automaker recently unveiled a round of updates to its midsize GLE and flagship GLS sport-utility vehicles at its sprawling plant near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, underscoring a strategy increasingly common among automakers.
For the 2027 model year, the GLE lineup will continue to span a notably wide spectrum, from the entry-level GLE 350, powered by a 255-horsepower turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder, to the range-topping AMG GLE 63 S+ mild hybrid with a twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V-8 producing 603 horsepower.
The GLE comes in a choice of traditional SUV and coupe body styles, while the larger Mercedes-Benz GLS comes strictly as a three-row SUV. Buyers can choose between the 375-horsepower GLS 450, equipped with an inline-six, and the more muscular 530-horsepower GLS 580. And, in keeping with modern luxury-market expectations, all-wheel drive comes standard.
For both lines, Mercedes is refreshing the technology suite and subtly reworking the exterior design. Both have been on the market since 2020 and received their first refresh in 2023. Traditionally, 2027 would see the debut of an all-new generation. But soaring development costs and an uneven transition to electric vehicles has Mercedes-Benz playing the field more cautiously. So, they are undergoing a second major facelift designed to keep profitable models competitive without the expense of a ground-up redesign.
The German automaker is also preparing a major manufacturing shift in the U.S., with plans to begin scaling production of its compact GLC SUV at the company’s plant in Alabama by 2029. The move is tied to a $4 billion investment designed to bring assembly of its bestselling SUV to America, reducing the company’s exposure to rising American import tariffs as Mercedes-Benz builds vehicles in the markets where they sell, allowing the company to use local suppliers to satisfy local tastes.
It comes as Mercedes-Benz abandons producing one mode worldwide, as flexibility has become the new corporate survival strategy. The reason is volatility, not just in consumer sentiment but also in the global economy.
“You cannot build a strategy today that perfectly predicts where the market will be tomorrow,” said Mathias Geisen, member of the company’s board of management for sales and customer experience. Oil prices have risen sharply recently, reshaping the economics of electric versus combustion vehicles almost overnight. Geopolitical disruptions, energy costs, government incentives and charging infrastructure can all alter consumer choices faster than traditional automotive planning cycles can handle.
“Unfortunately, we live in a less globalized world than some years ago, so you have to be very specific in what you offer for different markets,” Geisen said. “In the past, let’s say, five years, 10 years back, we would have developed one technology for the world. It’s impossible now.”
That uncertainty is forcing automakers into a delicate balancing act of running multiple powertrains through the same production line. While it adds complexity and cost, Mercedes-Benz is willing to absorb that inefficiency in exchange for agility.
“Two or three years ago, we decided we cannot rely upon hoping that specific regulations will kick in. We have got to make sure that our strategy is flexible enough to adjust whatever it is right, and that creates more complexity on our end,” Geisen said. “Our customers tell us what they want, and we’ve got to make sure that we have it available. If you don’t have it available, a competitor will.”
Consider the Mercedes-Benz CLA sedan.
Beneath the sleek exterior is a flexible architecture capable of supporting either an internal combustion engine or a fully electric powertrain, a strategy that reflects the automaker’s increasingly pragmatic approach to electrification. In Europe, where orders for the new CLA is strong, executives say the majority of buyers are gravitating toward the electric version, including many who had not initially planned to purchase an EV at all.
The lesson, Mercedes believes, is that consumers can be persuaded less by ideology than by desire.
“If you build a vehicle compelling enough,” Geisen said, “customers stop asking whether it’s electric and start deciding whether they want it in their driveway.”
That distinction is critical for luxury brands navigating an uneven global transition away from gasoline engines. Rather than forcing customers toward electrification through discounts or inventory pressure, tactics that can erode resale values and dilute a premium brand’s cachet, Mercedes is attempting to create what executives describe internally as a pull effect — that is, vehicles attractive enough in design, technology and pricing that consumers willingly make the leap.
The alternative, Geisen acknowledges, is costly. Pushing excess vehicles into the market can damage margins, weaken residual values and ultimately undermine brand equity, a particularly dangerous outcome in the luxury segment, where perception is often as valuable as the product itself.
“Two or three years ago, we decided we cannot rely upon hoping that specific regulations will kick in. We have got to make sure that our strategy is flexible enough to adjust whatever it is right, and that creates more complexity on our end. Our customers tell us what they want, and we’ve got to make sure that we have it available. If you don’t have it available, a competitor will.”
Mathias Geisen, Mercedes-Benz board of management for sales and customer experience member
With 420 horsepower and a satisfying roar, the 6.2-liter pushrod V-8 engine under the hood of my 2026 Cadillac Escalade Platinum Sport tester would usually be my obsession.
But eight is a trivial number in the Platinum Sport model.
What has my attention in the Platinum Sport are the dozens of buttons that operate a cornucopia of automatic functions on this rolling condominium: auto doors, seats, tailgate, drawers, TV screens and Super Cruise hands-free driving. At $131,000, Platinum Sport is an expensive automobile — but an affordable condo.
Let’s start in back and move forward. Our first button is the functional Cadillac shield on the rear tailgate.
Press it and the rear hatch automatically opens, revealing a palatial, 121 cubic-feet of space with the third-row seats down for your cargo (142 cubic-feet if you option the Extended Stretch Vehicle (ESV)). How big? Throw a mattress topper back there in the ESV model, and you’ll have the dimensions of a king-size bed — about 7 1/2 feet of length. Not a bad hotel bed if you’re towing, say, your race car to a track weekend.
Push twin buttons under the right rear hatch, however, and the third-row seats (split 60/40) automatically deploy for one of the most comfortable third rows in the segment. For its latest generation mega-utes (including the Chevy Tahoe/Suburban and GMC Yukon), General Motors changed to a space-efficient independent rear suspension, freeing more footwell room (compared to a solid-axle Toyota Sequoia).
That means my knees weren’t under my chin — and my 6-foot-5 frame could enjoy the 35 inches of third-row legroom (more than the Cadillac CT4 sedan’s second row).
Better yet, I could convert the second-row seat into an ottoman and get some work done on my laptop. Just pull the tab (OK, technically not a button) at the base of the second-row captain’s chair and it automatically flops forward into ottoman mode.
Want to exit the third row? Push the button on the Caddy’s C-pillar and the second-row seat pivots forward. Or exit via the center aisle like an airplane (though if you’ve optioned the Escalade’s rear refrigerator, the aisle will be blocked).
Pull the big silver tab on the door armrest and the rear power doors swing open. Power doors — standard on the Platinum trim — are especially useful in parking lots since they will automatically stop shy of nearby objects (cars, trash cans). All that’s missing is a red carpet.
Row two brings more amenities.
I climbed into my (fridge-less) model and pressed the button on the back of the front center console — revealing twin cupholders. I secured my Snapple bottle, pressed a button to heat my rear seat, then turned on the 12.6-inch screen on the back of the front seat and accessed the YouTube app to watch the 12 Hours of Sebring. I pulled the wireless headphones (Bluetoothed to my phone) from the seat pocket and slipped them on.
The front seats are accessed with power doors as well. Squeeze the button on the side of the handle, and the big door swings open at the same time a step automatically deploys from below the rocker panel for easy access. Much appreciated, says wee Mrs. Payne.
Hop inside, pull the door handle tab, and the door automatically closed behind me.
A massive 38-inch screen housing three displays arches across the dash from A-pillar to A-pillar. The far-right screen — like the twin screens in the second row — can be used for video, games and other passenger programming. The other two screens are for the driver.
I punched the Android Auto apps icon, and Google Maps took over the center screen.
“Navigate to Zmash Padel, Sterling Heights, Michigan,” I barked, and the route filled the display complete with lush Google Earth details. Escalade’s electric twin, the Escalade IQ, uses Google Built-in rather than Android Auto/Apple CarPlay so it can integrate Google Maps with charging station stops. Map directions are also projected to the instrument and heads-up display in front of me.
The steering wheel is your button-palooza:
Steering-wheel left spoke rocker button to select my instrument display of choice (Google Maps View, Super Cruise View, rpm/mph view)
Button behind the right spoke for radio volume
Button behind the left spoke for radio station selection
Rocker button for adaptive cruise control
Button to activate Super Cruise
Entering I-75, I pulled the rearview mirror button for a full 360-degree view behind the boat. I set ACC to 75 mph, and the steering wheel glowed green, indicating that my land yacht was on autopilot. I took my hands off the wheel and grabbed a Snapple with my right hand. With my left, I pulled on the turn signal and Escalade steered automatically into the middle shipping lane.
From there, I let Super Cruise do its thing. When it sensed slower traffic ahead, it moved automatically to the left lane. Like Tesla’s Autopilot, Super Cruise is nervous about pulling back into the right lane after passing, so I often had to prod it with the right stalk.
Exiting I-75, Escalade turned driving duties back to me. As it did on I-696 West on my drive later in the day to 910 AM in Southfield.
I-696 was under construction, with only the eastbound lanes open … for, ahem, westbound traffic. Super Cruise is mapped only for properly functioning east- and westbound lanes, so only ACC was available for my route.
All these buttons make the Escalade Platinum a supreme road trip vehicle. It relieves trip fatigue for passengers and drivers alike. For all its luxury, the big Caddy is still a driver’s car. Below decks is GM’s superbly engineered truck chassis paired with adjustable shocks. I took the long way home over Oakland County’s two-lane roads.
I pressed the drive mode (on the left dash) to sport, which stiffened the springs and maximized the 10-speed automatic transmission’s gear ratios. Exiting a corner onto a long straightaway, I pressed the biggest button of all — the accelerator pedal at the end of my lead foot.
