I’ve put off writing about the movie “Precious” because, in some ways, I feel as though it has been rammed down our collective throats. First, there was Oprah’s big push for it. It should come as no surprise that Oprah partnered with Tyler Perry (of the “Medea” low-brow black comedy films) to executive produce the movie. I know that it was made into a very “high profile” event at the Chicago Film Festival and the tickets the night I wanted to go were $50, which included the full red carpet treatment, hors d’oeuvres and the works, even though the film wasn’t the “showpiece” of the festival (that was a forgettable Uma Thurman film).

“Precious” has all the themes that are guaranteed to make you feel depressed before you even enter the theater: teen-aged illiterate African American girl pregnant by her step-father for the second time; AIDS; physical and sexual abuse; mean-spirited teen-agers who make fun of the fat girl; a physically and verbally abusive mother. In other words, this was one of those films, like “Angela’s Ashes” or “The Hours” that you just know are not going to leave you humming a happy tune. Yes, Precious manages to maintain a more-or-less even keel with insightful thoughts like, “And in that tunnel, why the light was inside of them.” (Speaking of her teacher, Miss Rain and her life mate).

I had read “Newsweek’s” (Dec. 14, 2009, p. 13)  “My Turn” column (usually written by unknowns), and these words were penned by former First Lady Barbara Bush (or, as I like to call her, “my best friend Babs,” based on the fact that she personally presented me with a Bi-State Literacy Award in 1993):  “Recently George and I hosted a special sneak preview of ‘Precious’ in our hometown, Houston.” Mrs. Bush went on to put in a plug for the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and then plugged the movie mercilessly, saying, “If I were to give out a homework assignment, it would be this: go see the movie.”

Gee. I’m glad there wasn’t any overt proselytizing for seeing the film by Famous People with Power, like Oprah and Babs. That would seem kind of unfair to all the other good films out there that don’t have a powerful backer, like, say, “The Athlete,” an Ethiopian film I saw at the Chicago Film Festival that was certainly a tribute to the triumph of the human spirit. But no Oprah for that one.

I idly wondered if the Barbara Bush who wrote the article in “Newsweek” and said, “But go see it—then ask yourself how you can help” was the same Barbara Bush who toured the Superdome during the horrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when hordes of (largely black) residents of New Orleans who had been forced from their home by the rising floodwaters were penned up like animals for days while her son, our president, mucked around and let a major American city drown and the people in it fend as best they could with very poor response(s) from the federal or local government(s). At that time, the press reported that Barbara blithely commented that these conditions (in the Superdome) were probably better than many of them had at home, or something along those lines. (Those of you who read the papers will remember the flap Mrs. Bush’s remarks caused, and, no, I’m not making this up.)

But, all super-duper marketing moments and maneuvers aside…and it certainly appears that all stops have been pulled out on this one— this story of a young girl’s struggle to break free of her abusive mother and to step into the sunlight of her life is done well by all the actors and is well directed by Director Lee Daniels. It is, quite simply, heart-wrenching.

It opens with Clarice “Precious” Jones (Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe) saying, “Every day I tell myself I’m gonna’ be normal. I’m gonna’ break through.” And, of course, this young 17-year-old mother of two (by film’s end) does break through…sort of. (I’d like to know where she ends up in 5 years’ time, but maybe 5 years is too long a time to plan if you’re in Precious’ shoes.)

It is 1987. Precious talks about how depressed she gets, to the point of being suicidal, saying, “Sometimes it feels like we’re just ugly black grease to be wiped away. There’s always somethin’ in my way.” But, she remains relatively upbeat. When she gets depressed she remembers, “That’s why God or whoever makes new days.”

It’s not bad enough that Precious has been repeatedly raped by her step-father, the first child she gives birth to as a result suffers from Down’s Syndrome and the child’s oh-so-sensitive and completely selfish grandmother Mary…in an Oscar-worthy turn by Mo’Nique…dubs the child “Mongo.” Constantly abusing her daughter by calling her “stupid’ and “a fat mess,” and following that up with physical abuse as she turns her teen-aged daughter into little more than an indentured servant, the plight of Precious ultimately catches the attention of the authorities.

