Envy no man

     Envy no man, because you don't know where he has been, or where he is going.
     It was last June, not a year ago, that I stood in the Hyde Park living room of Amer Ahmad and watched him and his family pray.
      I was writing what was on its surface a simple article: I wanted to look at Chicago Muslims, not through the context of controversy, but through the five prayers that a devout Muslim says every day. The story would start in one place—Fajr, the first prayer, at 4:30 a.m. at the Muslim Education Center in Morton Grove—then jump around the city, meeting Muslims at various prayer times. In the process it would look at Islam in Chicago, and say something about the normality of a faith that still seems strange to many Americans.
     I had been to prayers in public mosques, suburban and downtown. I wanted to get inside someone's home. I happened to be talking to the mayor's press secretary, complaining, as I usually do, about their unhelpfulness. "How about a Muslim city worker?" I asked. They must know of one—hook me up with someone.
    They served up Ahmad, the city comptroller. We had a pleasant conversation over the telephone—an open, intelligent man—and a short time later, one evening after work, I visited his luxurious Hyde Park home: newly rehabbed, tasteful, huge. I met his lovely wife, Samar, and their three adorable young children. Looking around, I felt a pang of envy: THIS guy obviously had life figured out. Cultured. Traveled. He had been to Mecca. A rising star. Obviously money somewhere. HE got to live in this swell house in the heart of Hyde Park, across from the Kenwood Academy. While I'M exiled to my decaying ruin of a suburban farm house, hoarding pennies. 
     I don't want to overstate the case. I didn't gnash my teeth and shake my fist at the sky. More like a sigh, standing on the sidewalk after. Some guys have life figured out...
     Within a month he was at the center of scandal, and had quit his $165,000 a year job. Of course I thought of my visit to his house. Perhaps a connection to write about. And I did have the observation that seemed, perhaps, worth sharing. The question arose last summer: did City Hall know this guy was under suspicion? It seemed clear that the mayor's office probably didn't know he was dirty or they wouldn't be dangling him under the nose of the media. But that seemed pretty thin gruel, and, frankly, I didn't want to draw attention to his being Muslim, because that is irrelevant. There are crooks of every faith, in Islam as in all others, but there are people who would try to make hay with this specific situation, and why toss them fodder?
    Ahmad pleaded guilty to money laundering and receiving kickbacks in Ohio. He is facing 15 years in prison.  That seemed to unhinge him. Since he surrendered his passport, he tried — his wife alleges — to get her to get him a fake passport, and is now on the run, with a warrant out for his arrest. His wife, pictured above, said he has become violent and abusive and has taken out an order of protection because she's worried he'll kidnap their children and flee to Pakistan, where he has family.
     I don't envy him any more.  I hope he turns himself in, finds a way to salvage his life. He seemed a smart man, the hour I spoke with him, explaining how he permitted his daughters to lead the prayers, contrary to strict tradition, but in keeping with the new tradition he was pushing toward. Family was important to Ahmad. I liked him. 
     The house did seem perhaps too nice for a city employee. I wondered about that. But I figured people have money somewhere, from their families. And besides, he was a money guy. Money guys do well. In his case, I guess the house was paid for with the graft money from Ohio. Which meant that I was gazing appreciatively at the tangible manifestation of the ill-gotten gains that would soon destroy his life, and didn't even know it.  
     Stealing was a bad choice, running worse. We all reap the fruit of the choices we make. I hope Ahmad chooses to stop running, report to the authorities, serve his time, and begin the slow crawl back to whatever new life awaits him. Hard work, but it is still possible. Life is a long time, or can be. Me, I'm going to try to remind myself, next time I cast a covetous eye on someone else's glittering lot, that all is not what it appears, and better to put that energy into paddling my own canoe and being content with what I do have, which is plenty and should be enough. Many ills flow from discontent. Better to envy no man. Because you never know where he has been. Or where he is going.

     Update: As of 2021, Amer Ahmad is serving a 15-year prison sentence at Terminal Island, a federal prison in Southern California.
     

Saturday fun: where IS this?