Price: $93,995, including $2,895 destination charge ($131,370 AWD Platinum Sport as tested)
Powerplant: 6.2-liter V-8
Power: 420 horsepower, 460 pound-feet of torque
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Performance: 0-60 mph, 6.0 seconds (Car and Driver)
Towing capacity: 8,000 pounds
Fuel economy: EPA 14 mpg city/18 highway/16 combined
When Rush settles in for a sold-out four-night stand at United Center beginning July 16, it will mark the first time the band plays Chicagoland without long-standing anchor Neil Peart. The drummer died at age 67 from brain cancer in early 2020, less than five years after the group’s last area appearance.
Though many fans believed Peart’s death spelled the end for Rush, whose most recent studio album (“Clockwork Angels”) was in 2012, co-founding members Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson shocked nearly everyone last fall when they announced the “Fifty Something Tour.” Anika Nilles accepted the challenge of manning the drum kit. Rush is also bucking tradition by employing an auxiliary musician, Loren Gold, on keyboards and backing vocals.
Personnel changes aside, the upcoming shows build on a local legacy equaled by few artists. Since performing in early October 1974 as an opener for the bands Steppenwolf and Canned Heat at the long-forgotten Oak Brook Forum, Rush has logged upwards of four dozen concerts spanning the city, suburbs, Elgin and Rockford. The frequency speaks to the trio’s consistency, popularity and deep ties to the blue-collar Midwest — the region responsible for helping the Toronto-based collective break through outside its native Canada and land a major-label deal.
Here’s a deeper dive into some of Rush’s rich regional history, in 10 concerts.
Fremd High School in Palatine (April 19, 1975)
Rush evolved from an underage covers act into an original band by woodshedding on school campuses around Toronto during its formative 1968-1974 era. Fittingly, the trio supported Kiss (promoting its “Dressed to Kill” LP) at a northwestern suburban high school. Sponsored by the Vikings Booster Club as a fundraiser, the somewhat unorthodox gig cost $4.50 and ran from 7:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Fresh off making “Fly by Night,” its sophomore album and first effort with Peart, Rush was already acclimated with the area. The trio had opened for Aerosmith three weeks earlier at Aragon, a venue it first visited with Rory Gallagher the previous November. Seizing every opportunity to expand its reach, Rush circled back with Kiss in May for a concert at a sports gym at Lewis University in Romeoville.Armory in Rockford (Nov. 15, 1975)
As was typical of burgeoning rock bands in the mid-1970s, Rush pumped out its second LP (“Caress of Steel”) in the same calendar year and headed right back on the road. Kiss paired with Rush again in fall 1975. The Illinois National Guard Armory in Rockford (now listed on the National Registry of Historic Places) then doubled as a music venue and advance tickets ($6.50) were hawked at independent outlets such Co-op Tapes & Records with locations in Beloit, Dekalb and Rockford. An Auditorium Theatre show with Rainbow the following week got nixed due to Rush not being given enough room onstage, as well uncertainty over payment. After the band decided not to play, Lee and company trekked to the International Amphitheatre to watch Kiss. Two other confirmed Illinois dates followed in late 1975 — in Quincy, and at the Aragon with Blue Oyster Cult the day after Christmas. Next was a March 5, 1976, engagement at Randhurst Twin Ice Arena in Mount Prospect that went ahead despite an alleged ordinance prohibiting hard rock.
Auditorium Theatre in Chicago (Dec. 16, 1976)
After paying dues for almost a decade, Rush exploded with the sci-fi concept album “2112.” The band headlined a May 28, 1976, date that was cobbled together with little advance at Riviera Theatre, where an enthusiastic crowd spurred three encores. Rush was already too big for the Schaumburg nightclub B’Ginnings when it stopped there in late August, while a return to the Rockford Armory in November with hometown heroes Cheap Trick witnessed Lee and Lifeson whisked around the stage on a gurney. By the time Rush celebrated its widespread fame at a sold-out Auditorium Theatre concert — whose finale witnessed Lifeson sit atop the shoulders of nearly 7-foot-tall tour manager Michael “Lurch” Hirsh — the mainstream press picked up on the momentum. “This is music to sacrifice one’s mind and body to the God of Heavy Metal Rock to — damn the eardrums, damn the brain damage,” mused the Chicago Sun-Times. The reward? Another trip to Uptown on May 20-21, 1977, causing police to shut Lawrence Avenue down in both directions due to such commotion outside the Aragon Ballroom entrance.
International Amphitheatre in Chicago (Dec. 14-16, 1978)
Rush helped usher in 1978 with a trio of January shows that established a new attendance record at the Aragon Ballroom. Underlining how big it had become, the group closed the year with a jam-packed docket that involved three sold-out gigs at the International Amphitheatre. A mere $9.50 (or about $34 today) admitted you into the bygone Union Stock Yards building to hear Rush navigate some of its most complex fare, including the “Hemispheres” LP in its entirety, the complete “Cygnus X-1” and all but one part of the epic “2112” suite. Lee and Lifeson’s signature double-necked guitars, a percussive arsenal equipped with 23 microphones, more than 200 high-wattage lights and a cutting-edge sound system fueled the prog-rock excursions. Record-label executives even presented the band gold-record awards for “Hemispheres” on the second night.
Rosemont Horizon in Rosemont (Nov. 19-21, 1982)
New era, new venue, new album (“Signals”), “New World Tour.” The first of Rush’s cumulative total of four multi-night engagements during the ’80s at the bunker now known as Allstate Arena succeeded a “Chicago Jam II” festival appearance in August 1979 at a half-empty Comiskey Park, and a last hurrah at International Amphitheatre in 1981. Sandwiched in between: An early April 1980 residency at which the band became the first artist to sell out the latter facility for four nights. Promoting its Billboard Top 10 “Permanent Waves” record, Rush reigned amid a smoke-choked environment festooned with homemade banners strewn from balcony overhangs and held aloft by fans, who created them for a contest sponsored by WLUP-FM. Shiny and suburban, the atmosphere at Rosemont Horizon differed — with the group’s clean-cut looks, shortened locks and spiffy outfits mirroring the flair of its recent synth-dominant material.
World Music Theatre in Tinley Park (June 28, 1992)
The 101st and final concert of the “Roll the Bones Tour” occurred nearly eight months after Rush’s initial area stop at Rosemont Horizon. Renowned for their willingness to poke fun at themselves, the band members prompted laughter whether sending up their sentimental feelings or, in Peart’s case, surprising everyone by ripping off the bandana on his head to reveal a mohawk haircut he’d gotten shortly before the band hit the stage. During the encore, Lifeson fired a foam arrow at Peart and the drummer grabbed it and stuffed it in his mouth. Rollicking stuff from veterans who, on their next trip to the Chicago area in 1994, got slammed in a Tribune review for being “stuck in a time warp.”
World Music Theatre in Tinley Park (June 14, 1997)
No matter its name, the Tinley Park shed currently called the Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre has never been praised for its acoustics. The venue nevertheless was where Rush recorded most of its live album “Different Stages,” which almost functioned as the band’s coda. When Peart’s daughter died less than five weeks after the conclusion of the 1996-97 “Test for Echoes Tour,” the drummer told colleagues to consider him retired. (His wife died less than a year later.) A sad epitaph to outings at which Rush performed without an opener and staged the complete “2112” LP for the first time in its career. Fans here (and at the United Center on Oct. 28, 1996) were also treated to a whimsical array of kitchen implements — a refrigerator, toaster, blender and meat grinder included — standing in for Lee’s equipment backline. So began a clever tradition in which clothes dryers, rotisserie ovens, popcorn machines and other gadgets replaced the bassist’s conventional amp stacks.
Tweeter Center in Tinley Park (June 5, 2004)
An extended introduction starring comedian Jerry Stiller as a Rush super-fan set the tone for the seventh stop of the “R30 Tour,” which commemorated the 30th anniversary of the group dating to the release of its debut. Rush further acknowledged its roots with tunes that the teenage Lee and Lifeson used to study by listening to records on a turntable and following along on their instruments. The Who’s “The Seeker,” the Yardbirds’ “Heart Full of Soul,” Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” and the Robert Johnson staple “Crossroads” peppered a three-hour-plus set that touched on all but one of Rush’s albums and witnessed Peart nod to legendary jazz drummer Buddy Rich during an animated solo. The Tribune wrote that Rush had survived “the arrivals of punk, new wave, rap and grunge with its integrity, creativity and rabid fan base intact.”
Charter One Pavilion on Northerly Island (July 5 and Aug. 23, 2010)
Originally slated for early July, both area stops on the steampunk-oriented “Time Machine Tour” focused on the band playing its milestone “Moving Pictures” LP from start to finish. However, weather intervened at the outdoor venue, with strong winds on opening night scrapping pyrotechnic detonations and freezing the mobile “Spider” lighting rig in its tracks. The group nonetheless earned a rave from the Tribune, which lauded Lee, Lifeson and Peart for finding “space for new flourishes in their formidable arrangements.” A steady mix of breezy showers two days later created safety hazards, and though patrons were already huddled inside the gates and handed free ponchos, promoters postponed on short notice and issued rainchecks for late August.
First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park (June 28, 2013)
The Monday before Rush regaled Tinley Park with its string-ensemble-accompanied “Clockwork Angels Tour,” the Chicago Blackhawks scored two goals in 17 seconds toward the end of the third period en route to stunning the Boston Bruins and earning their second Stanley Cup in three seasons. On the following Friday, the team attracted more than 2 million people downtown for a blow-out celebration. Several hours later and about 30 miles to the south, Rush extended the hockey-themed revelry. Peart wore a hat adorned with logos of the NHL’s “original six” teams. Lee ribbed the audience and watched as a case opened to reveal a miniature Cup. The joke having landed as designed, the real Cup then emerged, with Blackhawks left winger Daniel Carcillo hoisting the trophy and inviting Lee and Lifeson to lay hands on it. As Peart, who rapped the Cup with his drumsticks, doubtlessly understood: timing is everything.
