Bus tragedy linked in time, memory

     October 25, 2015 is my older son's 20th birthday, and I had just decided to let that pass unmarked upon here — don't want to go to the Child Nostalgia Well too often — when I realized that today is also the 20th anniversary of something else: the Fox River Grove bus tragedy, which occurred the morning he was born. A school bus on its way to Cary-Grove High School stopped with three inches of its tail end hanging over the Metra tracks. The substitute bus driver didn't realize it, and Union Pacific Northwest Line express plowed into the bus. On the one-year anniversary of the disaster — and his 1st birthday — I wrote a column about the confluence of the two events, one joyous, one disastrous.

     Friday was the first anniversary of the Fox River Grove school bus tragedy, in which seven students were killed when their bus was struck by a train.
     In my house, we marked the day with a party. We blew up balloons, sang songs, ate cake.
     Lest this seem grotesque cruelty, let me quickly add that Friday was also our son's first birthday. He was born Oct. 25, 1995, about nine hours after the bus tragedy.
     The two events are forever intertwined in my mind. My wife was walking back and forth in the bedroom early that morning, and I was counting the minutes between contractions, when the phone rang. I thought it was her doctor, whom we had just called. But it was the newspaper, telling me to get over to Fox River Grove immediately. Something about a school bus. Something about a train.
     My first impulse was to go. But I looked over at my wife, big as a house and in pain.
     "I can't go," I said. "My wife's having a baby."
     So somebody else went -- many somebodies, actually, as the magnitude of the horror quickly became clear.
     Meanwhile, I walked my wife around the block, holding my wristwatch in my hand, urging her to breathe, trying to remember all that voodoo they taught us in Lamaze.
     But in that perverse way labor has, instead of getting closer and closer, the contractions faded. Two hours later they were gone.
     Nothing is worse in the newspaper business than refusing to accept an important story for no good reason. If this baby now decided to wait a week before being born, nobody at the newspaper would ever believe that I hadn't ducked out of a difficult assignment, shirking behind my pregnant wife.
     I dithered like Hamlet for a while, then my wife gave me a shove.
     "Honey," she said, "I'm not having this baby right now. Go to work."
      And off I went. It was too late to go to Fox River Grove, so I went to the office and took dictation from reporters in the field. While communities in the midst of tragedy view reporters as a plague of locusts, the insult added to the injury, the fact is that, the next day, everybody expects to pick up the newspaper and read all about it.

     I had been at the office about three hours when my wife called. Get back home now, she said. I did. The rush to the hospital was exactly like in the movies; me hitting the horn and cursing the traffic while my wife screamed that she was going to have the baby in the car.
     One hour and 45 minutes after we arrived at the hospital, Ross was born.
     The irony of his timing was never far from mind. This day of tragedy for so many was a day of joy for me. At first my only connection to the accident was that I was a reporter and it happened the day my son was born, but a third connection, strongest of all, grew over time.
     Over the many nights to come, warming bottles, changing diapers, walking the floor in the dead of night. I became a parent too, and the enormousness of what those parents in Fox River Grove lost slowly began to dawn on me, the unspeakable tragedy whose dimly perceived form was still enough to grab at the heart and twist.
     How to begin to understand a loss like that? To have all the years, all the love, and the hard work that parents put into their children just yanked away in an instant? I wanted to understand, but I couldn't.
     Day after day, I searched my baby's face, trying to divine the future.
     Would his moment come before his time? On a plane? In a car? On a bus? Through some carelessness, some random cruelty? Was the train accident an omen? I love him so much, I wanted to know.
     I tried to imagine what it would be like to be in the Fox River Grove parents' shoes. My first thought was that I just couldn't live with it. That I would have to go to the tracks and put my head down and wait for the next train.
     But obviously they kept going. They have other children, other responsibilities and the strength must come from somewhere. Maybe that's God's role.
      The media of course marked the grim anniversary. In my house, we had a party. But in doing so, we also remembered those families in Fox River Grove. Nothing extensive. A raised glass. A few words. Not offered as comfort, which would be cold and useless coming from someone untouched.
     But recognition of what all of us who enjoy unshattered lives, at the moment, owe to those who now mourn. We owe them to do what they would do if they only could; to hug our kids tighter and to savor the passing of each sweet hour.
     To do otherwise is to be blind to life's hard realities: Nothing is guaranteed. No one is immune. The claw awaits each of us, in turn, and we must cherish every moment it dallies on its way to the inevitable rendezvous.