One of the best things about the film is that all of those who are in positions of authority in the schools (teachers, social workers, etc.) are portrayed as really, sincerely trying to help Precious. That includes her teacher, Miss Rain (Paula Patton); her math teacher, Mr. Taylor, about whom she fantasizes that the two of them will fall in love and live in Westchester; her social worker, Mrs. Weiss, well-played by a very dressed-down Mariah Carey; and the male nurse, Nurse John, who helps Precious deliver Baby Number Two (Lenny Kravitz.) (Certainly an improvement over her delivery of Baby Number One on the kitchen floor with her mother kicking her in the side of the head!)

Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe plays Precious well, but I couldn’t help but feeling that her acting triumph falls more in the category that the double amputee from World War II, (Harold Russell) did in 1946 when he played a double amputee coming home from World War II (Homer Parrish) in “The Best Years of Our Lives.” (It’s worth noting that Harold won the Oscar that year.)  Gabby looks the part; the rest falls into place.
As for Mo’Nique, however, her performance is sheer, unadulterated evil, laced with selfish menace. The screenplay by Geoffrey Hatcher, based on the book “Push” by Sapphire is a sure-fire tearjerker. There are lines like this one, spoken by the young illiterate Precious, who is exposed to her educated teachers in a more intimate environment for the first time and says she doesn’t understand a word they exchange because “They talk like TV channels I don’t watch.”

There is a song entitled “It took a long time”, performed by LaBelle that is very good. Everything works, and it becomes a serious film about the power of literacy (Precious improves from a 2.8 reading level to a 7.8 reading level, and, believe me, as the owner/operator of a Sylvan Learning Center for close to 20 years and a teacher of reading for 42 years, I know about that kind of educational progress.)

The film is almost certainly going to garner acting nominations for its female leads, and the able supporting performances (Carey, Kravitz and Patton) are just as deserving. I just wish that Oprah and Barbara and all the PTB weren’t pushing it quite so hard. It’s good enough, as a film, to stand on its own merits without having a former First Lady give us all our marching papers, telling us to go see it or having the Queen of Daytime TV turn it into the “toast of the town” (the town of Chicago), simply because she’s powerful enough that she can. (What will it be next? Shutting down Michigan Avenue and then leaving town for good?)

See the film if you want to see a well-crafted film…not because my best friend Babs said you should.

A winter storm bore down on 10 states, bringing with it snowdrifts, bitterly cold temperatures and wind gusts, in the Quad Cities, of close to 40 mph. In New Mexico, a 100 mph wind gust tore the roof off the Los Alamos police station, and in Nashville (TN) the Christmas tree in front of the state capitol was broken in half by the wind.

Parts of Interstate 80 were closed near Des Moines (Newton area) and anything west and north of us was getting hammered all day.

I ventured out on Wednesday, December 9th, and took some pictures, but first let me post some from Des Moines, which got more snow than we did:

This photo represents my friend’s car, parked outside their house in Des Moines. To begin with, the car could not be driven to their house and a neighbor had to push it with his four-wheel drive vehicle. Why? Because the snow and wind was so bad in Des Moines that road crews had been pulled and their (relative) side street had not been plowed. Secondly, as luck would have it, their snowblower was broken. They eventually grabbed shovels and, with a neighbor’s help, were able to unearth the car lurking under all the snow in this picture.  And now for a few other snow shots:

This photo happens to have been taken of the fir tree

right next to my garage entryway. Needs Christmas

lights.

For this one, go back to the top of the page and take a look at “Big Blue,” as I call the 300 lb. ceramic frog that sits on the edge of our back yard ravine. Right now, “Big Blue” looks more like “Big White.” The ravine is quite beautiful, with drifts around the wrought iron lawn furniture (right in the photo) and frosted trees, but it’s really too cold to stand outside admiring it for long.

This one is a picture of the Celebration Belle, one of the riverboats (or riverboat replicas) that sit alongside Ben Butterworth Parkway in Moline, Illinois. The boat has a paddlewheel, and the paddlewheel was rotating vigorously in the 37 mph wind(s). I almost got hit by the car behind me as I attempted to pull into the parking lot to take this shot, because the parking lots have not been plowed and it turned out to be a hopeless project to try to get close to the boat on that side of the river. (This is taken from across the street.)

If you look closely at this Moline sign, you can see that    snow was still falling and the wind was in full force. The sign sits near the railroad line that cuts through town, and it establishes that this snow was, indeed, hitting the Quad Cities area of Moline, East Moline, Bettendorf (IA), Davenport (IA), and all the many other smaller cities that make up an area with the misnomer “Quad.” LeClaire (IA), up the river, was without power for several hours (from 9 a.m. on) and over 6,000 homes lost their power in the snow and wind. Jane Addams Elementary School in Moline (IL) lost its power and heat. They sent the students home but required the teachers to come to work.

