Crowded house / Red-light relief / Lead leads

Hugs today to triskaidekaphobes. And now the news:

Crowded house. Chicago has another candidate for mayor: State Rep. Kam Buckner, a former University of Illinois football player.
A Sun-Times editorial: The City Council’s likely new ward map “gives Chicago another 10 years of gerrymandered mess.”
In what media watchdog Robert Feder calls “a conflict that should have been avoided,” two Chicago TV stations have split the field of Republican candidates for governor into two separate in-studio debates May 24.
Responding to a letter from Jewish lawmakers condemning antisemitic comments by her husband on his radio show, Cook County assessor candidate Kari Steele says she’s sorry.

‘It didn’t have to happen.’ The son-in-law of a woman killed when her Metra train collided with a truck in Clarendon Hills says the accident was preventable.
He says she was “the glue to the family.”

Red-light relief. Amid an unfolding corruption investigation, Illinois is ordering Oakbrook Terrace to turn off its red-light cameras at the busy intersection of Route 83 and 22nd Street.
Chicago police say a motorist they’d pulled over during a traffic stop on Michigan Avenue drove away, striking a pedestrian before fleeing on foot.
The suspect was still at large.
A stretch of Milwaukee Avenue where two bicyclists have died has some new stop signs.

‘How can he do that?’ A public defense attorney is appalled that Chicago Police Supt. David Brown would assign responsibility for a mass shooting in the Back of the Yards neighborhood to a man who hadn’t been formally charged.
Police were seeking leads in the shooting—reportedly 11 times—of a woman killed in her great-grandmother’s Chicago garage.

‘Things are really not going well.’ Noting steadily rising COVID-19 infections across the country, Bloomberg says that having recently caught it seems to no longer be a guarantee you’re protected for any length of time.

Dingus of the week. Columnist Lyz Lenz’s pick is Chicago-based Abbott Laboratories—which she blames for America’s critical shortage of baby formula.
Abbott says it’ll take up to two months to replenish store shelves.

‘We're going to have … unsatisfying compromises.’ Columnist Mona Charen predicts that a Supreme Court ruling ending the right to abortion would put policy back into the realm of politics, which she says “we should have been doing all this time instead of indulging the pleasures of purism.”
Esquire’s Charlie Pierce says the Senate’s abortion vote revealed “a black hole at the center of our republic.”
Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg: “God is the busiest abortionist.”

‘U.S. schools are not racially integrated.’ The Conversation: Decades of effort have failed.
Illinois’ top financial official is forbidding local governments from using a state program to collect debt from the families of students ticketed for truancy—meaning an end to the practice of withholding those families’ state tax refunds, lottery winnings or paychecks to extract payment for things like ordinance violations, and unpaid water and sewer bills.

‘Get out of the Loop.’
Organizers of the iconic Chicago Marathon and Shamrock Shuffle races are adding a third: The Chicago 13.1 half marathon, which will wind through the city’s West Side on June 5.
Sign up here.

Looking for produce bargains? Organic farmers’ products might be your best bet this summer as the cost of synthetic fertilizer—which they don’t use—has risen during Russia’s war on Ukraine.
If the whims of the pandemic allow woodwind participation, you might spot your Chicago Public Square columnist in performance (2019 link).

Lead leads. Chicago’s expanding eligibility for residents who can get their poisonous lead water lines replaced free.
Apply here.

Dark of the moon. Sunday night at 8:32 brings the start of a total lunar eclipse.


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