     —Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 27, 1996

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     Not every column idea comes together. Sometimes you do the legwork, poke and prod, ask and analyze, and the story for some reason just doesn't gel. I went to this place hoping to find whatever ineffable thing makes for a good story, and came up short. The fault was

La-Dee-Das

entirely my own. My host was honest and pleasant, her story interesting, and I returned a second time, hoping to make it work. But it just didn't. Happens. Though this place is off the beaten track, and I thought: At least it might stump the hive, for a while. 
     Where are these intriguing comestibles being made? After it's guessed — and it always is —I'll fill you in a bit on the place, and how you go there and partake of the wonderful products manufactured within. The winner receives one of my endless supply of 2015 blog posters. Place your guesses below. Good luck. 

Lose one blob, gain another

Thompson Center 

     Maybe there's some obscure Chicago ordinance requiring at least one curvy, hideous public building to exist in the city at all times.

     That would explain why Gov. Rauner's announcement last week that the bulbous salmon-and-blue monstrosity of the Thompson Center would be disposed of and, please God, torn down, will be followed so closely by Rahm Emanuel's pet City Council approving — next week, take it to the bank, after the Bears's last few qualms are mollified — the eye-scalding white hillock of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which some are calling Jabba the Hutt's Palace, but I think of as "Space Mountain."

Proposed Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

     One step forward, one step back.
     While I'm no knee-jerk preservationist, I do think the Thompson Center should be preserved, for a while, because it's a crime scene. It should be kept vacant, as evidence, until Helmut Jahn's show trial for crimes against architecture can be held in its vast cavernous belly. Only then, upon the inevitable conviction, can it be imploded upon him, a fitting punishment for him and an apt end to his 30-year blot on the city.
     But I am not here to criticize. Too much of that. Too much negativity. I'm here to offer a ray of hope regarding our newest civic asset, on two fronts.
     First, regarding the utter aesthetic failure of the Lucas Museum's design, a thought: How many now-beloved world icons were despised initially? France's great minds jostled each other like piglets at a sow to condemn the Eiffel Tower while it was being built in 1887. "This belfry skeleton" Paul Verlaine sniffed. "This high-and-skinny pyramid of iron ladders, this giant, ungainly skeleton upon a base that looks built to carry a colossal monument of Cyclops, but which just peters out into a ridiculous, thin shape like a factory chimney" wrote Guy de Maupassant.
     Time soothes. While I sincerely believe Ma Yansong's design resembles nothing so much as an enormous glob of pigeon poop, maybe we'll get used to it. Other, heretofore, reviled structures won't seem so bad. "The Bears should support the Lucas Museum," quipped an editor on the city desk, "because it makes Soldier Field look good by comparison." That's true. The lopsided spaceship that landed in Soldier Field's colonnaded glory looks like the Parthenon compared to the Lucas Museum.
     There is the inside to consider. Yes, last May I suggested it was the "Buck Rodgers" museum, hinting that Star Wars will someday (again, please God) be as forgotten as the once popular Saturday afternoon movie serial.
     But Lucas insists it won't just be a shrine to Luke Skywalker. It's the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, remember. He has a trove of Norman Rockwell paintings. When I was in Boston earlier this month, I made the drive out to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to visit the Norman Rockwell Museum.
     The art world dismissed Rockwell, but I've loved him since I was a child, savored his deeply human, richly detailed paintings. A visit to the museum confirmed his genius. You put your eye 3 inches from a pencil sketch of his and swear the man was Michelangelo. Any accusations of sentimentality are deflated by his powerful paintings for Look magazine on the civic rights struggle of the early 1960s.
     The was a special exhibit hall showing the excellent New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast, and her book on her parents' decline into dementia, a reminder that "narrative art" can be a very big tent.
     I learned much during my visit. The museum highlights Rockwell's Four Freedoms paintings, based on FDR's famous speech. You're familiar with "Freedom from Want," a much-copied image of a family around a Thanksgiving table being presented with an enormous turkey.