I saw one woman in a red car crash into a snow plow, and I heard reports of over 260 tickets being issued in Davenport (IA), tickets telling the driver that the car must be moved from the city streets so that snow plows could operate. The tickets are $35 each. Someone calculated that the city was going to reap a windfall of $9,100 from the tickets, alone. Add to that Davenport’s disputed camera system at intersections, which send you tickets by mail if you are photographed going through the yellow portion of a red light, and the winter white becomes green for the cash-strapped city.

In the Quad Cities, the best snow removal trophy always seems to go to Silvis and East Moline. Moline: not so much. Davenport: really horrible. Rock Island: ditto. I don’t know why this is, but c’est la vie. Also, in the Homewood area of Moline…a chi chi area that predated Wildwood as the city’s finest, the streets are narrow and winding. On top of that, telephone lines and power lines were strung through the ravine/woody areas that surround the homes. Jane Addams is near Homewood. I have friends and relatives who live in Homewood. They lose their power all the time because the power lines run through the heavily wooded area and, whenever a tree branch falls on a power line during a storm like this, power goes out. I’ll bet money that this may have been a factor in the loss of Jane Addams’ power. (No other elementary schools were released, I heard on the news.

Another thing that has come to light as a result of this snowfall, which seems new, to me, is Channel 6’s “new policy” of NOT running news of cancellations in a crawl on their screen unless it is a school closing. The announcers on KWQC gave a very long (and involved) explanation and directions to rush to your computer, sign in, kiss your elbow 3 times and a lot of other complicated directions to find out if a meeting is being canceled as a result of the storm. What if, like my 91-year-old mother-in-law, you don’t HAVE a computer? What if, like me, it sounds like waaaay more work than it should be, just to find out whether the bridge game at the local meeting place has been canceled or if the musical performance at the River Music Experience is “on” or “off”? Whatever happened to informing the community? Why is it just schools, now, that are going to be allowed to have a crawl at the bottom of the screen? If I were Channel 6, which has been having some financial problems of late, I hear, I’d rethink this policy. Anyone with a clicker will change to Channels 8 or 4, which seem to still care if their viewers stay tuned in and will provide a crawl with informatino about cancellations other than schools. Think about it.

(* This report, written in October of 2004 about the Vote for Change concerts that various artists undertook during the 2004 Presidential campaign in support of John Kerry and John Edwards. The concert was in Ames. I am reprinting it from www.blogforiowa.com, where it is in the archives, because it is pretty funny.)
Connie submits this report from her cross-state Democratic Road Trip with “the daughter.”

The daughter and I returned from our SIX-HOUR concert about 1:30 a.m. last night.  I cannot remember a concert where I drew Snoopy on the left ankle of the young man behind me (in red ink) and then, on his right ankle, played tic-tac-toe with my daughter.  (It was a draw.) Plus, I sprayed BOTH of the young man’s feet with Burberry perfume (from my purse) since they were really smelly feet, which he insisted on parking on the arms of MY chair. At one point, he grabbed my notebook and wrote in it, “I have no idea what you are doing here. I can’t see sh-t, but keep this. Thanks and bye.” Earlier, I heard him and his friends discussing how I had “probably remembered every President back to Lincoln.” The sad thing is, they are right. He kids me about “growing up in the seventies” and wants to know if I ever “smoked reefer.” I feel flattered that he thinks I “grew up in the 70’s.”  That makes me much younger than I am, so I am enjoying that comment. As for the reefer question: allergic, you know. Only contact highs. I respond, “Yes, but I never inhaled,” thinking he will get the joke. He does not.

In the parking lot afterwards, while waiting for the cars to move out to the road, the car ahead of us contains a fake snake. One of the young college men in the party puts the snake between his legs and gyrates (like a Chippendale Dancer).The snake looks very real, so I roll my car windows up. The daughter, who is beginning to sound a little like Typhoid Mary, says, “Why are you rolling up the windows?” I pretend it is for her health. It is really because I fear that the kid with the snake might gyrate over to us and do God-knows-what.