Bob Gendron is a freelance critic.
As you make progress on your summer reading, ask yourself: Do I really want to tackle “The Odyssey” this year? The Christopher Nolan-directed, star-jammed adaptation of the Greek epic arrives in movie theaters on July 17. And yet, do you want to lug Homer out to the beach this summer?
In need of encouragement?
The ideal person for that job is Mary Beard, professor emerita of classics at the University of Cambridge, and certainly the best-known ancient classicist in the world. She was in Evanston recently for a Chicago Humanities Festival talk at Northwestern University. We met near the beaches where Nolan, raised in Evanston, made Super 8 films as a child. She had long white hair and wore high-top sneakers covered in Batman comics word balloons. You might assume, at 71, with many, many books on Greco-Roman culture to her name — including “Pompeii,” “Pagan Priests,” “SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome,” “Confronting the Classics,” and her latest, “Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old,” inspired by a lecture series she gave at the University of Chicago in 2023 — that Beard is an advocate for ancient Greek and Roman literature.
And she is, though for the right reasons.
She said, “I deplore when people say stuff like you must read ‘The Odyssey,’ you must because it is textbook social history, and this and that — No! Just read it and enjoy it!”
Indeed, when we met, she was groaning to a friend about a question she was just asked, on how to square the study of Greek and Roman culture with the long “toxic” history of how its books, figures and aesthetics have been used in the service of fascism and racism. She bristled at that word, “toxic,” at teachers who erect roadblocks at the start.
“I mean, look, we don’t want to live like the ancients,” she said. “But there is a heavy burden placed on how much all of this stuff is to be admired or not. It’s never been clear to me where that comes from. We’d get so much more out of the ancient world if we could stop admiring it! If we could just stop revering everything about it! If we could just start asking: ‘What are these people even talking about, how do I feel about this?’”
“The Odyssey,” she said, is a perfect example of how ancient classics should not be read for grand truths and stoic takeaways but for how they question, dispute, debate.
“OK, so, we have Odysseus, our heroic leader, trying to make his way home, but he returns having lost all of his men. What kind of leader is that? If you’re alert to it, the book is asking this. Also, what kind of woman is Penelope, his wife — is she being clever trying to avoid marriage to a number of suitors? I say ‘suitors’ but these men are really thugs, who, mind you, she is sending little notes to! How do we understand the morality of these people? Take the cyclops. Odysseus invades the home of a one-eyed giant and drinks and eats, and the cyclops, a cannibal, eats a couple of Odysseus’s men, so Odysseus then gets the giant drunk and grinds out his eye. Who is in the right here? Are we certain where good and bad sit? That’s not Odysseus’s home! I’m not asking because we live in an enlightened society — the ancients raised those questions, too.”
In fact, though Homer is widely considered one of the foundational authors of literature, it’s never been settled entirely if the writer credited with “The Odyssey” existed. “People have theories,” Beard said. “The Greeks thought there was a poet named Homer, but we don’t know. And we don’t know when ‘The Odyssey’ was written down. It’s even hard to say when the book we can buy at a bookstore became the book we know. There’s debate. I don’t know where I stand. There’s a communal, oral bard tradition there — yet it’s so amazingly crafted I find it hard not to think an individual shaped it, start to finish.”
Beard credits her love for ancient classics to a chance event, the time a museum guard at the British Museum removed a 4,000-year old boomerang-shaped chunk of Egyptian bread out of a display case, so that Beard, five at the time, could examine it better, and smell it, and get a sense of just how ordinary ancient people could seem. As Beard came to know, ancient Greeks and Romans were ordinary, and also “completely weird.”
A leader might wear an ostrich head.
Greeks and Romans were not even sure what they looked like — without a mirror, which tended to owned only by the wealthy and powerful, they relied on placid pools of water.
On the other hand, like us, they didn’t always distinguish reality from fantasy.
A couple of days before we spoke, Elon Musk complained about casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. “There certainly can be a fuzzy boundary between mythology and reality in (ancient classics),” she said. “That’s true. But we have Musk saying Helen of Troy can not possibly be Black. And well, ‘The Odyssey’ is also a story. It didn’t happen. We should not confuse a mythological character with the people who actually lived. On the other hand, the Greeks did believe this was all historical, which is important to know. And there is a place called Troy. And Odysseus is going back to a place that does exist — there’s an Ithaca.
“But then, witches and whirlpools and one-eyed giants — those do no exist. People now, people then, people for thousands of years have been trying to plot Odysseus’s voyage in the real world. You know, some of the best minds in the world have wasted their time trying to do those things.
“But again, sorry — it’s fiction.”
As the Chicago Public Library Foundation — a nonprofit established in 1986 as the fundraising partner of the Chicago Public Library — celebrates 40 years, it does so with a new leader.
The foundation’s board of directors has appointed Eva Giglio as its new president and CEO. Joining the organization Aug. 12, Giglio will leave the executive director role at the CME Group Foundation to take up a mantle left behind after former leader Brenda Langstraat Bui died in February. Giglio said she knew Langstraat Bui and that stepping into the position she held for more than seven years is a bittersweet moment.
“It’s an honor to be stepping into this role and celebrating 40 years of impact and being able to carry on Brenda’s legacy,” Giglio said. “She did a lot of amazing work — built so many strong partnerships, she was an advocate for the libraries. I’ll continue that.”
Giglio, a Rogers Park native and mother of three, brings some 17 years of experience in education, government and philanthropy to the CPLF. She spent 13 years with Chicago Public Schools in administration and inside the classroom at Kenwood Academy, where she taught middle and high school students. Giglio oversaw the district’s five-year plan to reopen schools during the pandemic. At the CME Group Foundation, an education-based grant making funder from early childhood through college and career, Giglio directed an annual grant making budget of $6.5 million and launched a grant-making endeavor focused on Chicago girls’ mental health during her five-year tenure. Listed to Crain’s Chicago Business’s “40 Under 40” in 2024, Giglio will now oversee CPLF’s 2026 $7 million budget.
Giglio said her time in both areas taught her how to build systems to effectuate change and that she will bring all her experience to libraries. “It’s a big system, 82 branches of libraries across the city, but every community is unique and may have different programming needs,” Giglio said. “At the foundation, I was working more at the systems level with connecting nonprofits to institutions to have support over all the city, and now I’m thinking about that ability to leverage libraries, to support those as anchor institutions. I love that libraries provide a safe third space, connect communities, and find a lot of different opportunities for people to engage with them across the board. That’s what drew me to this role.”
While Giglio admits she doesn’t have a secret sauce on how she will approach her new responsibilities, she will be focused on prioritizing building relationships, reducing the literacy gap, engaging more youth in libraries, and making sure the growth of artificial intelligence doesn’t leave communities and learners behind.
“Brenda always said, ‘There was a foundation before us, and there will be a foundation after us. So, while we’re all here, let’s do the best work we can to help transform the lives of every Chicagoan,’ said Bob Wislow, CPLF’s interim managing director. “Eva, with her deep understanding of our foundation as a longtime funder, is uniquely positioned to carry Brenda’s energy, devotion, and legacy forward.”
Former CPS CEO Janice Jackson worked with Giglio at the education nonprofit Hope Chicago and CPS.
“She understands that real progress happens when institutions work together and when communities are at the center of the work,” Jackson said. “The Chicago Public Library Foundation is gaining a leader who knows how to build coalitions, unlock resources, and translate vision into impact for the people who need it the most.”
“It’s certainly about books, but it’s not only about books,” Giglio said of Chicago Public Libraries. “There’s so much opportunity there — it’s a place of safety, a place of creativity, really cool programming available. … People can find their path if they walk in those doors.”
As you make progress on your summer reading, ask yourself: Do I really want to tackle “The Odyssey” this year? The Christopher Nolan-directed, star-jammed adaptation of the Greek epic arrives in movie theaters on July 17. And yet, do you want to lug Homer out to the beach this summer?
In need of encouragement?
The ideal person for that job is Mary Beard, professor emerita of classics at the University of Cambridge, and certainly the best-known ancient classicist in the world. She was in Evanston recently for a Chicago Humanities Festival talk at Northwestern University. We met near the beaches where Nolan, raised in Evanston, made Super 8 films as a child. She had long white hair and wore high-top sneakers covered in Batman comics word balloons. You might assume, at 71, with many, many books on Greco-Roman culture to her name — including “Pompeii,” “Pagan Priests,” “SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome,” “Confronting the Classics,” and her latest, “Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old,” inspired by a lecture series she gave at the University of Chicago in 2023 — that Beard is an advocate for ancient Greek and Roman literature.
And she is, though for the right reasons.
She said, “I deplore when people say stuff like you must read ‘The Odyssey,’ you must because it is textbook social history, and this and that — No! Just read it and enjoy it!”
Indeed, when we met, she was groaning to a friend about a question she was just asked, on how to square the study of Greek and Roman culture with the long “toxic” history of how its books, figures and aesthetics have been used in the service of fascism and racism. She bristled at that word, “toxic,” at teachers who erect roadblocks at the start.