Norman Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech"

     But it was "Freedom of Speech" that taught me something, or rather the docent lecturing nearby. The painting shows a workman at one of New England's town meetings, standing up, having his say.
     "Notice the ears of the listeners," the docent said. "Rockwell made them slightly bigger."
     He certainly did. And I realized, looking at those ears, something important about the trouble in America today. Nowadays, everyone's talking, but nobody's listening. And if nobody's listening, freedom of speech loses its value.
     A lesson worth driving to Stockbridge to learn. I hope Lucas makes a museum that isn't just a tourist trap for Star Wars fans, but somewhere that visitors can go to discover similar truths hidden in art. And if he doesn't, the 99 years will pass, and the mistake will be corrected.

The first step with guns is education

    Clarity can be a long time coming. I've been writing columns on gun violence for nearly 20 years, lately slipping into a kind of exhausted hopelessness, just like our politicians and public.

      But writing yesterday's column, it came to me, and since I only approach it in the column, I thought I should say it clearly. The answer isn't law, at least not now. The answer is education. Americans have a right to bear arms, but they also have a right not to to bear arms, and they need to understand where their safety lies. Smoking was banned in restaurants because people learned enough about second hand smoke that they realized how dangerous it was to employees who work in smokey environments. Americans need to be told just how threatening guns are, to the gun owners and to everyone else. How baseless the "get the drop on the bad guy" fantasy really is. How the idea that we should have guns everywhere isn't the solution to the problem, it's the cause of more problems. 
    Not that it'll be easy. We're up against impassioned believers such as the gentleman in the exchange below. But education doesn't need Congressional approval. It doesn't require laws to be changed. The truth is out there.  It'll take a long time, but it's a way to start. 
     In the meantime, this is just one thread in the mass of response I got yesterday. The emails are quite long, but they'll give you a sense of things, and if you lose patience, skip to the end as the last one is a welcome surprise. There is hope. It'll take a long time. But in the end, Americans solve their problems.

Neil,
      Not really sure if you'll even read this email, but I am writing to briefly show you the other side of the coin after reading your rather narrow sighted partisan article on the so called "gun crisis". You liberals act as though people that support gun rights area bunch poorly educated redneck hillbillies who want to shoot everything. Nothing could be further from the truth and chances are the gun that was used by that 6 year old boy to shoot the 3 year old boy was not obtained or owned legally. The fact is all the gun control measures that liberals propose, which no doubt are stepping stones to a mass government seizure of guns that obama advocates citing Australia and Great Britain successes, will only succeed in disarming law abiding responsible people. The bad guys who use the guns to commit the crimes you cite in the stats will still get guns and still commit gun crime. The  difference is, if you liberals ever get your way, that the criminals will know that no one can defend themselves and it will therefore increase, as it does when they know they are in a gun free zone. Notice no one walks into a shooting range to commit a mass shooting, it happens in known gun free zones. Liberal policies keep our southern boarder wide open where drugs, guns and criminals flood across daily. The drugs lead to gangs, who use the guns in the hands of the criminals to commit gun crime. So as long as you liberals and your policies keep us in danger, we will fight for our rights to defend our families. Australia can get all the guns off of their streets because they respect their own sovereignty and don't have illegal drugs, guns and criminals flooding into their country. And by the way calling Ben Carson idiotic is really one of those "I know more than you" liberal statements that show an inability to shed the brainwashing all liberals seem to have gone through. Maybe if you and your children had been marched onto a train by a bunch of armed nazis you would have appreciated having a gun and a chance to defend your family instead of walking quietly into a gas chamber. Maybe one family could not fight them all off, but every family working together could have had a chance to prevent something like that, why else would hitler have started out by disarming the country if it would have made no difference. Besides I would have rather died fighting for my family rather than walking quietly to our deaths. And really?????? citing the French as an example of why guns wouldn't have helped, that is idiotic, haven't you ever heard of the French rifle for sale........good condition, never fired, dropped once. Doubt you have open mind enough to consider any other points of view, liberals rarely do, but food for thought. If you read it thanks for reading it, if not I'm not surprised.                                              Craig  