Neil Young (of the old days…Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young) comes onstage at one point with the Dave Matthews Band and plays (a “surprise” performance). My notes, at that point: “They are holding this guitar note for so long that pain will soon ensue. They are all watching Neil, for a ‘sign.’ He has, apparently, forgotten the sign. I am beginning to think that the “sign” is that your ears begin to bleed.  Neil looks like Howard Hughes on a bad day. He is engaged in some sort of guitar death throe. Some blonde woman comes onstage with him, but I don’t think anyone has a clue who she is (I know I don’t). I ask, but the boys behind me have passed out, and nobody else can hear me over the guitar punishment. Yikes!

The new camera (Olympus digital), which was fully charged before the concert, only ran for 2 hours. The concert lasted 6. [Thank God for my trusty little Canon]. The daughter got pictures of “My Morning Jacket,” “Jurassic5,” and “Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals,” but where was my digital camera when the Main Act came onstage? Why, dead, of course. As I fear I will be after this six-hour marathon.

At one point, Ben Harper plays a song called “Burn One Down,” which either has to do with forest fires or smoking marijuana. Other lyrics I hear, but don’t know: “Kick your b-tt.” “Plastic.” “F— the pResident.” “I always have to steal my kisses from you.” “This is a song about freedom. There’s some people who smoke a lot of weed, cause some of those [bleep] haven’t gotten off the couch for two years. Then, that [bleep] wanders out in to the street holdin’ his remote and getting his groove on. If you ain’t where you want to be in your life, put the bong down, Homey.” This brings on “Burn One Down,” which seems to involve a haze of illegal smoke. “Your choice is who you choose to be. We are gonna’ burn one down.”

Good to see that our college students are becoming more articulate every day. Gives one hope. I hope they don’t burn anything down while I am inside it.

Back to lyrics: “No lives for bu—sh–.”  “He offered life in sacrifice, so others could go on.” Neil Young sings (if you can call it that), “It was just a legend. War was never known. The people were together, and they lifted many stones.” I’m thinking this might be “Along the Watchtower,” but I really am not “into Neil Young. He looks like the Crypt-Keeper, from television, at this point in his career. None of the young kids there know who he is, or who the old blonde with him is. Then there is something about dancing across the water. Neil seems somewhat uncoordinated, so I don’t think he will be doing any dancing across water or any other surface any time soon. It is as though Bigfoot has been taking guitar lessons and has been unleashed upon us.

I know three songs all night long,  including the Dave Matthews Band encore song “Too Much” from the “Crash” album; “Keep on Rockin’ in the USA” and a version of Buffalo Springfield’s, “There’s somethin’ happenin’ here; Stop, Baby! What’s that sound? Everybody look what’s goin’ down.” This is repeated about 20 times. I remember it was used in a documentary about the Vietnam War that I used to show my 7th grade students.  At one point, trying to be friendly, I say, to the black guy next to me, “I took her to her first Dave Matthews Band concert when he had “Under the Table and Dreaming” out. She was ten.” The guy says, “Oh. Yeah. I remember that concert. I passed out halfway through it.” O………K.

Now, Neil plays TAPS on his guitar. Why? We don’t know. Dave and the others are sort of glassy-eyed, mesmerized, staring at Neil. This concert has lasted a Looooong time. Someone please make Neil quit!!! The drunk guys from St. Joseph’s, Missouri, or Joplin, Missouri, have all passed out, which is when and why I draw Snoopy on one of their ankles.

The girl ahead of me is wildly flailing her arms like a windmill. Too much caffeine, I’m thinking. This girl is known, henceforth, as “Hyperactive Girl,” or HG. Every time I try to take a shot, she pumps her fist in the air just as I shoot. I have a lot of photos of her fist(s).

As usual, I attempt to pick out “bobbleheads” in the arena, which are people who are making absolute fools of themselves. My God! This must be the Bobblehead Convention. The violin guy onstage is going nuts, and the guy wearing the Number One jersey with the page boy bob haircut is doing something that I can only describe as NOT likely to  impress anyone.

The drunk or stoned guy behind me (“Max”, says his NAME TAG) keeps trying to bump my arm as I take notes, and, at one point, he actually tries to relieve me of my notebook. But I’m too quick for him.

Ms. Hyperactive is now resorting to rabbit-like punching in the air. The guy she is with is very tall and looks like the one who once played Claire’s boyfriend on “Six Feet Under.” He is wearing a shirt that says “America’s Music Festival to End All Festivals” while his girlfriend has on a “Farm Aid, September 18th” shirt. I fear for Ms. Hyperactive’s safety, as she is so out-of-control that I think she is going to fall over the balcony railing any minute.