     Now this rock is something frightfully important, obviously. And as much as I'd like to tell you all about this very important object -- you can tell it's important because of the velvet ropes -- I don't want to give the game away.  Last week, I really thought I had you with the abandoned South Works. So mum, really. Except to say ... it's not located in some obscure place, but in a well-known place. You'd know the exterior on sight. You might just not know that this revered piece of stone is there, hiding.
     Since my stock of posters is dwindling — if you want one, buy one, because once they're gone, they're gone — I'll offer the winner a copy of my 2008 (!) memoir, Drunkard. It's a grim story, as I like to tell people, but it ends well. It must be on my mind because so many of my new readers in American's beautiful Southern states have been bringing up various aspects of the book over the past few days, as a result of a burst of momentary notoriety on various right wingnut websites that I've never heard of before and will never hear of again, if I'm lucky. It's a long story and not worth recounting. Good luck, post your guesses below. 

Location guessed! Very impressive — and I'm pleased it took until noon, which meant that it was challenging but not impossible. If you want the answer where this is, click here and you can read about it. Thanks to all. I'll try to find another mildly-tough one next week. 

Racism ended in U.S.! Colleges to judge only by merit

   Two college hunts. Back to back without pause. Even before our high school senior was parading around in a new T-shirt for his future alma mater, we had already begun to aid our junior’s search. Down to Urbana. Up to Milwaukee.

     I suppose some, perhaps many, parents are absentee in this process. Many parents are absentee, period. But we nudged them this far, can’t stop now. So yes, 16 campus visits and counting; 16 speeches of welcome from 16 perky administrators or student hosts. And 16 versions of the following:

     “We are looking for a dynamic, diverse student body. Tell us who you really are, your unique skills and excellence. Because some years, we need a trumpet player in the band, so we wave a few trumpet players in.”

     Last month at Marquette, a student greeter said something like, “We have students from 49 out of 50 states ...” then added, “so if you know somebody from North Dakota, tell ’em to apply.” Everyone laughed. At least I thought it was Marquette; maybe it was U of I; these things blend.

     Either way, is that fair? Should anyone who can complete a form in North Dakota trump some hard-working kid from Illinois or Missouri just to fill a hole in Marquette’s promotional graphic? Of course not. But that is how the strange, random, mysterious, unfair, unscientific, skewed, debated and complex college admissions process works.

     A system that just got stranger, more random, etc. Tuesday, as the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Michigan constitutional amendment that says public colleges there can't consider race or sex when admitting students. Trumpet-playing yes, football ability, definitely.  Volunteering, yes. Scores on tests designed to reward certain kinds of smarts? Absolutely. Race and gender? No.
     Because we've all moved past that racial business and are a colorblind nation where all are free to make their own life choices, unfettered by any prejudice or lingering disadvantage. We all start from the same clean slate - it's just some chose to live in an upscale suburb like Northbrook and go to excellent Glenbrook North and study like mad and get a great education, while others prefer to be poor and live in Englewood and see their kids get shot at every weekend.
     Kidding.
     The scary thing, for me, was not so much the Supreme Court quashing affirmative action, which wasn't the ruling. What the majority ruled was worse. They said college race preference is for states to decide, individually, the same states where bigotry smolders through the decades, waiting for the smallest waft of acceptability to burst into flame. If you don't believe that, reacquaint yourself with the choking off of minority voting rights, disguised as preventing nonexistent voter fraud, that the usual suspect states—Florida, Texas, etc.—have recently adopted, because they thought they could get away with it and they were right. Nobody seems to care.
     Now those same states can make it harder for minorities and women to leverage themselves into college, the engine that feeds the middle class. These laws have real results: When California schools became race blind in 1996, the next class of incoming black freshmen fell by 57 percent.
     But that's OK because admissions are based on merit, right? Wrong, as anyone who is going through the process knows, since "merit" belongs in quotation marks. "Merit." It is a social construct, a definition, a game. What is "merit"? The best test scores? On whose test? No college takes the top test takers or top class rank. They want a mixed student body and have reason to strive for balance, especially racial balance. First, diversity reflects who we are and increasingly will be as a country; second, it extends a scarce resource—a diploma—to more groups seeking it; third, and most importantly, it creates a better learning environment for all.
     This is complicated, and I hate trying to wrap it up in fewer than 800 words. For 50 years, the Supreme Court took the lead in transforming colleges, which, left to their own devices, tended to be lily-white enclaves where upper-class kids went to polish the skills they'd need running the world. Being inclusive meant they let in a few Jews. After World War II that changed. Slowly.
     But centuries of oppression were not undone in a few years; it's foolish to pretend otherwise. Access to college is part of the long correction, and colleges will skirt the law, focusing on geography and economics, to achieve the balance they seek. What will be scary is what states cook up next, with the high court's blessing, in their endless effort to return to their beloved past.