Craig --
     Well, I tried to read your email, but you seem to be responding, not to what I wrote, but to your own general biases about "liberals." I think people should be educated about how dangerous guns are. You, I take it, do not. You imagine that you would have fought off the Nazis with your guns. Of course you do. As I point out, gun advocates are so passionate because they are people lost in fantasy.              Generally, I try not to cross a man's fantasies. But in this case, it's too important. Ben Carson is an ahistorical idiot, and you are carrying water for an idiot, which strikes me as something worse. Still, thanks for writing.
NS   

     As I expected you do not have an open mind to others points of view, and nothing in what I said states that I do not believe people should be educated on the dangers of guns or that I did not respond to your article and you are wrong on both counts. I believe that in the hands of a well trained person who owns and maintains a firearm is not dangerous. Guns are dangerous in the hands of reckless criminals who fully intend to use them for evil. The laws and restrictions proposed by liberal politicians would do absolutely nothing to change that, because criminals do not abide by laws and the point of our wide open southern boarder, highlights the fact that illegal guns will be readily available on our streets and in the hands of criminals. A car can be dangerous and have the same effect as guns in the hands of reckless and lawless people, like drunk drivers who kill innocent people all the time, but there is no liberal agenda to ban cars. Responsible gun owners are educated and trained to handle firearms safely, just like responsible drivers. As someone who has likely never owned or operated a firearm I highly doubt you should be a source of reference on how a person trained to use firearms would react. I have had the unfortunate experience of having someone break into my house while my family was asleep. I grabbed my 12 gauge and engaged it where the intruder could hear it and the sound of my 12 gauge shotgun sent him running, and had it not and he proceeded any further into my house he would have gotten a full 12 gauge round square in the chest, because my family comes first. Sorry if yours does not and I feel sorry for you that you don't think enough of yourself to have the ability to defend your family by any means necessary, besides would you have a problem with someone beating an intruder down with a bat, what is the difference? The real fantasy is that someone who has never owned, been trained on or even seen a real firearm has any idea what someone who has fired one many times and is well trained to use one would do. Your narrow minded thought process is imagining yourself in that situation knowing you have no idea what your doing or talking about and therefore would be unable to use it. The fact is that firearms are used by citizens across the country everyday to defend their homes and families, but the media will not report on it. I'm sorry but you come across as an angry liberal who has no idea about the subject he is rallying against and sounds out of his league talking about it. Why did hitler disarm germany if it would have made no difference and no I'm not saying I would have single handedly fought off the nazis, but I am saying I would rather die defending myself than marched quietly without a whimper, and you who has never fired a gun can not say what I who has fired one thousands upon thousands of times, and is well trained to use one without fear and with tremendous respect would do, you are the one who lives in a fantasy.

Craig--
     Hmmm, I should probably not respond. Because it's a waste of time, at least for me. But you're just making stuff up, because it sounds right to you. For instance, you write, "You who has never fired a gun." 
     What makes you say that? Attached is a photo of me firing a gun, at the FBI range in North Chicago. I have fired many guns. Another one of those facts that you might have trouble wrapping your head around. 
     It isn't my job to fix the world, person by person. And yet, it's hard to see such a bolus of delusion and not reply. 
     One more thing — really, responding to you is like eating candy; it's hard to stop. When you refer to a "liberal agenda to ban guns," that's another hallucination. Seven years of Obama has lead to absolutely nothing on the gun front. Not only aren't liberal changing gun laws, we don't even have hope that gun laws might be changed. 
     But I'm just curious. Can you really not perceive that?  Thanks for writing; answer my question if you can. 
Best,
NS

           I assumed that would be the end, but there was one more email, which just goes to show, if you treat people with respect, they do begin to come around, sometimes.