“I mean, look, we don’t want to live like the ancients,” she said. “But there is a heavy burden placed on how much all of this stuff is to be admired or not. It’s never been clear to me where that comes from. We’d get so much more out of the ancient world if we could stop admiring it! If we could just stop revering everything about it! If we could just start asking: ‘What are these people even talking about, how do I feel about this?’”
“The Odyssey,” she said, is a perfect example of how ancient classics should not be read for grand truths and stoic takeaways but for how they question, dispute, debate.
“OK, so, we have Odysseus, our heroic leader, trying to make his way home, but he returns having lost all of his men. What kind of leader is that? If you’re alert to it, the book is asking this. Also, what kind of woman is Penelope, his wife — is she being clever trying to avoid marriage to a number of suitors? I say ‘suitors’ but these men are really thugs, who, mind you, she is sending little notes to! How do we understand the morality of these people? Take the cyclops. Odysseus invades the home of a one-eyed giant and drinks and eats, and the cyclops, a cannibal, eats a couple of Odysseus’s men, so Odysseus then gets the giant drunk and grinds out his eye. Who is in the right here? Are we certain where good and bad sit? That’s not Odysseus’s home! I’m not asking because we live in an enlightened society — the ancients raised those questions, too.”
In fact, though Homer is widely considered one of the foundational authors of literature, it’s never been settled entirely if the writer credited with “The Odyssey” existed. “People have theories,” Beard said. “The Greeks thought there was a poet named Homer, but we don’t know. And we don’t know when ‘The Odyssey’ was written down. It’s even hard to say when the book we can buy at a bookstore became the book we know. There’s debate. I don’t know where I stand. There’s a communal, oral bard tradition there — yet it’s so amazingly crafted I find it hard not to think an individual shaped it, start to finish.”
Beard credits her love for ancient classics to a chance event, the time a museum guard at the British Museum removed a 4,000-year old boomerang-shaped chunk of Egyptian bread out of a display case, so that Beard, five at the time, could examine it better, and smell it, and get a sense of just how ordinary ancient people could seem. As Beard came to know, ancient Greeks and Romans were ordinary, and also “completely weird.”
A leader might wear an ostrich head.
Greeks and Romans were not even sure what they looked like — without a mirror, which tended to owned only by the wealthy and powerful, they relied on placid pools of water.
On the other hand, like us, they didn’t always distinguish reality from fantasy.
A couple of days before we spoke, Elon Musk complained about casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. “There certainly can be a fuzzy boundary between mythology and reality in (ancient classics),” she said. “That’s true. But we have Musk saying Helen of Troy can not possibly be Black. And well, ‘The Odyssey’ is also a story. It didn’t happen. We should not confuse a mythological character with the people who actually lived. On the other hand, the Greeks did believe this was all historical, which is important to know. And there is a place called Troy. And Odysseus is going back to a place that does exist — there’s an Ithaca.
“But then, witches and whirlpools and one-eyed giants — those do no exist. People now, people then, people for thousands of years have been trying to plot Odysseus’s voyage in the real world. You know, some of the best minds in the world have wasted their time trying to do those things.
“But again, sorry — it’s fiction.”
When visitors enter “Powering the Future,” a permanent exhibit that opened in May at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, they’re invited to place their hands on a solid wall of ice, then wave to an infrared camera that highlights their chilled palms and fingers in blue. One of many hands-on opportunities in the energy-themed exhibit, this activity helps illustrate how energy, in the form of heat, is transferred from the human body to the ice.
Developed with support from Exelon Foundation and ComEd, among other donors from the public and private sectors, “Powering the Future” provides an accessible introduction to the science underlying energy sources such as wind power, solar power, hydropower, bioenergy, geothermal power, nuclear power, coal and natural gas. The exhibit also explores the real-world effects of using these sources, looks ahead to future energy needs and features individuals and companies who are working toward innovative solutions.
“(Energy) is central to all life on Earth, it’s central to the existence of our universe, and it’s also central to how we live in our daily lives,” said Patricia Ward, the museum’s head scientist. “Science in our daily lives is one of our strategic pillars, and that’s really my North Star (regarding) how we think about content and experience development.”
One section of the exhibit features items that educate visitors about the mechanics required to harness different forms of energy, including a cross-section of a real wind turbine and a simulated nuclear uranium fuel bundle. Quartzite, metallurgical-grade silicon and polysilicon are displayed both in raw form and as part of the solar wafers and solar cells that are sandwiched together to form solar panels. A 1930s-era alcohol distillery illustrates the process of separating liquids into different components through heating, evaporation and condensation — a similar method to the distillation of crude oil into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
Also on display is a geothermal panel, which captures underground waste heat from buildings and garages to generate heat that can warm entire office buildings in winter. Invented by Northwestern University faculty member Alessandro Rotta Loria, the panel was donated to the museum by Enerdrape, a clean tech start-up that he cofounded in 2019.
Captions in English and Spanish acknowledge both the advantages and the downsides to specific energy sources — noting, for example, that natural gas burns relatively cleanly but its extraction and processing can cause serious environmental damage and carbon emissions that harm the climate. According to Ward, this balanced approach is intended to encourage a realistic outlook.
“We thought it was really important that even in the context of looking to the future and thinking about our energy mix and trying to be more sustainable and cleaner, we also recognize that there’s no single solution,” she said. “We are going to have a mix of energy sources for quite a long time, so we need to understand them and understand the pros and cons of each.”
The exhibit’s central space offers digital and analog activities geared toward a range of age groups. Visitors can design their own power grid by moving 3D-printed tokens across a digital tabletop display, creating pathways for power to travel from generators (hydroelectric dams, nuclear plants, wind farms, etc.) through transmitters and finally to consumers. Another station invites people to experiment with different appliances and energy sources in a model home, in order to learn about optimizing energy savings.
One eye-catching display, nicknamed the plasma trees, features five glass tubes containing argon gas and neon gas. By turning a crank, visitors can generate an electric signal that excites these gases to form a brightly lit plasma, which is a state of matter that naturally occurs in lighting and the Aurora Borealis. Other activities demonstrate the efficiency levels of gasoline-powered internal combustion engines versus electric vehicle motors and of gas burners versus induction stoves.
Attendees ages 5 through 12 can put their own abundant energy into motion by playing in a climbing area designed to evoke an electrical substation. Kids and adults alike can ride on the ComEd Coil, which encompasses two spiral slides, with single-story and multi-story options. The slides’ shape and name are inspired by the fact that a coil is “an element that you’ll find throughout different electrical scenarios,” Ward explained.
Beyond enjoying these kid-friendly features, Ward hopes that young people will learn about the diverse range of careers that are available in the energy sector. Placards throughout the exhibit highlight occupations such as meteorologist; data analyst; chemical or nuclear engineer; computer or materials scientist; power line, solar power or wind turbine technician, and plant safety manager.
“One of the things that we really are focused on is to help kids imagine the possibilities, see themselves, be inspired, see what they resonate with,” she said.
Ward also hopes that visitors of all ages will come away with a greater appreciation for the relationship between our energy systems and the natural world, which is the ultimate source of all energy harnessed by humans.
“I would love to see that people have made the connection: you look at a body of water, you look at a wind or solar farm, or whatever kind of power plant, and you realize that without the natural workings of the Earth’s interconnected systems, it’s not possible.”
Emily McClanathan is a freelance critic.
“Powering the Future” is included with general admission to the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, 5700 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive; $14.95-$25.95, griffinmsi.org/exhibits/powering-the-future
Once thought of as a quirky pursuit for retirees, bird- watching has exploded in popularity in recent years. Surveys show that nearly 1 in 3 Americans now partakes, with a notable spike among younger generations thanks in part to tech innovations like the Merlin Bird ID app, which takes the guesswork out of birdsong identification.
These seven podcasts can help beginners build a birding habit or help regulars enhance an existing one, whether offering expert advice on equipment and logistics, digestible facts about the more than 11,000 bird species worldwide, or stories about the psychological benefits of tuning in to the winged world.
‘Get Birding With Sean Bean’: British actor Sean Bean was once best known for his frequent on- screen deaths in action franchises like the “Lord of the Rings” and James Bond movies. More recently, he has found a niche with this charming podcast. “Get Birding” focuses on practical tips to help anyone start a hobby that’s both fun and healthful. Bean’s history is instructive: He began bird-watching during his teenage years in the northern English city of Sheffield, so he’s well placed to make it feel accessible and beginner-friendly. He’s joined by a variety of guests, including broadcasters, zoologists and conservationists, who share their stories of discovering peace and inspiration in birds with such enthusiasm that listeners may find it impossible to resist picking up their own binoculars.
Starter episode: “Garden Symphony”
‘The Science of Birds’: Despite what the title may suggest, there’s nothing dry or overly academic about “The Science of Birds,” a biweekly show offering entertaining deep dives into bird biology. It’s hosted by Ivan Phillipsen, a naturalist and zoology doctorate with a passion not just for his subject, but for teaching it in an engaging way. Topics vary; episodes can home in on a single bird species or family (like herring gulls or cuckoos), explore the birding habitats of different countries, or deal with phenomena like vagrancy (when an individual bird gets knocked off course and ends up far outside its typical migratory range). There are also shorter “Random Bird Thursday” episodes, in which Phillipsen spotlights an overlooked type of bird and packs as many facts as possible into a 15- to 20-minute window.