Say hello to my new friend, Little Pete

      It was the cap, certainly. A light beige—undyed, natural fiber, so popular among the young. Gathered at top, worn low over his one cyclopic eye. 
      The hat makes the man, as they say, but it also can anthropomorphize objects. Look at Mr. Peanut. Planters was trying to address the problem that peanuts were considered food for swine, almost unfit for human consumption. Trying to solve this marketing challenge, they put a top hat on a symbolic peanut, and suddenly he was halfway to being a "Mister," with a touch of class from the silk topper thrown in as well. White gloves, a cane, the effect was complete.
     Nothing like headgear to suggest personality...
     I was trucking on the way to work one day last month when I noticed this little fellow, in his cap and matching sweater, his lone eye peeking out from behind some thin branches. 
     "Hello there," I said, trying to be friendly, groping for a name. "umm, Little Pete." A laugh—mine. Then I proceeded on my way. Frankly, I didn't give it a second thought. 
     Every day he was waiting for me, with a faithfulness I found touching in these hectic days of dissolving friendships and fleeting, on-line bonds. Strange? Of course. It is a thin line between whimsy and madness, and I like to think my taking this little aqua critter -- okay, some kind of drainage system exhaust pipe with a filter on it, to keep it from spewing sewage-- under my wing as being closer to the former than the latter, more lark than derangement. The human ability to expend sympathy toward the non-living, well, you could view it as testimony to just how big our hearts are, or more evidence of the perverseness of human nature. I march by a dozen beggars every day—their numbers building with the warm weather—averting my eyes, deaf to their pleas. But his pipe....
     More cute than crazy, I hope. I almost paused from writing this, after a few outposts in the conservative press on Wednesday grabbed something I wrote Friday, and twisted it into a pretzel then started waving it over their heads. Not wanting to pile on members of the black community who sell out to Republican politicians, I pointed out that ALL people can sell out, and sought to defuse charges of ignoring my own by mentioning Jewish collaborators during World War II. Suddenly I was saying—talk about imagination—that black Republicans were Nazi sympathizers. You'd have to be an idiot to pull that out of the actual words, but there you go. 
     Still, if they could come up with that, what would they make of old Little Pete?  But one of the few rules I have is to never write for people who hate you—bulletin: they're going to hate you anyway— and if they want to go after me for talking to a drainage pipe, well, I've been called worse, it'll be a change of pace for them, because it'll actually to be true this time. (Sadder than the conservative radio hosts, frankly, were the handful of fellow Jews who complained that by bringing up something negative in our history, I was feeding anti-Semitism, as if it were an area of scholarship where historical data were constantly being gathered and new conclusions formed. Second bulletin: it ain't. Part of being human is the right to be flawed, to look your history straight on with a clear eye; no cringing and cowering and trying to assume a pert profile for those who hate you anyway, as an article of faith).
     I do have company. Lots of legitimate--or at least accepted--social movements depend on anthropomorphism (the ascribing of human qualities to animals or objects, for right wing readers checking out the blog for the first time). The anti-abortion movement, for one, which is really just plain old religious control and oppression of women, trying to skate into the 21st century on the stretch of declaring the centimeter long unformed fetus—which, if you saw it, would look like a red grain of rice—in fact resembles the Gerber baby, the rightful recipient of their care and concern and legal protection glibly denied to the women conceiving them. Compared to that transformation, Little Pete makes perfect sense, like seeing sheep in clouds.
     Not that I'm opposed to conjuring up personalities for the non-living. I just don't want to compel others to share my view. You might not see the stout watchman I see in Little Pete; that's your right. Maybe he's a symptom of isolation, like Tom Hank's soccer ball pal, Wilson, in the movie "Castaway." Though you really should meet Little Pete in person. I'd tell you exactly where he is, so you could see him yourself. But people can be so cold—read my Twitter feed someday and you'd see that—and I worry about him coming to harm. Someone might snatch his smart little hat, and then I would find myself knitting him a new one and, glancing guiltily in both directions, slipping it over his head. "There you go, Little Pete," I'd say. "So you don't get a chill."
      Hopefully that won't happen. Hopefully, we can just continue on now before the inevitable breach occurs. We're friends now.  I look forward to him coming into view in the morning, hailing him with a smile and a hearty "Hey Little Pete!" He doesn't say anything in return. Not yet anyway.