Neil (Young) is doing some kind of geriatric jig.  Someone make Neil quit. Please.

I don’t normally regale AC with stories of “personalities I have known and loved,” but I can’t help but comment on an obituary that recently appeared in a local paper, (which shall remain nameless.) It provided much food for thought. I mean no disrespect in my comments. I am apologizing in advance, so you know that someone will take me to task but remember: the names here (for the most part) are fictional.

 I was sorry to see that a former student passed away at a relatively young age. (Defining “relatively young” is difficult. For me, it is anything under 100, but the former student was 52.)

What I remember about this student from my very first year of teaching is that, when I…. a brand-new teacher struggling to come up with creative writing assignments…. put 6 possible theme suggestions on the board, taken from a Scholastic Books Teachers’ Guide book I had been given, for the year’s first writing assignment, they all incensed the deceased. The deceased (well, NOW he’s deceased; at the time he was very much alive and kicking) protested that writing on ANY of these topics was “an invasion of my privacy.” Then he marched off to the Principal’s office.

The topics in the Scholastic Teachers’ Guide included a number of situational ethics ideas, which someone other than me who wrote for Scholastic Books had thought up. The topics seemed to make him uncomfortable. Here’s one example: “If you knew that your best friend had cheated on a test you were both taking, what would you do, if anything?”

 There was also the hoary theme assignment (please no “hoary” jokes here), “What did you do over your summer vacation?” (I was really struggling and only 21 years old at the time to come up with interesting writing assignments, so bear with me.)

But nothing suited the young man, who protested the assignment by marching to the Principal’s office to loudly complain about the theme assignment, and I was then, of course, called on the carpet by the administration (although not as quickly as today’s teachers would be. Now, it is instantaneous to side with Junior and teachers are constantly hauled in to defend anything and everything! In my day (1969-1985) the administration was slightly more supportive. I explained why I had made the assignment and showed the Principal the book from Scholastic that he had given his first-year teacher to use.  What he said to the student I do not know. Whether he wrote the paper I do not remember.

My take on this protest, from the vantage point of decades later: said student was trying to get out of writing a paper. Period. He had 6 choices and one of them was as tame as they come, unless he had spent his summer hijacking cars.

 What I DO remember about the family and the children I taught (yes, there were 3 of them) later, his sister was shot in the butt in a “drive-by shooting” (pellet-gun) in a nearby city—okay, it was Rock Island, Illinois— very late on a Friday night. She was 12 at the time. For that matter, the deceased, Guy or “Guido,” if you prefer, was 12 at the time, too, and was with her at the time of the shooting. They claimed they were “caught in the crossfire” of a gang-related shooting.

 Later, in a MacKenzie Phillips moment, the sister accused her father of incest, but then recanted before the in-house authorities would have had to notify the Family Services.   These anecdotes may give you an idea of what I was dealing with in trying to teach English to 7^th and 8^th graders as a first-year teacher. (Five of my former students were on Death Row when former Governor George Ryan abolished it, just before going to jail himself for the drivers’ license scandal in Illinois.)

But what really struck me about this obituary I will reprint pretty much as it appeared, (minus the real surname(s) and some of the first names, of course.) “Guy was a commercial fisherman and worked construction in the Florida area. He never married. Since he loved living in Florida, and all his good friends are here, the family has decided to celebrate his life by riding Harleys to Florida next summer (written in early September) and chartering a boat to spread his ashes at sea.”
Every single member of the immediate family had a nickname, duly noted in the obituary.  Furthermore, the entire family (men, women and children, are going to drive Harley Davidson motorcycles all the way to Florida (from the Midwest) for the funeral? Is this a cost-saving measure? (No casket, ergo, no funeral fees?)

 I think of my 91-year-old mother-in-law on the back of a Harley. It just does not seem like a good plan. She fell down last week while walking across her lawn and got a concussion. Is everyone in the Vandella family young?  I wonder what would happen if my mom or my husband’s mom or…perish the thought, me… were to try to come to a family funeral several states away on the back of a Harley, especially one driven by the individuals mentioned in the rest of the article? Would they risk being shot in the butt by a pellet-gun…or worse? 

Is it even legal to scatter someone’s ashes at sea in this day of “let’s clean up our oceans” and anti-pollution sloganeering? [Don’t know; can’t tell you.]
But let’s read on, (with some of the first names and the last name definitely changed to protect the identity of the family):

Guy “Guido”Vandella, 52, of  (fill in your own Florida city here) passed away at Solaris Innovative Hospice Care on  (Fill in date of your choosing).

