Works in progress — Andy Davis

I try not to use the “c-word” — community — too much. A buzz term worn to a nubbin. But if my recent dive into Substack taught me one thing, it is that a large and growing group of people view EGD as an important part of their day. Such as regular reader Andy Davis, who asked if I would plug a charity run he is doing a week from Sunday. Eager to inject other voices into the blog — and to pause from this quotidian treadmill I’ve put myself on — I suggested he take a swing at it himself, which you’ll find below. And as I never rattle a cup that I haven’t tucked a little something into myself, I can tell you that contributing to this good cause that helps improve our schools is both easy and satisfying.

Andy Davis

     On October 11th, 50,000 or more runners will take a 26.2 mile tour of Chicago, from the north side to the south side and back again. Each runner has their own reasons for running. While fitness and personal accomplishment are a given, many also run to support a cause or organization that matters to them.     

     Besides proving that I’ve still got what it takes after my recent 70th birthday, I am running for the Education Equity Fund, a not-for-profit that I founded Six years ago. EEF helps ambitious and talented Chicago public school teachers finance graduate degrees in Urban School Leadership, a credential that allows them to become Chicago Public School principals. 

      The well-respected Wallace Foundation has stated that, “It is hard to imagine a higher rate of return than investing and supporting great school leaders.” Chicago’s future is unimaginable without a well-educated, literate cohort of Chicago Public School graduates, inspired by the great leadership in their schools. 

     Schools with strong leaders, principals who provide supportive atmospheres in which dedicated teachers can achieve their full potential as educators, will certainly determine our future. Please consider “investing in the long run” by contributing to my run in support of Chicago’s great school leaders of the future. Make your donation by clicking here.

Despite clown show at the top, local FBI still ‘very good at what they do’

The graduation ceremony for the FBI Citizens Academy takes place at the bureau’s North Chicago Regional Firearms Training Facility, a fun outing where we saw bomb disposal demonstration and the boys got to fire a Thompson submachine gun. 

     When the FBI called, I hesitated.
     Their request was simple enough. They wanted to bring me into headquarters, for briefings, once a week, for a couple months. Something called the FBI Citizens Academy.
     Why me? Agents in the Chicago office were readers. Flattering, though, the way my mind works, I instantly saw that this wasn’t necessarily a compliment — it was entirely possible that my perspective was seen as so woefully ignorant of the world of law enforcement, they felt duty bound to help me get a clue.
     Or maybe they just wanted to get me in their clutches. I’d end up handcuffed to a metal chair in a basement, a bright light shining in my face.
     One evening a week, for a couple hours, at their Roosevelt Road field office, learning the ins and outs of the department, the problems they face. Battling international terrorism, tracking cybercriminals and bank robbers.
     “It sounds like traffic school,” I told my wife.
     But I have a personal rule: if you don’t go, you never find out. Plus they would feed us — dinner from a different restaurant each week. Being fed always helps. I signed up.
     This was in 2010, so the specific program details do not pop out in mind. There were guest lecturers, short films, tours of their facility. I knew several of the attendees, and the academy was pretty much the entirety of my social life for a while.
      What’s strongest is the sense I took away about the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They were good people, working hard, battling bad guys. I’m sure that was the point. Not that the bureau’s often checkered history was whitewashed. Anyone who read Jonathan Eig’s recent Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Martin Luther King knows how the FBI bugged King’s hotel rooms, using the transcripts to try to blackmail him into silence, to urge him to kill himself, generating dirt they fed to his enemies. Knows that the FBI often strayed from protecting America to protecting a narrow right wing racist image of America.