Neil,
       Rest assured it is not a waste of time to respond to my emails, your article has generated a healthy civil debate between two people who don't know each other and have opposing views, but may be able to find common ground in the end. I want to start by thanking you profusely for responding at all, I have a ton of respect for that. I have written to other writers and have never received a response, I guess that's why I didn't expect to get a response in the first place. Secondly I guess that I came out "guns blazing" (no pun intended) because I thought I had one chance to say it all and that would be it, because I did not expect to get additional responses, and for that I am again very grateful as well. Now you are absolutely right, I should not have assumed that you have never fired a gun, I do apologize for that, that is not typical of me and I was wrong. I guess that would be rooted somewhere from the fact that most of the people I know in life being from Chicago are in fact liberal (yeah I know big surprise) and we of course get in heated political debates because we are all political junkies, but are also in the end all good friends and although I am outnumbered I love and respect them all as friends and wouldn't change a thing about them. And in those debates I find them to be often angry and passionate about their various causes, as am I. In particular though when it comes to the gun debate, the people I often debate have never seen a live firearm let alone used one and often have no idea what they are talking about, and so to answer your question, I guess I made an incorrect assumption that anyone against guns has never been trained to use them, and for that I do again apologize. Clearly you have had some training so will you not at least concede that people who are properly trained and know how responsibly own and maintain a firearm,  should be allowed to continue to do so. I am particularly sensitive to that because my family was in fact saved by my firearm and I don't want to think of the things that could have happened if I didn't have it, I get overly sensitive and I say things I don't mean on this subject because of that experience in my life and I am also sorry about the other things I said about you defending yourself and your family, also very out of character for me and I apologize. I have three beautiful daughters that  I do not want see become a crime statistic. It just seems to me that the policies put forward by the left target (again no pun intended) responsible law abiding gun owners rather than the illegal guns that are responsible for the horrible crimes we see. I see liberal political pundits portray conservatives raving lunatics who want to shoot children and in fact the exact opposite is true. I also feel very strongly that obama's boarder policy has opened up out streets to even greater amounts of illegal drugs, guns and gangs all in the name of getting votes. And his response is to target law abiding people. You must concede I have a point. Something else you should know about me is that I am not a raving right wing lunatic, I am a physician and surgeon and I specialize in limb salvage surgery. I work hard to prevent amputations, in mainly patients with PVD and diabetes, but it unfortunately also puts me on the front line of the other end of the "illegal gun problem". I am a patriot who loves this country and everyone in it, my brother served in Iraq and I always try to be a good person who does the right thing. I don't think you wasted any time in writing to me and I really am thankful that you have. You may not have changed mind on the gun debate, but you have reminded me not to make assumptions about people, which is something I do pride myself on, so thank you and you can hang your hat on that. I hope that maybe you can see that there is more to the gun debate and that people like me are just as saddened and horrified by the illegal gun violence these days in America, especially in our great city of Chicago, it hurts inside because I love this city so much, to see what is happening here. We just disagree on the cause and solution. Maybe a better title of your editorial would be "Case symbolic of U.S. illegal gun crisis" and that would get some attention on both sides of the isle. I am glad you choose to engage me on this topic and hopefully we are both learning something. One of these days both sides have to figure out how to come together because the country is becoming more and more divided and it isn't good for us. I have to say I have a ton of respect for you and will now be a regular reader of your work.
Cheers,
Craig

Craig --
     Well, that's more like it. Remember, I'm not suggesting we change laws at all. Just that we educate people as to the risks so they can make their own decisions.
I thought I might post our exchange on my blog. Would you feel ill-used if I did that?
NS 

Mass shootings aren't the problem

     A 6-year-old boy shot his 3-year-old brother to death in Chicago last Saturday.
     Leading to no public soul-searching, no local, never mind national, catharsis. People hardly noticed.
     Which is strange, because this kind of tragedy — or, if you prefer, crime, since the child found the gun left atop a refrigerator by his father, Michael Santiago, who is now charged with child endangerment — is symbolic of our nation's gun crisis.
     We snap to attention at mass shootings, with round-the-clock coverage, and intense thumb twiddling.
     But mass shootings are not the problem. Not close, not compared to everyday gun violence.
     According to the FBI, 486 people were killed in mass shootings in the United States between 2000 and 2013. Or between 30 and 40 a year.
     Now lets look at the numbers of people who intentionally shoot themselves: about 20,000 a year. An additional 11,000 are murdered by others wielding guns. And 600 more, like the 3-year-old boy, are shot and killed in accidents.
     So why the sound and fury after mass shootings? And the cough-into-the-fist at individual shootings?