OK for us to pay tax, why not OK for them too?

     Back in the Gilded Age of the 1890s, the philosophy used to justify the concentration of enormous wealth among a handful of folks was: They had earned it through hard work and moral superiority. God meant for them to be rich. Poor people, on the other hand, also deserved their lot, by being inferior, lazy and prone to vice.

     Plus, there was always the Horatio Alger path, open to all. With pluck and luck, the most humble newsboy could do a good deed, catch the eye of some titan of industry, get a job at the factory, marry the boss’ daughter. Happened all the time, in fiction.

     The social Darwinism mindset hit a rock during the Progressive Era, that asked why people born on the lower rungs of society had to live such miserable existences? Would the American dream really grind to a halt if the law forbade 12-year-old girls from working in thread factories?

     Now we’re in a New Gilded Age and social Darwinism is back. The rich do very well. We all agree on the rightness of that, just in case we ever become rich. The only question is: “How well?”

     A Republican article of faith is that the rich must be allowed to earn, earn, earn with as little interference as possible, and by doing so we all somehow benefit — I guess by being hired to clean their pools. They insist that even if they are asked to do a little bit more, they’ll just huff off to some tax haven in St. Kitts. And we tend to buy that.

     Yet if you look at past eras, taxes were much higher. During the Eisenhower years, the personal income tax rate topped out at 90 percent. Yet CEOs still showed up at the corner office. Look at other countries; they tax far more than us. Combine state and federal taxes and the U.S. hits 47.6 percent. In Denmark, it’s 60 percent. And now their middle class is earning more than ours.
     Among the many people responding to a recent column of mine were former Board of Trade President Tom Donovan, who explained why he passed a law, in 1981, to prevent financial transactions in Chicago from being taxed. To alter that, he said, "You'd have to go to Springfield and change the law." That's exactly what Rep. Mary Flowers, D-Chicago, intends to do.
     House Bill 5929 creates the Financial Transaction Tax Act, which "beginning September 1, 2014, imposes a tax on the privilege of engaging in a financial transaction on any of the following exchanges or boards of trade: the Chicago Stock Exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Board Options Exchange."
     "We are merely asking that people pay their fair share of taxes," Flowers told me. "Some of these people do not. As the result of them not paying their taxes after making billions and billions of dollars, the very state we're in is crumbling apart."
     The tax is $1 for commodities contracts - say soy futures—and $2 for stocks and such, with retirement funds exempted.
     The tax is also a will-o'-the-wisp that has been pursued for years at the city, state and national levels. In 2008, the tax was suggested as a natural price to pay for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. Nobody on Wall Street questioned the propriety of government aiding the financial sector; why, then, does putting the shoe on the other foot spell the end of capitalism as we know it?
     But maybe its probable failure, like that of Occupy Chicago, can have a benefit, can leave a lingering question: Is society the way it is now the only way a fair system could be structured? Flowers said most citizens are used to paying tax on the things they buy.
     "We do it every day," she said. "Every day, we pay taxes. If it's OK for us to pay taxes, it's OK for these traders to pay taxes."
     For instance: I bought my beef and broccoli lunch Tuesday. The bill included the 10.75 percent Chicago restaurant tax. I did not move to Liberia. If I can do that, I bet a trader can pay two bucks to buy 100 shares of TechDrek. I just can't believe financiers are really going to pull their kids out of the Latin School and move at the prospect of earning a little less.
     Here's what I find most interesting. Michael Lewis' new book, "Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt," looks at the shadowy world of high-frequency traders—those who, with the market's collusion, carved a niche in the few milliseconds between the time a stock order is placed and when it is filled. Adding a few pennies per sale created what could be a $29 billion, largely invisible industry.
     That near-scam gets only a cluck of approval from financial sorts—noblesse oblige, I suppose. Yet direct those same pennies toward the state to keep it from collapsing and you're anti-American. I just don't get it.