Starter episode: “Avian Navigation: How Birds Find Their Way”
‘How Many Geese?’: Though it’s a more irreverent pick than most of the shows on this list, “How Many Geese?” is nonetheless hosted by two experts, Jack Baddams, an ornithologist, and Roddy Shaw, an urban forestry specialist. The pair chew over bizarre bird and animal stories throughout history, like the U.S. government’s World War II-era plan to weaponize bats or all the times that animals have been put on trial (turns out, more than you’d think). On occasion they also tackle more serious topics, like the ecological impact of humans feeding birds. But the show’s signature segment comes toward the end of each episode, where one of the hosts must determine how many of a specific species they, personally, could take in a fight. The show recently concluded its run after 100 episodes, but there’s a deep back catalog of absurdist nature anecdotes and hypothetical fight clubs to enjoy.
Starter episode: “The Extended Nuclear Animals Universe”
‘Life List: A Birding Podcast’: This “birdy, proudly nerdy” series is hosted by an affable trio of experienced birders, who share conversations about their latest triumphs and frustrations out in the field, both close to home in the United States and on international trips. A “life list” refers to a personalized, cumulative list of all the species a bird-watcher has personally spotted, so bird identification is unsurprisingly a major theme of the show. The hosts — George Armistead, Alvaro Jaramillo and Mollee Brown — swap stories about rare sightings and lessons learned from failed searches. There’s a real sense of community and camaraderie born of mutual passion, which makes the show a pleasure to listen to.
Starter episode: “Birding the Eastern Himalayas, a Backyard Long-Eared Owl, and Safari Adventures With Jason Hall”
‘BirdNote Daily’: This bite-size series is a good way to learn something new about nature every day. Produced by BirdNote, a nonprofit media organization, each episode blends a fact-filled story about birds with soundscapes featuring recordings of birdsong and other nature sounds, delivering an atmospheric audio experience in under two minutes. This format makes “BirdNote Daily” feel more like a meditation than a typical podcast — a reminder to slow down and notice the natural world.
Starter episode: “House Wrens and Dummy Nests”
‘American Birding Podcast’: This audio series from the American Birding Association has been running for close to a decade, and it’s a must listen for any enthusiast. Featuring a rotating cast of ABA staffers alongside its regular host, Nate Swick (the education and digital content coordinator for the association), the show includes discussions of avian news, personal birding anecdotes, and interviews with scientists and conservationists. Some episodes focus more on the human stories than the avian ones as in one recent installment that spotlighted the concept of “spark birds,” which is birder speak for the particular species that converted them to the hobby.
Starter episode: “Saving Birds to Save the Planet With Scott Weidensaul”
‘The Field Guides’: Although this information-packed podcast has a broad focus on North American wildlife, it often zooms in on birds. In each monthly episode, the hosts Steve and Bill focus on a different species or natural phenomenon, breaking down the science behind it and sharing their expertise. Episodes often have a documentary feel, with the hosts recording audio from the field as they explore new settings and sometimes hunt for specific rare species like the Florida panther or the Central Park snowy owl. No matter your level of expertise, these immersive episodes offer a fascinating glimpse into the life of a naturalist.
Starter episode: “The Dawn Chorus (Part 1)”
In June 2015, two days before same-sex marriage was federally recognized, Hayley Kiyoko released her song “Girls Like Girls.”
At the time, Kiyoko was 24 and had built a fanbase from her acting roles in Disney Channel fare. But she was now putting out an explicitly sapphic song when she had come out as a lesbian only privately, to a few people in her life.
“I grew up seeing Ellen on the magazine cover, then getting her show canceled and the backlash,” Kiyoko said of Ellen DeGeneres’ 1997 “Yep, I’m Gay” Time magazine cover. “My examples of being authentic meant not being successful in your career. That was one-to-one to me, so it was very scary.”
In the 11 years since, however, Kiyoko has become a queer icon — her fans refer to her as Lesbian Jesus — and she has expanded “Girls Like Girls” into a multifaceted universe: first, by writing a 2023 young-adult novel based on the anthem’s music video, which became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, and now, by directing and co-writing its feature film adaptation.
The movie, now in theaters, is a dreamy drama that follows Coley, played by Maya da Costa, the new girl in a small town who is grappling with her developing feelings for Sonya, played by Myra Molloy. Neither teenager is out, and their coming-of-age in the 2000s coincides with their coming to terms with their sexuality. Zach Braff stars alongside the duo as Coley’s father.
“I have been driven to tell this story because I knew it needed to be told, and I knew that I was the one to do it,” Kiyoko, 35, said in a recent interview. “It felt like my purpose in life was to get this movie made.”
Kiyoko, who grew up in the Agoura Hills area of Los Angeles, fell in love with performing at an early age. Her mother, Sarah Kawahara, is a former professional figure skater and choreographer, and her father, Jamie Alcroft, is a comedian and voice actor.
As a child, Kiyoko played the drums and dreamed of joining “Stomp” or the Blue Man Group. Then, when she went to an ’N Sync concert in 2000, she decided, “I want to be a pop star,” she said. “I was like, ‘I want girls screaming.’ ”
At school, she was involved in a variety of leadership activities, but Kiyoko said she “had to learn how to project confidence to survive” as she spent her teen years hiding her sexuality.
“No one explicitly said, ‘Don’t come out,’ but the world made me feel that way,” she said, her voice catching. “I have a vivid memory of being 14 and being like, ‘I hope I live till 26.’ ”
The evolution of “Girls Like Girls” from a self-released song to a novel to a theatrical film is a testament to Kiyoko’s grit, said her fiancée, Becca Tilley, in a video interview.
“She doesn’t take no for an answer,” said Tilley, who appeared as a contestant on “The Bachelor” before meeting Kiyoko. “She’s like: ‘What’s the worst they can say? “No” five times? They’ll eventually say “yes” on the sixth.’”
In 2015, most outlets, Kiyoko said, declined to promote the “Girls Like Girls” music video, which the singer directed with Austin S. Winchell and features its female protagonists kissing.
“They used the words ‘risqué’ and ‘niche,’ ” she said. “Why do you call lesbians risqué? They’re just kissing.”
But soon after the video was released on YouTube, something unexpected happened — the views skyrocketed.
“I was doing a show in Lansing, Michigan, for 15 people in a bar,” Kiyoko said, “and the video hit 500,000 views. Then, it was a million, and we basically went up a million every week.”
“Girls Like Girls” had resonated with young women and girls who saw themselves in its lyrics, which stressed the mundanity of how “girls like girls like boys do, nothing new.” One of those was singer Gigi Perez of “Sailor Song” fame, who was 15 years old at the time and still grappling with her queerness in a conservative environment.
“It was overwhelming for me to experience such head-on representation,” Perez, 26, said in a video interview from her hometown, West Palm Beach, Florida. “I look at Hayley with such amazement because she did so much work to give people my age, people like me, the ability to feel comfortable. She let us know you can be yourself, and the water is fine.”
Weeks after the song’s release, Kiyoko signed with Atlantic Records, and she has continued to put out music with openly queer messaging.
Kiyoko had initially hoped to expand the “Girls Like Girls” video into a feature film, and she collaborated on a script with actor Stefanie Scott, who had starred in the “Girls Like Girls” music video. But the original deal fell through, and over the years, Kiyoko struggled to find producers willing to take a chance on her as a first-time feature director.
“The book was my Hail Mary because the movie wasn’t happening,” Kiyoko said. “My whole career has been out of necessity.”
After the success of the novel, Focus acquired the film rights to “Girls Like Girls” in 2024. Kiyoko pushed for the film to have an accompanying soundtrack — a rarity for a project of its size. Without the budget to license existing tracks, Kiyoko wrote and collaborated with queer artists, including Tegan and Sara, Snow Wife and Perez.
“Hayley is Wonder Woman,” said da Costa, one of the film’s young stars. “She worked on every area of this movie, from making a whole album, directing, being the voice of the audiobook that I listened to in my ear. She just cared so deeply about making this thing feel real and authentic and be her vision.”
Kiyoko is acutely aware that the box-office performance of “Girls Like Girls” could affect the chances that similar films will be made in the future. Americans’ support for LGBTQ+ rights has declined in the past decade, and Kiyoko said she felt “so much pressure to make sure that this is a success.”
“The hope is a queer kid in a red state or someone who has felt alone in their experience, even if they’re not queer, that they’ll feel seen,” she said.
Kiyoko now aims to make a career behind the camera her primary one, directing movies and TV shows and also creating their accompanying soundtracks.
She would like to adapt for the screen her 2025 novel, “Where There’s Room for Us,” which is set in an alternate reality of Victorian England.
And she might find a way to give “Girls Like Girls” yet another iteration: “I actually would love it to be a musical,” she said. “That would be a dream.”
Kiyoko then reflected on what she hoped would be the legacy of “Girls Like Girls.”
“This is not a thing that goes away; this is who we are,” she said. “I think that’s my goal in life: to normalize our experiences.”
There is much history to celebrate at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the oldest public rare book collection in the United States, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731.
Forty-five years older than the nation itself, the landmark nonprofit once extended borrowing privileges to delegates of the First and Second Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. It served as the research arm of a nascent American government before there was an official Library of Congress.
Now, as ever, it displays Franklin’s electrostatic machine and William Penn’s desk. But there’s also something a bit racier on the menu as the library celebrates the recent gift of 1,500 rare volumes illuminating centuries of attitudes on sex and the reproductive anatomy.
The sexuality collection is the latest donation by Charles E. Rosenberg, 89, an emeritus professor of the history of science at Harvard University, who has already bequeathed the library some 15,000 books on the social aspects of medicine, topics covered in six books he himself wrote. He described his latest gift as largely “how-to-run-your-sex-life books.”
“There’s definitely some graphic materials, but they’re not intended as pornographic,” said Rachel D’Agostino, the library’s curator of printed books.