Per his request, cremation followed. (This was followed by information about where memorials could be made.)

“Guy was born on (fill in your own date here) in (fill in your own small Illinois city here). He was never married. He was a commercial fisherman, worked construction, and loved living in Florida. Since his friends are there, the family had decided to celebrate his life by riding Harleys to Florida next summer (written in balmy September, mind you) and will charter a boat to scatter his ashes at sea.”

This gave me pause. Especially when the survivors’ names followed:

Amy “Rose” Vandella (sister); Beth “Sissy” Vandella; John “Johnny Boy” Vandella; Kenny “The Hammer” Vandella, Brooklyn “J.K” Vandella, Myrna, “Big Momma” Vandella, and, my own personal favorite, Judy “Butch” Vandella.

Does anyone wonder why I quit teaching in this district? More importantly, does anyone want to be a fly on the wall when this family group gets on their Harleys, en masse, (come spring), and starts the trek to Florida from Illinois?  Does anyone, (besides me) wonder why they don’t ride their motorcycles down there NOW, since it has been unseasonably warm and balmy? Why wait several months? Is the family motto “Better late than never”?

I know one thing: If I were going to this funeral, I would not want to be riding shotgun on Judy “Butch” Vandella’s Harley.

The backlash from Chicago residents against the privatization of the Chicago parking meters and lots continues.

In the June 21, Sunday, Chicago Tribune, a parking poll by Tribune reporter Mark Caro (conducted online) had the following results. In response to the question, “Are you spending less time at entertainment venues because of the cost of parking?” 91.4% of readers said yes and only 8.6% said no.

Then came the irate letters from actual Chicago residents.

Vicki Quade, who creates and produces the “Late Nite Catechism” and other “nun” comedies at the Royal George Theatre wrote as follows: “My shows run about 1 hour and 45 minutes, with intermission.  That means that the patrons must run out at intermission to feed the meters along Halsted or Clybourn.  An additional problem is that my actresses also have to run out and feed the meters!  And they’re dressed in a full nun’s habit.  Yes, patrons are affected, and we need those patrons to keep the business of entertainment in Chicago alive.  But I also am concerned about the performers, the stage managers, the ushers, the box office staff…the people who bring you that entertainment and don’t often have the kind of funds to valet their cars six, seven, eight times a week or pay outrageous parking rates in the private garage complexes.”

Another Chicago resident, Brian Suste wrote:  “If we cannot find the restaurant in the suburbs, we go to the city, valet, and leave town immediately.  No more leisurely shopping on Michigan Avenue or walking from the Loop to North Michigan Avenue for us.  Between the cost of parking and the exorbitant tax rate, we are shopping in the suburbs.  It is sad, because we love Chicago.”

Nancy Krauss of Rockford wrote, “We love Chicago and have family in the suburbs and for people like us public transit is not an option.  We drive in for events as often as our budget allows, and with the parking costs skyrocketing, the number of visits will be fewer.  We have tickets to take a grandchild to ‘Mary Poppins,” but are debating our traditional visit to Taste of Chicago.  Please continue to hold the mayor’s feet to the fire on this issue.  We can’t even vote against him!”

Said Robert Hirsch, a Lyric Opera fan, “Mayor Richard Daley’s terrible decision and LAZ Parking’s ridiculous rates and 24-hour meter schedule are going to greatly hurt Lyric Opera and the downtown restaurants.  The great ‘Live from the Met’ operas for $20 with free mal parking will take away thousands of Lyric subscribers.  All Chicago restaurants and theaters will suffer.”

Linda Catalano put it this way:  “I definitely make many of my entertainment decisions based on parking costs and options.  I avoid Chicago movies if I can help it—it’s just too easy to park in the suburbs for free.  I could easily take the CTA but don’t feel it’s safe in the evening.  Easy for the mayor to say take the CTA, but he’s got a chauffeur, and I think he’s out of touch with reality.”
To get in touch with the reality of the outrage of Chicago residents over both the latest parking fiasco (reported on in a previous article, which was rejected by AC after I researched it until 4 a.m., because I’m too old to know how to “work” the hyper-links well enough), you can read all these and more on page 5 of the Father’s Day issue (June 21) of the Chicago Tribune, by Mark Caro, Tribune reporter.