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Those spewing hate often dribble on themselves

     Hateful speech is so pervasive online and generally consequence-free — try getting Facebook to suspend an account — that it can be almost shocking to realize that it can be otherwise in the living world of flesh and shadow.
     I can't be the only person mildly surprised to see a Niles man, Shahid Hussain, 43, sentenced to seven years in prison for spray painting swastikas around Northwestern's campus. Not the slap on the wrist most often seen in such cases.
    Particularly because he pleaded guilty — typically that involves a lower of sentence, and one wonders what he might have gotten had he gone to trial.
     The reason he got the book thrown at him, I imagine, is that Hussain was sentenced to two years in prison in 2022 for defacing a Jewish day school, bakery and several synagogues with hateful messages. He's a two-time loser.
     I can't speak for you, but for myself, the 2022 trip to the slammer would been a subtle hint that maybe I need a new hobby. But haters are not the brightest bulbs in the box. And there is an addictive quality to it — they're locked in the thrall of an obsession. This is worth remembering, since some Jews seem to think they're auditioning for haters, that their words and actions, or those of fellow Jews, somehow provoke antisemitism, so we need to be on our best behavior. When in reality, antisemitism isn't about us; rather, it is someone else's problem that sadly involves us, such as this Niles man caught scratching an itch that just won't go away.

     I almost felt sorry for him — maybe he thought that Northwestern was a safe space for expressing antisemitism. It certainly has seemed that way in the past. If only he'd stuck to the safer forms of hating Jews, respected the accepted etiquette, the specifics of which hardly need to be spelled out.

     The story shouldn't be buried in the Tribune, as it reminds all those keen to make their private urges into bold public statements that, depending on the time and place, tone and exact language, sometimes it blows back on you in spectacular fashion. It makes a lot more sense — safer, smart and morally right to boot — not to hate anybody. I wish more people would give it a try.

     

Out of the Darkness Walk raises awareness about the heartbreak of suicide

Shaylin Takesue (right) was one of nearly 50,000 Americans who died by suicide in 2023. Her friend Krissy Jerkatis (left) will be among 6,000 participants in the Out of the Darkness Chicagoland Walk Saturday at Montrose Harbor.

     Shaylin Takesue was smart and funny and beautiful, inside and out. In high school, she played volleyball, despite being 5-foot-1. She was a libero, the back row defensive player. At Illinois State University, where her little sister Olivia was also a student, Shaylin was busy and popular, interested in mental health. She had her own struggles, battling depression. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she sometimes spoke of suicide. But that seemed under control in the spring of 2023. Shaylin was out partying with her friends when, eight days before graduation, she abruptly killed herself at age 22, without planning or a note. Her sister found her body.
     “It’s hard,” said her mother, Michelle Takesue, of Batavia. “You always think it’s going to happen to somebody else. Not you. We spend our whole life as a parent trying to keep our kids safe. You love them more than anything in the world. You fear that something could happen to them, but you don’t really get it until something does, something you pray never happens, the biggest heartache anyone could imagine.”
     Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Americans in their 20s. Impulsive suicides are common — one study found that a quarter of those making serious suicide attempts consider the act for less than five minutes beforehand. Suicide can be seen as a kind of infectious disease — that’s why journalists are asked not to describe the exact method of a specific suicide, so as not to inspire copycats.
     Chicagoland Walk Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Montrose Harbor. Six thousand people whose lives are affected by suicide are expected to attend the walk, sponsored by the Illinois chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
     Sixty are representing Shaylin Takesue.
     “We did the first one in Bloomington-Normal, right after she passed away,” said her father, Tim Takesue. “To me, it was completely eye-opening. A little bit of healing, understanding that we are definitely not alone. To see how much this has affected people.”
     The walk is a blend of outdoor festival and somber commemoration, embodied by the “honor beads” participants wear — color-coded Mardi Gras strands: white for loss of a child, red for a spouse or partner, gold for a parent.

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Flashback 2012: Sculptures set inner kid free to soar

     

"Glider Pilot" by Bob Emser

     I do miss going into the office on a semi-regular basis. You never knew what you were going to stumble upon.