The collection includes dozens of variations of what was once a cornerstone primer on sexuality, “Aristotle’s Masterpiece.” It was not really by Aristotle, and it was hardly a masterpiece, but the widely pirated, often questionably informed manual was in virtually continuous print for more than two centuries since its first anonymous publication in London in 1684.
Mary Fissell, a professor in the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, who is writing a book about the book, said the unknown author had posed as the Greek philosopher who gained a reputation (largely undeserved and not at all serious) in 17th- century England as a Dr. Ruth of antiquity. But the popularity of the underground bestseller waned when anti- vice crusader Anthony Comstock suppressed sex books in this country in the 1870s.
What Franklin might have thought about the sex books is not known, although he did reprint and publish a 1734 book by a Virginia doctor named John Tennent called “Every Man His Own Doctor: Or the Poor Planter’s Physician,” which offered a method of home abortion.
The latest Rosenberg gift includes sets of another rare book first published in London in the early 1700s, “Onania, or The Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution,” with warnings against masturbation.
The donation also includes many books on topics that today might be classified as LGBTQ+ life — one, on “Greek Ethics” bearing the plaintive scrawled inscription: “To Bob, if we had only lived then. Sincerely Phil.”
In all, the Library Company — once based in Independence Hall and since 1965 in a building in the Center City neighborhood of the Philadelphia — holds an estimated 500,000 books and an equal number of historic papers, illustrations and artifacts. Visitors do not roam the stacks but request items from librarians.
“Franklin spent more time and care on the Library Company than any other civic project,” wrote University of Delaware historian J.A. Leo Lemay in his multiple-volume biography unfinished at his death in 2008. Franklin founded it as an outgrowth of his Junto mutual improvement discussion club of 1727 and served as its director, librarian and book agent.
The idea, Franklin wrote in his autobiography, was that by “clubbing our Books to a common library, we should, while we lik’d to keep them together, have each of us the Advantage of using the Books of all the other Members, which would be nearly as beneficial as if each owned the whole.”
With few booksellers outside Boston, Franklin, then 25, had subscribers pay a modest fee of shillings to join and pledge additional sums to buy books from England. They usually met in taverns, with the fine for missing a meeting set at “one Pint of Wine.” Franklin, as inscriptions show, donated some of his own volumes, including an English translation of a French text “Logic or the Art of Thinking” from 1717, and the group voted to purchase texts such as “Gulliver’s Travels” and “the Koran,” according to Lemay’s book.
In 1740, the library housed its roughly 375 titles in the State House of Pennsylvania (now Independence Hall), and in 1773, it moved nearby into the newly built craft guild house Carpenters’ Hall.
The following year, the First Continental Congress became its downstairs neighbor, convening to weigh a response to King George III’s “Intolerable Acts.” The library welcomed delegates with a resolution, now preserved on the shelves in a bound volume of original handwritten minutes: “Upon Motion, Ordered: That the Librarian furnish the Gentlemen who are to meet in Congress in this City with the use of such Books as they have occasion for during their sitting, taking a Receipt for them.”
That hospitality was extended for subsequent assemblies before and after the Revolution. “The U.S. is a baby compared to us,” said D’Agostino, who also teaches at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School.
One new exhibit at the library reviews the climate of radicalism that propelled the colonists toward independence. A highlight pointed out by librarian emeritus James N. Green during a tour is a rare surviving document from 1766 showing the royal imprint of the reviled Stamp Act imposed on the colonists after Britain’s expensive war with France for control of North America. Almost none exist because patriots quickly consigned stamped papers to the flames.
Rosenberg’s gifts to the Library Company began in the 1960s and stem from his time at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught the history of science from 1963 to 2001. His first gifts were received by Edwin Wolf II, the company’s notable librarian.
“I always had that collector’s thing,” Rosenberg said, calling his interest “how people thought of medicine — the ethnography, not just who discovered what.”
In his unfinished autobiography, written from 1771 to 1790 when he died at 84, Benjamin Franklin expressed special pride in his Library Company, which he called “the Mother of all the N American Subscription Libraries now so numerous.”
“These Libraries,” he added, “have improv’d the general Conversation of the Americans, made the common Tradesmen & Farmers as intelligent as most Gentlemen from other Countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the Stand so generally made throughout the colonies in Defense of their Privileges.”
“A Dog in Georgia,” Lauren Grodstein’s sixth novel under her own name, is set in Eastern Europe — it’s that Georgia — and the history that affects the plot is 2023’s wave of large-scale protests against the government’s increasing authoritarianism.
As the title says, there’s a dog in Georgia, a wonderful, fluffy white dog who worked as a crossing guard at an elementary school, and this dog is lost — or perhaps kidnapped. Amy Webb of New York City has been following the situation on YouTube, donating money to an organization called Justice for Angelozi (the dog’s name, which means “Angel”).
As the novel opens, a couple of unsettling things happen to Amy: A pet psychic tells her that her dog, Roxy, is secretly miserable. That night, a hostess at her husband Judd’s restaurant texts him some nudes, and though he claims he’s not involved with her, Judd has cheated in the past, and Amy isn’t sure.
So, when Irine Benia of Justice for Angelozi writes to thank her for her generous donations, Amy makes a snap decision to visit Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, and help with the search. It seems as good an approach as any to dealing with her own lostness — she was briefly a model, and after that, a chef; after that, an adjunct writing professor and caretaker of her stepson. But he’s away at college, she has no classes this semester, and all this — plus Judd’s possible infidelity — is adding up to an identity crisis at age 46.
Amy is an appealing character with an interesting set of skills, knowledge and flaws. What she finds during her two-week stay in Georgia is complicated. From Irine and her teenage daughter Maia, as well as from a Russian army deserter staying in their home, she receives a somewhat harsh education in what American life looks like from the outside.
But even a pampered New York City dog whisperer does confront moral choices. In the course of a surprising series of events, Amy opens her eyes and faces them. — Marion Winik, Minnesota Star Tribune
At 13 years old, Sydney Singleton discovered an old photograph tucked away in a drawer in her paternal grandmother’s guest room. It was a portrait of a Black girl just entering her teen years. The next morning, Sydney asked her grandmother about it. The woman, her voice “firm as the oak tree on her front lawn,” would say only this: “We don’t talk about Carol.”
Two decades later, Sydney, now a married woman in her mid-30s, flies from her Los Angeles home to Raleigh, North Carolina, to help prepare her late grandmother’s home for sale. There, she and her younger sister, Sasha, find the photograph again. They also find Carol’s diary concealed above a ceiling panel in the guest room closet.
So begins Kristen L. Berry’s fine debut novel, “We Don’t Talk About Carol.” Carol, it turns out, was Sydney’s late father’s older sister. Her diary, written when she was about 16, reveals that she had an older boyfriend, aspired to be a singer and planned to run away to Detroit to try out with Motown. Carol’s family, believing the child had run off, never filed a missing person report.
So Sydney, a former investigative reporter, feels compelled to discover what happened to the aunt she never knew existed. Before long, she learns that Carol was one of six Black teenage girls who disappeared from the same Raleigh neighborhood 60 years ago and were dismissed as runaways by the police.
On a quest to learn all their fates, Sydney finds allies among the missing girls’ families, cold-crime podcast enthusiasts and a Raleigh homicide detective.
The result is a well- written, emotionally wrenching tale about the generational consequences of evil, the meaning of family and what a single dedicated woman can accomplish.
After the diary is discovered, the plot unfolds slowly, but the tale soon picks up speed, taking readers through a propulsive series of revelations, the most sunning of which involves the fate of Carol. — Bruce DeSilva, Associated Press
Eiko Kadono, the author behind Japan’s most famous — and almost certainly most beloved — literary witch, has a little trouble going up the stairs these days.
At 91, she’s still writing every day and hasn’t stopped loving the color pink, dressing up or believing in the magic of books.
“Kiki’s Delivery Service,” which was first published in 1985 and turned into a 1989 animation film by Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, is among 200 books she has written.
“I never tire of writing,” she says in a recent interview at her home in the picturesque seaside town of Kamakura, south of Tokyo.
With a little pink gate, the house is filled with books, pink chairs and her collection of animal figures. “I’m probably a child at heart,” Kadono says with a small laugh.
Wearing her signature boldly framed glasses, Kadono is dressed in a colorful smock that her daughter designs especially for her with sleeves that are elastic at the wrists so they can be pulled up easily when she writes.
These days, she uses a keyboard, punching the keys slowly, one at a time. But when she is creating a story, it still all starts with writing by hand. She also draws pictures. “I want to write so that the reader can visualize what I am writing,” she says. “I love to write.”
Her writing basically hasn’t changed over the years. Though when she looks back on her past writing, she feels it’s wordier than her current crisp style.
The “Kiki” series in the original Japanese spans six books and three spinoffs. The first installment was translated into English in 2020 by Delacorte Press. It is now in 25 foreign languages.
Now, the second in the series, “Kiki and the New Magic,” is set for release in English in August, translated by Emily Balistrieri and illustrated by Yuta Onoda.
Kadono, who won the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2018, never set out to become a writer. She was a housewife, married to a designer and raising a daughter.
She lived in Brazil for two years during her 30s and was asked to write about that experience. That’s when she discovered she liked writing as a fun thing to do, not as a job. It was certainly not something she was ordered or pushed to do.
The character of the sprightly, no-nonsense Kiki was inspired by a drawing her daughter did when she was 12 years old: A cute witch was flying on a broomstick toward the moon. Kadono decided to create a coming-of-age story about a little witch who goes on an adventure, traveling with her black cat Jiji. The rest is history.
Kiki’s Museum of Literature, which opened in Tokyo in 2023, now sells Kadono’s smocks, as well as pink mugs and T-shirts decked with the characters she has created, and displays rows upon rows of books, including ones by other authors.