     Mass shootings are scary. We can imagine someone bursting in and shooting us. Hard to imagine shooting ourselves, even though the odds are 1,000-to-1 in favor of the latter. The media is run by human beings, and like all human beings we have a tendency to ignore what's important in favor of obsessing over what's shiny, or novel, or scary, or dramatic.
     The common wisdom — and I've written this myself — is that nothing will be done toward adopting a sane national approach to guns because gun owners are so passionate in their support of gun rights. Their solution is always more guns, not fewer. The National Rifle Association has Congress in the palm of its hand to such a degree that it stripped funding to the Centers for Disease Control that went to gun violence research (a reminder of how wrong people can be — false patriots claim their guns protect our freedoms, when the exact opposite is true: the gun lobby undermines the basic American freedom to investigate the facts of our lives).
     Yet there is hope. There is a model for success, the story of a formerly huge national problem, worsened by rich interests and entrenched public delusion, eventually made less huge after decades of hard work: smoking.

      Fifty years ago, half of the adults in this country smoked. Smoking was cool. Even after the Surgeon General's report linked cigarettes and cancer, it took decades for attitudes to change. If you had told people that smoking would be banned in offices and bars, aboard airplanes and even on some streets, they'd have laughed at you. Go to a bar and not smoke?
     Now only a quarter of adults smoke. Millions of lives have been saved. How? Facts are sticky. No matter how much hype and spin gets sprayed at them, the facts remain. Smoking really does kill you. As do guns. Arguments for their value are delusional, like Ben Carson's idiotic imagining that arming Germany's Jewish population would have prevented the Holocaust. (The French army had guns; didn't help them). Or episodic: Someone, somewhere occasionally uses a gun for a legitimate protective purpose. But that is an extreme rarity, the comfort hiding the peril. Cigarettes make you more relaxed, so you ignore the danger. Ditto for guns. They help you feel safe, the illusion of protection masking the hard reality: that you don't usually shoot the gang-banger coming through the door; what happens, usually, is one of your kids shoots another.
     With cigarettes, before laws changed, perceptions had to change. Slowly smoking went from something desirable to a personal flaw.
     Ditto for guns. The NRA is trained to snarl against anyone proposing laws, but it's too early to push for laws. What we should push is the unvarnished truth, supported by the overwhelming evidence. Buying a gun makes you more imperiled, not safer. It increases the risk you will kill yourself, that you will kill your family members, or they will kill you — or each other.
     Those are just the facts.
     The father of those two boys bought his gun for what seems like a valid reason — he had testified against a gang member and was worried that the gang might come for him. But they never did. And now they don't have to. But let us not focus on this case. Because someone else will be shot tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that . . .

What to Do With Louie, Revisited

   
     A family on the next block put up this sign in their yard — actually a number of them. Which made me think of Louie Herrera, a 28-year-old man who lives in Elmhurst with his family who, coincidentally, have a similar sign in their yard. 
     I met Louie and his family six years ago, after his mother wrote to object to a piece I had written about Misericordia, the home for people with developmental challenges. Those kids would be fine, she suggested. But what about her son, who had just turned 22 and thus was no longer eligible for state services? I think she was surprised to hear back from me, and even more surprised to find me in her kitchen shortly thereafter. 

     If Louie Herrera's parents beat him, if they abused or abandoned him, then he'd be all set: The State of Illinois would be able to swoop in and see that Herrera, who has Down syndrome, was placed in a large, public facility that could offer structure -- supervision, classes and work experience -- to help him live a full life.
     "That, unfortunately, is true," says Lilia Teninty, director of the Division of Developmental Disabilities for the Illinois Human Services Department. "We have 'crisis criteria,' where, if people need that, we immediately put them into services. Beyond that, we don't have a lot of flexibility in adding services."
     Alas, Herrera is not in crisis. He is the "heart and soul" of a tight-knit, loving family in Elmhurst, which, unfortunately, happens to be in Illinois, thus creating a further difficulty.
     If Herrera lived in another state, he might be able to avail himself of services from a small group home or shelter workshop located in his neighborhood -- in Michigan, 82 percent of people with developmental disabilities are served in such settings. In Illinois, the figure is 30 percent, making it dead last -- 50th out of 50 states, right behind Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas -- when it comes to supporting community services for people with disabilities.
     Scarce Illinois resources are focused on large facilities, and even those are hard to get. People with disabilities who are trying to find whatever help is available in Illinois go on a waiting list to be evaluated. That waiting list currently has 16,000 names on it.
     "We don't have enough money to serve them all," says Teninty.
     That's the bad news.
     The really bad news, for Louie Herrera, is that his name isn't even on the 16,000-person waiting list. His family has been told that now that he has become an adult -- his 22nd birthday was Friday -- he is officially on his own, and the state cannot give him even the hope of any kind of assistance.