     In a little room hidden somewhere deep within our brains, the little child we once were sits,  pressing his palms flat against the gouged, glue-spattered, heavily shellacked wooden desktop, puffing out his cheeks, listening to the clock tick, gazing at the rain streaks on the windows, waiting.
     I had just left the 8:17 downtown, shuffled in Fritz Lang lockstep with the other commuters through the platform’s smoky, dripping din, up the stairs, then surged across Madison, up more stairs and onto the plaza.
     Dihedral, I thought, getting a glimpse of the first of a trio of artworks, an installation called “Test Flight” created by sculptor Bob Emser that went on display earlier this month at 2 N. Riverside Plaza, or what we fogies refer to as the old Chicago Daily News Building.
     The dihedral is the angle of an airplane’s wings. I hadn’t thought of that word in decades, but it must have slumbered, scribbled on a scrap tucked into that little boy’s pocket.
     “Two x 2,” a pair of wing tips — a Supermarine Spitfire’s, among the most beautiful planes ever built — made of Brazilian walnut, with little aluminum insets. You want to run your hand over the rich wood but, trained not to manhandle art, even public art, I didn’t.
     Next is “Balsa Flies Better,” a large wooden skeleton of an airplane wing — a DC-3’s, another lovely plane. Typically, a kid would make one of these wings out of balsa, first cutting the pieces out with an X-Acto knife, gluing them together on a board with pins, later covering the fragile 10-inch lattice in paper, doping it until it stretches tight. This one was made of pine and 14 feet tall. I stopped in mid-stride — the other commuters nearly piling up, cartoon fashion, behind me, before flowing past like a river current around a rock.
     Suddenly it was all back: the colorful cardboard boxes, the T-shaped pins, the Saran wrap over the diagram plans, so the glue wouldn’t stick. Decals. Toothpicks. Not only a Spitfire, but a Hawker Hurricane and others.
     The third, “Glider Pilot,” is a little off-theme, but somehow pulled the three together. An exact model of those 19-cent — now $1.99 — Jet balsa gliders you’d get at Woolworth’s. Only this one was made of marine plywood and 12 feet long. Anyone who could make a Spitfire out of balsa disdained these gliders, though they would serve in a pinch.
     Art should do at least one of three things: It should be original in idea, excellent in execution, or dramatic in effect. The idea of making common stuff really big isn’t new; Claes Oldenburg’s “Batcolumn” is around the corner. The big model plane components were certainly precisely made. But the impact — at least to me — flew me back to Berea, Ohio, in 1970, though I suppose art that only touches men who once made model airplanes is aiming for a narrow and thinning audience. This particular subject couldn’t be an accident.
     “When I was a kid, I think that my first sculptural experience was taking these flat balsa shapes and ending up with this sensuous form,” said sculptor Bob Emser, 58, who has studios in Chicago and Eureka. He views the three pieces, together, as “a full theme of music stripped down to a three-piece band.”
     Emser built model airplanes for the same reason I did — because of his dad’s influence.
     “I wasn’t much for organized sports,” said Emser. “I liked building things. My father said this is something you can do in your bedroom and not hurt yourself.”
     The wooden sculptures secretly solve a problem that any artist hoping to display art on this specific spot must consider — that 2 N. Riverside Plaza is built over the Metra tracks.
     “There’s some problems putting large-scale sculptures over vaulted train tracks — most of it is pretty heavy,” Emser said. “I thought, ‘You know this is opportunity knocking to do something fun, quick, temporary.’ ”
     Underline “temporary.” I mentioned that someone with too little control of their inner child had jumped on the glider and cracked it. “Two x 2” was tackled by drunk Bears fans.
     “Stuff like that happens. It’s designed to be temporary. It’s not designed to last forever,” he said. “I’m going to go and reinforce that wing. I remember breaking lots of balsa wood planes. They’re fragile. I knew people were going to climb on them. That’s what happens when you put something in public. Still, I wanted to get the dihedral into the wing.”
     I smiled, hearing the artist speak the same recondite word that had popped into my head when I first saw his work. Kindred spirits. I told him, given how much public art in Chicago is garbage — the chunky Dubuffet jammed next to the Thompson Center, other hunks of metal signifying nothing — it’s nice to see something evocative, at least to me.
     “I even try not to call myself a ‘public art’ person,” he said. “I like to say it’s ‘civic art.’ It’s really about civilization and making civilization a happier place.” We can all use that. “Test Flight” is part of the 23rd International Sculpture Conference, in Chicago Oct. 4 - 6, and will be at 2 N. Riverside Plaza, north of Madison, west of the river, until mid-October.

            — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 25, 2012

Hard to find a good kosher candy to throw at your kids

Sunkist Fruit Gems

     To be a Chicagoan — yes, I know I’m not — is to have a certain nostalgia about candy.
     Growing up here — OK, I grew up near Cleveland, thank you for noticing — meant to be aware of the enormous Brach’s factory on the West Side and the Spanish Revival Mars confectionery on Oak Park Avenue. Visits downtown were liable to give you a contact high from the cocoa aroma rolling off the Blommer’s chocolate factory.
     Being a fat kid — try snatching that away from me, you touchy chauvinists — I had a visceral understanding of the entire Brach’s line. The gorgeous slightly soft, matte milk chocolate stars. The shiny dark blobs of bridge mix, with its scorned peanuts and ultra vanilla creams.
     My mother played bridge — yes, in Berea, immediately west of Cleveland, geez, give it a rest, will ya? — and I would belly crawl, like soldiers on the “Combat!” TV show, into the living room, to snake my hand into a bowl and retrieve a fistful of mix, then scuttle back to my room to enjoy my prize. What a sight that must have been.
     And we — meaning Chicagoans and whatever unwanted interlopers manage to jam themselves among them — shouldn’t complain. Despite the insane sugar tariffs sending Chicago candy companies fleeing to Mexico, we still have a bounty: Ferrara Pan, churning out their vastly cool Nerds Gummy Clusters. Butterfingers and Baby Ruths are made in Franklin Park, which is not Chicago either, last time I checked.
     Some folks insist Tootsie Rolls are made in Chicago, though after a lifetime of being denied access to the factory, I hope you will forgive me for insisting Tootsie Rolls are actually made in the military dictatorship of Myanmar, excreted by emotionally-damaged French poodles trapped in inhumanely small crates and force fed a combination of high fructose corn syrup, industrial waste and the offal of rabbits who died testing cosmetics.

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"Internet Precognition Weapon Civilization Invention"

I asked Chat GBT to "create an image of 'an angel shaman born of 
spirits.'" This was the result. Not bad, right?

 

    There are so many crazy people in the United States, we forget that other countries have their own share of lunatics.
     I glance at my spam folder, about once a day, just to see anything of note. On Saturday I noticed an email in Japanese, beginning: 

WCAB（労働者災害補償上訴委員会）様、カリフォルニア州労働安全衛生局様（Cal/OSHA）、米国労働省様

私京都森克己は、エンジェルシャーマン精霊生誕として、日本国家組織権力で生命財産収益の型枠を略奪されながら、又第六感金銭予知能力惨殺宗教をされながら、「インターネット予知能力武器文明」で本来収益を挙げられます。人類は宇宙に生存せずに、地球だけに生存する詐欺殺人鬼です。

従って、米国と英国と日本国は、それぞれ２億円ずつ労働災害補償を給付する義務と責任が在ります。

598予知能力武器世界配信開発期間は、私の全盲盲目者祖父から140年間。

     Which I translated (well, clicked "Translate to English," I don't want you to think I cracked open a dictionary and did the work myself) thinking it might be from Kumamoto Prefecture, telling me they're hot to get Kumamon together with the Sox. And was rewarded with this. Feel free to skim.

