by admin | Jun 5, 2016 | Chicago, History, Infrastructure, Recreation, Restaurants, Transportation, Urban Planning, Water
Chicago is already quite rich in parks and tourist attractions. What can it add downtown? In the past, I have written about the 606 Trail in Chicago, which is experiencing its first anniversary after opening a year ago. Despite some of its well-known challenges and...
by admin | Apr 10, 2016 | Books, Government, History
I may be one of the few non-historians to have read at least one biography of every U.S. President from George Washington through Barack Obama. The fact that I earned a B.A. in Political Science at Cleveland State University way back in 1973 may make my quest seem a...
by admin | Feb 15, 2016 | Government, History, Political philosophy, Religion
Back in the Great Depression, amid the New Deal, when the Republican Party was the very face of the Establishment, a good-natured, lasso-twirling Oklahoma humorist named Will Rogers quipped, “I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat.” To some extent,...
by admin | Dec 20, 2015 | Books, History, Industry
Let’s cut to the chase. If you have a relative on your gift list who loves the nooks and crannies of history, particularly those less well-known details behind the reality of the modern world, may I offer a suggestion? This suggestion emanates in part from the simple...
by admin | Aug 29, 2015 | Blogging, Disaster, History, Resilience
For the first time since launching this blog, I have invited a guest author, Stephen D. Villavaso, a New Orleans native, urban planner, and land-use attorney, to comment on today’s tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall on the Gulf Coast. I was heavily...
by admin | Jun 21, 2015 | Civil rights, Government, History, Public safety, Racism, Religion
Less than three weeks ago, on June 2, a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) bus mysteriously crashed a red light on Lake St. during the evening rush hour, jumped the curb on the eastern side of Michigan Ave., and killed one pedestrian while injuring several others. The...