“The other-worldly fantasy that Kadono creates has overcome the boundaries of language, to become appreciated by a wide global audience, including children and adults, and won international accolades,” reads a statement in pink lettering on the museum wall.
Tsukiko Fukuda, 5, who was visiting the museum with her family, had a more to-the-point reaction: The books are fun, and pink is her favorite color, too.
Kadono hopes there will be a continuous influx of talented writers of children’s books so that future generations can grow up loving books. Now is a crucial period, she believes, that may decide whether that can really happen.
The walks in the woods and other activities that captured the imagination of children of the past no longer exist, says Kadono. With other digital and modern diversions, they must read.
“People must think on their own to be able to create. That’s what being human means,” Kadono says with a passion in her voice.
“Books are the only thing now that can bring about creation and imagination.”
You can believe me when I tell you that, by most any definition, Riccardo’s was no dive bar. Located at the corner of Rush and Hubbard streets from 1934 into 1995, this restaurant/saloon, known to many as the “Montmartre of the Midwest,” was a legendary gathering spot for writers, journalists and artists.
In 1947, its owner, renowned bon vivant and artist Ric Riccardo (born Richard Novaretti), commissioned six of his famous artist friends to paint massive 96-by-48-inch oil paintings for the walls behind the restaurant’s palette-shaped bar. And so were created “Drama” by Ivan Albright, “Sculpture” by Malvin Albright, “Painting” by Vincent D’Agostino, “Architecture” by Aaron Bohrod, “Music” by William Schwartz, “Literature” by Rudolph Weisenborn and “Dance” by Riccardo himself. Collectively, these were known as “The Seven Lively Arts.”
Though these paintings were arguably the most famous to ever hang on the walls of a local tavern or restaurant, there has always been a relationship between art and booze. Today, one can find art on the walls of many area taverns and restaurants, such spots as the Old Town Ale House, a gallery of sorts for the portraiture of writer/painter Bruce Elliott, or the eclectic offerings at the Beverly neighborhood’s Horse Thief Hollow.
I bring this up because of what’s happening at a gallery called Art City. It sits at 1400 N. Halsted St. and will be the home, beginning July 10 and running through Aug. 14, for a provocative exhibition titled “Cash Only: An Ode to Dive Bars.”
No question that the definition of “dive bar” has changed over the generations, moving from dangerously down-and-dirty to charmingly unpretentious.
They were initially defined as a “drinking den” or “disreputable place of resort,” born of a time when such places were originally housed in cellars or basements, where patrons could “dive” in without others observing.
There were once, a half-century ago, as many as some 7,000 taverns in Chicago. Now that number flirts with about 1,000. With fewer around, the survivors are far more respectable (and cleaner) than their booze-serving ancestors. The best of these places survive thanks to a delicate alchemy. Some of that is based on booze, but it also has to do with the notion that they present a level playing field for customers, where a cab driver can sit next to and argue baseball with an accountant.
Art City’s promotional material refers to such places as “neon-lit institutions, sticky floors, jukeboxes, photobooths, and neighborhood taverns that have quietly served as Chicago’s unofficial community centers for generations.
“In a city defined by its neighborhoods, dive bars are more than places to grab a drink. They’re cultural landmarks where friendships are forged, stories are exchanged, and local history lives on. At a time when many of these beloved spaces are disappearing and younger generations are searching for authentic offline connection, the exhibition explores why Chicago’s dive bars remain some of the city’s last great gathering places.”
The gallery’s manager, a ceramisist and arts administrator named Alexandra Bishop, is originally from Maine. She’s been here for almost a decade, lives in Andersonville and says that her idea of a dive bar is “a special place that draws in people of all backgrounds. I have been a lover of dive bars for many years, especially as people are spending more and more of their lives in the digital world. There is community in these places.”
She mentions a fondness for Simon’s Tavern and then says that the idea for “Cash Only” was hatched by her and another gallery manager, Katrina Miller, who will have a piece in the exhibition.
“We were thinking of a theme for a show and the more we talked, the more we started to focus on bars, that this would be both interesting and fun,” Bishop says. “We put the word out and, frankly, got fewer submissions than I expected, maybe summer and all, but I’m excited by what we will have.”
They had pitched their idea to Joe Sikora and he was pleased and intrigued.
An Indiana native who has lived here since the early years of the century, he is a painter and has had a profound impact on the local art scene. He founded and runs NEW Gallery, the non-profit umbrella organization for such efforts as the Fine Art Salon and Art City. He has long been a teacher and is one of the most active promoters of new and emerging local artists. He also shares a name with but has never met an actor about whom I have often written. This Joe Sikora opened Art City in 2023 and mentions in passing his affection for taverns and the art on the walls of the Ale House, a few blocks to the east.
Most of you will not recognize the names of the artists who will be represented in the “Cash Only” show. That is one of the elements that makes this show so promising, even though, as of a few days ago, Sikora had yet to select the work of his to include in it, saying, “I have much of my work there, just waiting to pick one.”
There has long been an association between liquor and creativity: “Wine is bottled poetry,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, and all that. It has been writers who get the most attention, thanks to such over-indulgers as Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Capote or Dylan Thomas. But visual artists too have such noted drinkers as van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec or Jackson Pollock.
But that is not always the case. As an example, I give you one of those whose work is in “Cash Only.” In a video collaboration between NEW Gallery and Art on Tap Chicago, artist Lexi Alvarado sits in Central Park Bar, a pleasant-looking spot at 2924 N. Central Park Ave. in the Avondale neighborhood, and charmingly says, “I’m not really a drinker, which a lot of people find hilarious. It’s not about alcohol to me. It’s about community.”
“Cash Only: An Ode to Dive Bars” runs July 10 through Aug. 14 at Art City, 1400 N. Halsted St., viewing hours by appointment only, open Fridays from 6-9 p.m. More information at 312-690-9634 and newgallery.online
How does one write a sequel to a novel where you not only killed the protagonist in the first book, but declared her death as inevitable in the title itself?
This is the challenge Ron Currie Jr. set himself in deciding to write a follow-up to 2025’s “The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne,” in which Babs Dionne, a crime family matriarch overseeing the “little Canada” francophone community of Waterville, Maine, does indeed die in savage and noble ways.
I was a fan of the novel’s mix of noir, suspense and close character work, but I was uncertain about how Currie could pull off a satisfying story about someone whose origin story, and ultimate fate, has already been told.
In “We Will See You Bleed,” Currie not only pulls off this feat, but he shows that there are perhaps many more stories to be told in the Babs Dionne universe.
He does this by setting the story as a prequel to “Savage, Noble” with Babs not yet a matriarch, but a 29-year-old labor leader for the workers at the paper mill, the centerpiece of the town’s economy. After years of being squeezed by management, the workers have been on strike for many months and people are starting to break. Replacement scab workers have kept the mill operating and it becomes clear that there is no intention to ever return the locals who have worked in the mill for generations back to the line.
Babs has sworn off violence following a killing done in (mostly) self-defense as a teenager, the central origin story of “Savage, Noble.” Babs fears what she is capable of once the governor is off, but the situation becomes so dire that everyone in the town agrees that something must be done, and Babs is the one to lead them.
The plan is to first seize the drug trade from the outsiders who control it as a source of both power and money, and then seize the mill in a way that makes it necessary for the owners to recognize that the alternative — Babs Dionne as your enemy — is unacceptable.
The story unfolds as a kind of thriller/procedural as Babs, and her very capable husband Rheal, unleash violence as a precision instrument of power and persuasion. Rheal brings in the Saucier brothers, childhood friends and compatriots from their time in Vietnam, to do some of the messier tasks, like kidnapping some of the replacement workers and subjecting them to a couple of days of psychological terror before releasing them as an example of what could happen to others.
We also spend time with Clement, the local parish priest who saved the teenage Babs, but finds himself deposed for supporting the strikers, and winds up entangled in the early days of revelations about systemic sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
There is a thrill to seeing these characters we root for execute their plan to retake what we know belongs to them, but as with the first book, Currie refuses to let his characters off the hook when it comes to the consequences for enacting this violence on others.
Babs fears unleashing herself because she knows that these prices must always be paid, no matter how ruthless one believes themselves to be. Because this is a prequel, we know that big picture, Babs is going to triumph, but Currie puts her and Rheal and the reader through the wringer.
The novel builds momentum like a thriller as we head toward the climax, but in the end, what we’re left with is the sense that these stories are only beginning, and truth be told, you could read these books in any order.
John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi
2. “Becoming Madam Secretary” by Stephanie Dray
3. “Water from My Heart” by Charles Martin
4. “My Friends” by Fredrik Backman
5. “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles
— Irene S., Wayzata, Minnesota
Meg Wolitzer’s “The Interestings” is a fascinating exploration of a group of friends over time and a good fit for Irene.
1. “Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley” by Charlotte Gordon
2. “The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection” by Alexander McCall Smith
3. “His Eye is on the Sparrow: An Autobiography” by Ethel Waters
4. “Up from Slavery” by Booker T. Washington
5. “Dracula” by Bram Stoker
— Erica H., Winthrop Harbor
“Washington Black” by Esi Edugyan is the right book for Erica, and hopefully she can find an edition that’s not the dreadful TV show tie-in version.
1. “James” by Percival Everett
2. “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah
3. “Whistler” by Ann Patchett
4. “Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi
5. “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt
— Diane N., Darien
I’m going to reach back to a very early Richard Russo book that I think will be a winner for Diane, “The Risk Pool.”