    

At least Billy Graham never embraced Stalin

     Let's be clear.
     I wasn't sorry about the amazing progress that the United States has made regarding gay rights over the past few years.

     A triumph for human dignity, a breakthrough accomplished far sooner than most would have guessed it might possibly occur.

     But I'm also a newspaper columnist, and one thought did cross my mind, just a few days ago, while gazing at an empty screen: as welcome as it is that all decent people suddenly realized it's cruel to oppress GLBT individuals and their families based on nothing more than musty theology, that does pluck one arrow out of my quiver. Good for society; not so good for those in the opinion business.
    Okay, I know. Boo hoo, it's like a medical writer complaining, after they cure cancer, because battling the disease was so interesting.
    So I don't welcome the news that burying the issue might be a tad premature. That it's too early to tuck away the issue on the shelf of dead social questions, along with Free Silver and the 8-hour workday.

Rev. Billy Graham

Rev. Franklin Graham

    On the other hand, I'm happy to be able to point out this: No sooner did I stand, pouting, over the loss of an issue, then good old Rev. Franklin Graham, Rev. Billy Graham's son, stumbled out of his Appalachian shack (or, more likely, mansion) lets out a howl and starts blowing kisses toward ... ready, wait for it ... Vladimir Putin, who, when he isn't seizing the land of his independent neighbors and denouncing the United States, is oppressing and murdering gay people in Russia.

    In a column in the Washington Post Monday titled "Franklin Graham's detestable anti-gay statements," Jonathan Capehart shines a flashlight into the well of a Graham op-ed from the end of February, where the evangelist muses how America once "held the moral high ground," but now that has been snatched by Putin who, despite being a godless communist, at least has the moral sense to protect children from the evil designs of homosexuals posing as their parents. Graham writes:

    Isn’t it sad, though, that America’s own morality has fallen so far that on this issue—protecting children from any homosexual agenda or propaganda—Russia’s standard is higher than our own?
     In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues. Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.

     "Gay agenda" is a giveaway term, like "lib," which tells you that the speaker has been driven insane by bias and partisan politics. Of course, Franklin Graham only joins a parade of Right Wing haters flocking to Putin. "The Russian president has some curious bedfellows on the fringes of European politics," the Economist wrote this week, "ranging from the creepy uniformed followers of Jobbik in Hungary to the more scrubbed-up National Front in France."
    Birds of a feather.
    Although "driven" insane might be the wrong verb to describe Franklin Graham's journey. At the risk of paraphrasing Lady Gaga, he was born this way, or at least raised this way.
      As much as I don't like to visit the sins of the father upon the son, in Franklin Graham's case, what can you really expect? If you consider the career of the Rev. Billy Graham, what comes into sharp focus is how his faith inspired him to be on the wrong side of literally every significant moral issue of his time. He sat out the civil rights protests of the 1950s, preferring to baptize Eisenhower and turn up his nose at those “addicted to sitting, squatting, demonstrating, and striking for what they want.” In 1960, he rebuffed John F. Kennedy's pleas to tell his Protestant flock that they wouldn't go to Hell if they voted for a Catholic. He linked arms with Lyndon Johnson and mocked those protesting the Vietnam War. He was Nixon's apologist and lackey all through Watergate, nodding in approval and murmuring "amen" while Tricky Dicky raged against his enemies, including "The Jews." If Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchins and Sam Harris spent a month in a cabin working feverishly together, they couldn't come up with a greater indictment illustrating the ethical blindness that can go hand-in-hand with fervent religious faith than the career of Rev. Billy Graham.

     “A man in transit between epochs and value systems, he has chosen to disengage himself and distract us by shouting about the end of history,” Martin Marty wrote of Graham in the Sun-Times in 1965.

    Nearly half a century later, that sentence, true for the father, is now true for the son. With Billy Graham in his extreme age—he's 95— Franklin has picked up the baton. Barack Obama obviously won't let him come to the White House and whisper in his ear. Maybe Vladimir Putin will.
     Give Billy Graham credit for that much -- when Harry Truman banned him from the White House, at least he didn't try to make friends with Joseph Stalin. But then what son doesn't want to surpass his father? It is more his tragedy than ours that Franklin Graham has decided to rival his dad in combining moral myopia with fawning over power. Perhaps someday we'll see Franklin Graham standing before the cameras in Red Square, talking to the media about getting on his knees with Vladimir Putin. It's in his blood.