To the WCAB (Workers' Compensation Appeals Board), the California Department of Occupational Safety and Health ( Cal/OSHA ), and the U.S. Department of Labor

I, Katsumi Mori from Kyoto, as an angel shaman born of spirits, am being plundered by the Japanese national organizational power for the framework of life, property, and profit, and while being subjected to a brutal murder religion based on sixth sense, money, and precognition, I am actually making money through the "Internet Precognition Weapon Civilization." Humanity is a fraudulent murderer that does not exist in the universe, but only on Earth.

Therefore, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan each have the obligation and responsibility to provide 200 million yen each in workers' compensation.

The development period for the 598 Precognitive Weapon, which will be distributed worldwide, spans 140 years, starting with my completely blind grandfather.

The total cost is estimated at 1 billion yen per year for the Honmichi New Religion, a branch of Tenrikyo with 300,000 members, resulting in 100 billion yen in activity maintenance costs over 100 years.

No one can surpass my statements, even considering the 8 billion people who are alive and the 1 trillion who have died.

I am a 100 trillion yen player with precognitive abilities and a weapon distributed worldwide to 5 billion people.

Profit from the sale of precognitive weapons to individuals: over 100 million yen, payable in installments over 5 years.

My personal share is 90 %, your company's share is 10 %.

Profits from the sale of precognitive weapons to corporations: over 1 trillion yen, payable in installments over 5 years.

My personal share is 90 %, your company's share is 10 %.

All four pieces of information—UK Wise bank account information, Japan Mitsubishi UFJ Bank account information, Japan Rakuten Bank account information, and BTC wallet address account information (Japan Bitcoin Bank)—are correct.

However, only the recipient account information for KATSUMI MORI in connection with the "Internet Precognition Weapon Civilization Invention" has been treated as invalid due to fraud.

Please investigate the fraudulent invalidation of KATSUMI MORI 's recipient account information. Banks around the world have signed agreements to invalidate inventions related to precognitive abilities, weapons, and civilization.

Congratulations to the Angel Shaman Spirit for proposing "A bloodless weapon that will annihilate one trillion people, making its first landing on the four major continents, August 2026 , by Katsuminomi-nomics" as a proposal for the payment of workers' compensation benefits.

Americans brutally murdered a Canadian shaman spirit, and banks around the world have signed agreements not to recognize his life. As a result, people around the world are increasingly becoming corrupt individuals who are "impotent fraudsters and murderers," and the cosmic soul and spiritual life forms are regressing to what they were 5000 years ago.

Trump of the United States is working behind the scenes to arrange fraudulent agreements among banks worldwide, eliminating the survival of those who possess angelic shamanistic abilities, precognitive abilities, and weapon-based inventions, and promoting the enslavement of the nation, making it impossible to monetize souls and spirits. I demand the immediate execution of Trump and the immediate destruction of the United States. His television speeches in Japan serve as evidence. ( 2026/09/22)

Naturally, please transfer the funds to my designated Bitcoin bank account within two weeks, without any upfront fees. ( 2026/09/15 )

200 million yen is the average lifetime earnings of a salaried worker.

Here is KATSUMI MORI 's GBP account information for Wise . If you are sending money from a UK bank, you can use this account information for domestic transfers. For transfers from other countries, please use international transfer ( SWIFT transfer).

---

Name : KATSUMI MORI

Account number : 58825593

Sort code : 60-84-64

Please use this for sending money from the UK.

IBAN: GB39 TRWI 6084 6458 8255 93

SWIFT/BIC: TRWIGB2LXXX

     Wow, right? Part insanely complex scam, part wild egomaniacal flight of fancy. I truly believe — and Donald Trump is exhibit No. 1 — that self-regard is a psychiatric poison, and drives people mad. This has to be sincere delusion, right? No scammer is creative enough to make that up. Although, to be generous, who wouldn't want to be an "angel shaman born of spirits"? It sounds nice.