When Rush settles in for a sold-out four-night stand at United Center beginning July 16, it will mark the first time the band plays Chicagoland without long-standing anchor Neil Peart. The drummer died at age 67 from brain cancer in early 2020, less than five years after the group’s last area appearance.
Though many fans believed Peart’s death spelled the end for Rush, whose most recent studio album (“Clockwork Angels”) was in 2012, co-founding members Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson shocked nearly everyone last fall when they announced the “Fifty Something Tour.” Anika Nilles accepted the challenge of manning the drum kit. Rush is also bucking tradition by employing an auxiliary musician, Loren Gold, on keyboards and backing vocals.
Personnel changes aside, the upcoming shows build on a local legacy equaled by few artists. Since performing in early October 1974 as an opener for the bands Steppenwolf and Canned Heat at the long-forgotten Oak Brook Forum, Rush has logged upwards of four dozen concerts spanning the city, suburbs, Elgin and Rockford. The frequency speaks to the trio’s consistency, popularity and deep ties to the blue-collar Midwest — the region responsible for helping the Toronto-based collective break through outside its native Canada and land a major-label deal.
Here’s a deeper dive into some of Rush’s rich regional history, in 10 concerts.
Fremd High School in Palatine (April 19, 1975)
Rush evolved from an underage covers act into an original band by woodshedding on school campuses around Toronto during its formative 1968-1974 era. Fittingly, the trio supported Kiss (promoting its “Dressed to Kill” LP) at a northwestern suburban high school. Sponsored by the Vikings Booster Club as a fundraiser, the somewhat unorthodox gig cost $4.50 and ran from 7:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Fresh off making “Fly by Night,” its sophomore album and first effort with Peart, Rush was already acclimated with the area. The trio had opened for Aerosmith three weeks earlier at Aragon, a venue it first visited with Rory Gallagher the previous November. Seizing every opportunity to expand its reach, Rush circled back with Kiss in May for a concert at a sports gym at Lewis University in Romeoville.Armory in Rockford (Nov. 15, 1975)
As was typical of burgeoning rock bands in the mid-1970s, Rush pumped out its second LP (“Caress of Steel”) in the same calendar year and headed right back on the road. Kiss paired with Rush again in fall 1975. The Illinois National Guard Armory in Rockford (now listed on the National Registry of Historic Places) then doubled as a music venue and advance tickets ($6.50) were hawked at independent outlets such Co-op Tapes & Records with locations in Beloit, Dekalb and Rockford. An Auditorium Theatre show with Rainbow the following week got nixed due to Rush not being given enough room onstage, as well uncertainty over payment. After the band decided not to play, Lee and company trekked to the International Amphitheatre to watch Kiss. Two other confirmed Illinois dates followed in late 1975 — in Quincy, and at the Aragon with Blue Oyster Cult the day after Christmas. Next was a March 5, 1976, engagement at Randhurst Twin Ice Arena in Mount Prospect that went ahead despite an alleged ordinance prohibiting hard rock.
Auditorium Theatre in Chicago (Dec. 16, 1976)
After paying dues for almost a decade, Rush exploded with the sci-fi concept album “2112.” The band headlined a May 28, 1976, date that was cobbled together with little advance at Riviera Theatre, where an enthusiastic crowd spurred three encores. Rush was already too big for the Schaumburg nightclub B’Ginnings when it stopped there in late August, while a return to the Rockford Armory in November with hometown heroes Cheap Trick witnessed Lee and Lifeson whisked around the stage on a gurney. By the time Rush celebrated its widespread fame at a sold-out Auditorium Theatre concert — whose finale witnessed Lifeson sit atop the shoulders of nearly 7-foot-tall tour manager Michael “Lurch” Hirsh — the mainstream press picked up on the momentum. “This is music to sacrifice one’s mind and body to the God of Heavy Metal Rock to — damn the eardrums, damn the brain damage,” mused the Chicago Sun-Times. The reward? Another trip to Uptown on May 20-21, 1977, causing police to shut Lawrence Avenue down in both directions due to such commotion outside the Aragon Ballroom entrance.
International Amphitheatre in Chicago (Dec. 14-16, 1978)
Rush helped usher in 1978 with a trio of January shows that established a new attendance record at the Aragon Ballroom. Underlining how big it had become, the group closed the year with a jam-packed docket that involved three sold-out gigs at the International Amphitheatre. A mere $9.50 (or about $34 today) admitted you into the bygone Union Stock Yards building to hear Rush navigate some of its most complex fare, including the “Hemispheres” LP in its entirety, the complete “Cygnus X-1” and all but one part of the epic “2112” suite. Lee and Lifeson’s signature double-necked guitars, a percussive arsenal equipped with 23 microphones, more than 200 high-wattage lights and a cutting-edge sound system fueled the prog-rock excursions. Record-label executives even presented the band gold-record awards for “Hemispheres” on the second night.
Rosemont Horizon in Rosemont (Nov. 19-21, 1982)
New era, new venue, new album (“Signals”), “New World Tour.” The first of Rush’s cumulative total of four multi-night engagements during the ’80s at the bunker now known as Allstate Arena succeeded a “Chicago Jam II” festival appearance in August 1979 at a half-empty Comiskey Park, and a last hurrah at International Amphitheatre in 1981. Sandwiched in between: An early April 1980 residency at which the band became the first artist to sell out the latter facility for four nights. Promoting its Billboard Top 10 “Permanent Waves” record, Rush reigned amid a smoke-choked environment festooned with homemade banners strewn from balcony overhangs and held aloft by fans, who created them for a contest sponsored by WLUP-FM. Shiny and suburban, the atmosphere at Rosemont Horizon differed — with the group’s clean-cut looks, shortened locks and spiffy outfits mirroring the flair of its recent synth-dominant material.
World Music Theatre in Tinley Park (June 28, 1992)
The 101st and final concert of the “Roll the Bones Tour” occurred nearly eight months after Rush’s initial area stop at Rosemont Horizon. Renowned for their willingness to poke fun at themselves, the band members prompted laughter whether sending up their sentimental feelings or, in Peart’s case, surprising everyone by ripping off the bandana on his head to reveal a mohawk haircut he’d gotten shortly before the band hit the stage. During the encore, Lifeson fired a foam arrow at Peart and the drummer grabbed it and stuffed it in his mouth. Rollicking stuff from veterans who, on their next trip to the Chicago area in 1994, got slammed in a Tribune review for being “stuck in a time warp.”
World Music Theatre in Tinley Park (June 14, 1997)
No matter its name, the Tinley Park shed currently called the Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre has never been praised for its acoustics. The venue nevertheless was where Rush recorded most of its live album “Different Stages,” which almost functioned as the band’s coda. When Peart’s daughter died less than five weeks after the conclusion of the 1996-97 “Test for Echoes Tour,” the drummer told colleagues to consider him retired. (His wife died less than a year later.) A sad epitaph to outings at which Rush performed without an opener and staged the complete “2112” LP for the first time in its career. Fans here (and at the United Center on Oct. 28, 1996) were also treated to a whimsical array of kitchen implements — a refrigerator, toaster, blender and meat grinder included — standing in for Lee’s equipment backline. So began a clever tradition in which clothes dryers, rotisserie ovens, popcorn machines and other gadgets replaced the bassist’s conventional amp stacks.
Tweeter Center in Tinley Park (June 5, 2004)
An extended introduction starring comedian Jerry Stiller as a Rush super-fan set the tone for the seventh stop of the “R30 Tour,” which commemorated the 30th anniversary of the group dating to the release of its debut. Rush further acknowledged its roots with tunes that the teenage Lee and Lifeson used to study by listening to records on a turntable and following along on their instruments. The Who’s “The Seeker,” the Yardbirds’ “Heart Full of Soul,” Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” and the Robert Johnson staple “Crossroads” peppered a three-hour-plus set that touched on all but one of Rush’s albums and witnessed Peart nod to legendary jazz drummer Buddy Rich during an animated solo. The Tribune wrote that Rush had survived “the arrivals of punk, new wave, rap and grunge with its integrity, creativity and rabid fan base intact.”
Charter One Pavilion on Northerly Island (July 5 and Aug. 23, 2010)
Originally slated for early July, both area stops on the steampunk-oriented “Time Machine Tour” focused on the band playing its milestone “Moving Pictures” LP from start to finish. However, weather intervened at the outdoor venue, with strong winds on opening night scrapping pyrotechnic detonations and freezing the mobile “Spider” lighting rig in its tracks. The group nonetheless earned a rave from the Tribune, which lauded Lee, Lifeson and Peart for finding “space for new flourishes in their formidable arrangements.” A steady mix of breezy showers two days later created safety hazards, and though patrons were already huddled inside the gates and handed free ponchos, promoters postponed on short notice and issued rainchecks for late August.
First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park (June 28, 2013)
The Monday before Rush regaled Tinley Park with its string-ensemble-accompanied “Clockwork Angels Tour,” the Chicago Blackhawks scored two goals in 17 seconds toward the end of the third period en route to stunning the Boston Bruins and earning their second Stanley Cup in three seasons. On the following Friday, the team attracted more than 2 million people downtown for a blow-out celebration. Several hours later and about 30 miles to the south, Rush extended the hockey-themed revelry. Peart wore a hat adorned with logos of the NHL’s “original six” teams. Lee ribbed the audience and watched as a case opened to reveal a miniature Cup. The joke having landed as designed, the real Cup then emerged, with Blackhawks left winger Daniel Carcillo hoisting the trophy and inviting Lee and Lifeson to lay hands on it. As Peart, who rapped the Cup with his drumsticks, doubtlessly understood: timing is everything.
Bob Gendron is a freelance critic.