                                                                - - -

     Louie Herrera is a broad-shouldered, sturdy young man with a ready smile. Though some of his tastes mirror those of his peers -- he plays and coaches basketball and enjoys cooking -- his musical preferences are unconventional for someone of his age.
     "I like watching the Wiggles," he says, sitting in his mother's tidy kitchen, with its rooster motif. "I like 'Hannah Montana.' "
     Herrera was born with an extra 21st chromosome, a condition commonly called Down syndrome. Because of that extra chromosome, he exhibits a range of traits, including almond-shape eyes, a percussive manner of speaking and an IQ of about 50.
     I met Louie because his mother, Cheryl, wrote to me after I ran a column about Misericordia, the large Catholic facility on the North Side for people with developmental disabilities. She said that such places are fine, if you can get into them. But what about all those thousands of people who can't get in? Or those who don't want to go to a large setting and live with hundreds of people?
     The Herreras would prefer Louie to stay at home, where he has always been, and where most people with disabilities -- where most people, period -- prefer to be. But finding someplace nearby that welcomes someone like Louie Herrera can be next to impossible.
     "We've been finding a lot of these shelter workshops have been closed down as a result of funding," says his father, Louis Herrera. "Even if you do find a slot, you have to pay for it."
     Their search has been mirrored statewide. The struggle between a system that favors large institutions and the trend toward small community homes is a central concern for the disabled community.
     "This is not just about service, not just about a system that supports institutionalization vs. community living," says Marca Bristo, CEO of Access Living, a Chicago advocacy group for the disabled. "This is at the heart of our civil rights struggle."
     "Civil rights" may be a phrase not much associated with the disabled, but courts have increasingly viewed their situation in that light — the landmark 1999 Supreme Court Olmstead decision said, basically, that forcing citizens to receive care in large facilities when they prefer not to is a form of discrimination.
 

Louie Herrera, in a recent photo

   "We see so many people, especially young people, who have no business in nursing homes, ending up in them," says Bristo. "Some go in for short-term stays because they have some medical issue that needs to be addressed, and they never get out — and they never get out because of the way our public financing system is set up. It doesn't support community-based living. It's an individual's battle to find their way out."
     Battle is the word. Cheryl Herrera gave me a thick stack of photocopies of the letters, forms and reports she either sent or received trying to find a place for her son once he turned 22 and could no longer go to Elmhurst schools. She works as a substitute teacher, her husband as an accountant, so paying for Louie's care themselves is not an option. Yet leaving him at home would be like parking a 7-year-old in front of the TV for nine hours a day and hoping for the best.

                                                                                 
                                                                 - - -

     Those who are not related to someone who has Down syndrome, who have never met one, might automatically be put off by their outward appearances and thus may fail to grasp how loved they are as individuals by their family and friends.
     "Louie is the heart and soul of the family," says his father. "He has an outgoing, extraverted personality and is so pure in his nature and how he views things. So many people are touched by him when they meet him."
     One of those Louie Herrera touched most deeply is his younger brother, Doug.
     "People have misconceptions about everything having to do with special needs," says Doug, who's 19. "They look at them and see someone who's different, someone who drools or walks funny. They're too timid to actually get to know them."
     A sophomore at Illinois State University, Doug Herrera is studying special education and plans to spend his career working with people like his older brother.
     "I've always looked up to him," Doug Herrera says. "Through him, I've gotten to know a whole bunch of people with other disabilities, growing up and meeting his friends, hanging around his classrooms. I was always involved with people with special needs, always able to work with them. It's a rewarding job, and I really developed a passion for it."

       —Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times Feb. 8, 2009

     Update
    The deep cuts to state programs since this was written have not affected the life of Louie Herrera. 