South Shore works site developer vies for Obama library

McCaffery senior project manager Nasutsa Mabwa at the South Works site.

     It could almost be a lonely spot on the far Michigan shore, with the blue-gray lake and the brown grass, scattered copses, bare trees swaying in the steady breeze. The dunes maybe.

     But north, there’s the skyline of Chicago, looming like Oz, and west, a massive wall, 30 feet tall and 2,000 feet long, which held ore off-loaded from barges when this was U.S. Steel’s South Works. Once the vibrant heart of Midwest manufacturing, it is now, and for the past 20 years, both a white elephant and a tantalizing possibility.

     Nearly 600 acres — almost the size of New York’s Central Park — of prime lakefront, where East 86th Street approaches Lake Michigan. Or remote lakefront, depending on your view. For developer Dan McCaffery, this is where Chicago’s newest neighborhood is about to spring into being, anchored by Barack Obama’s presidential library.

     “It’s so beautiful,” said McCaffery, who has been working with U.S. Steel for the past decade getting the property ready for development — the South Lake Shore Drive extension that opened in October was a major step.

     The Obama library is a greased pig that many are scrambling for: the University of Chicago, in the lead, but also the University of Illinois at Chicago and, trailing behind, Chicago State. A committee of the Illinois House voted Thursday to put $100 million on the table to try to make sure the library doesn’t go to Hawaii, Obama’s home state.

     One benefit of the South Works site: There is nothing there. A velodrome — a banked bike track — somewhat improbably, and the wall, which would have to be blown up. That’s about it. The drawback: It isn’t on the city radar. Not yet.
“Imagine this,” McCaffery said."If you were getting 1.5 million visitors a year down there. Navy Pier is our number one tourist destination. . . . Put a hydrofoil [boat] station at Navy Pier, and a hydrofoil station right in front of the library, walk up these grand stairs."
     Which raises the question of how many visitors an Obama library would draw. The Lincoln library in Springfield, a Disney-esque attraction built around our most beloved president, pulls in 315,000 visitors a year. Reagan does a little better. But Nixon only draws 90,000. That isn't as many visitors as hit Wrigleyville on any summer weekend. I could see the library kick-starting a vibrant new neighborhood. Or I could see it perched by itself on a lonely, windblown promontory.
     This is an area where I'm a notoriously bad judge. I remember walking along Navy Pier, back when it was a debris-strewn ruin, and thinking, "What kind of idiots are wasting their money by trying to turn this remote stretch of nowhere into some kind of pleasure dome? Nobody is going to want to come out here."
     Most popular tourist attraction in the state — nearly 9 million visitors, about twice as many as second-place Millennium Park.
     McCaffery is pushing the site to "whoever will listen," and is placing a formal proposal when requests are due June 16.
     "It is an area of town that is 2 miles from Michelle's house, 4 miles from his current house," McCaffery said. "A mile from where he was a community organizer."
Fair enough. But what if history judges Obama as closer to Nixon than Lincoln?
     "His library, I'm quite confident, is going to be a longtime draw," he said. "It is no small thing that this is the first man of color to be the president of the United States."
He's a lot more than that. Between health care, eliminating Osama bin Laden and ending two wars, Obama's museum will have a lot of exciting stuff in it, and if every Chicago public school kid visits once a year, that's 400,000 visitors right there. You can almost squint and see the buses lining up.
     But is this the place? "Far" is relative. I kept thinking of the Wrigley Building. It isn't an accident that it is gleaming white, glazed terra cotta, lit at night with flood lamps. That was done because, when it was built in 1921, there were no office buildings north of the river. Michigan Avenue had recently been Pine Street, a seedy area of warehouses and factories.  The Wrigley Building was designed to catch people's attention, to lure them across the river.      It had a restaurant and a bank so tenants could have services nearby. It worked. The city grew around it. That could happen here too.
     "To me, this is more than a site," McCaffery said. "This is an opportunity for a new city, that espouses all of the things he has spoken about during his presidency."
A daring, future-oriented move that some would immediately condemn as folly. That hasn't stopped Obama in the past. I took a good look around and tried to imagine the library, the townhouses, the neighborhood. Stranger things have happened in Chicago.