    "He's actually doing pretty good," Cheryl Herrera told me Monday. "He does a couple of programs; right now he's doing one through Gigi's Playhouse, out in Hoffman Estates, three days a week.  It's a little far, but we're managing. Two other days he's at Monarch, through Ray Graham, and in that one, he's really out and about in the community." 
     When we spoke on Monday, they had just gotten home from the library.
     "Louie likes the library," she said. "We go once a week."  
     Louie also works one day a week at a local camera shop, Elmhurst Photo on Spring Road, helping to clean and handle small tasks.
     "He feels very useful," his mother said. 
     His brother, Doug Herrera, who was studying to be a special education teacher in 2009, is now 26 and doing just that.
    "He works with really significantly-challenged kids at the Kirk School in Palatine," his mother said 
     

Cubs doomed

     A grim Monday morning.
     The Cubs down, two games to zip in the National League Championship Series. Last week's carnival air of inevitability turned to gloom or, more likely, completely forgotten. An embarrassing, temporary mania.
     Of course, as I write this on Sunday afternoon, the Cubs have as yet only lost the first game to the Mets Saturday night. But I'm going to go out on a limb, take one for the team, and brazenly assume they've lost the second too, because a) it's the Cubs and they probably will b) it might be the best chance of ensuring they'll actually win Sunday night.
     How can that be?
     Baseball is not just bats and balls, throws and catches. Baseball is our most spiritual sport, sometimes more of a religion than a display of athletic prowess. It's karmic. The Cubs and their famous curse are only the beginning. In our age of the dominance of flashier, faster, more TV-friendly sports such as football and basketball, the mere survival of baseball is a true miracle.
     The baseball gods demand caution, modesty, and they must be appeased. When they are ignored, when you cross the Great Wheel of Baseball Fate, there are consequences. I saw this disaster looming last week, when the whole city started skipping around Wrigley Field as if it were a maypole, glorying in the team's surprising victory, like Israelites driven mad by the golden calf. They did things they shouldn't have done, and said things they should not have said. I kept my mouth zipped shut -- well, one tweet on Friday:
     "Chicagoans are so excited about the Cubs, I'm reluctant to whisper, 'Isn't this the point where they collapse and break your hearts again?'"
     No one noticed or replied. No one wanted to face the truth.
     Then came what was to me — averse as I am to challenge a colleague — the Kiss of Death, Saturday morning.
     "THEY'RE GOING ALL THE WAY" screamed the headline on Rick Morrissey's column.
     Oh no, I thought, aghast.
     "They look unbeatable."
     No!
     "A force of nature."
     No, no!
     "The Cubs have become America's team."
     No, no, NOOO!     
     I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that Rick Morrissey is not Jewish. So he is not familiar with a concept that in Yiddish is called the "kine hora." The evil eye. I suppose the closest equal in English is "counting your chickens before they're hatched." I think of it as "Flipping off Fate."
     I suppose its a result of all the "Moneyball" sabermetric number crunching that has so afflicted baseball in recent years, as if you could measure Rizzo's bone density and the humidity of the air blowing in from right field and call the series for Chicago. You can't. Baseball isn't math, it's poetry. Not science but philosophy. Baseball breaks your heart ("It is designed," baseball commissioner A. Bart Giamatti once wrote, "to break your heart.")
     Although the Cubs droopping the first two --if that's what they have done -- might be a secret kindness. What makes the Cubs such a special team, such a valuable commodity? Obviously not their string of championship victories. Just two things, really, in my estimation: 1) They play at Wrigley Field. and 2) their incredible World Series drought, which grows year by year.
     The two are not unrelated. A winning team would have moved out to DuPage County years ago. The Cubs are like Naples--success eluded them, they were spared the ravages of economic progress, and now failure is their success. When the Boston Red Sox ended their streak in 2004, it was a moment of joy, yes, but the joy that comes from leaping from a high place. Then they hit hard reality, won two more championships, and are now just another winning team, a sort of New York Yankees Lite.
     Is that what you really want? Fine. Consider this column my sacrifice on the Sacred Baseball Altar. The illusion of the fan is that they matter. That if they wear their lucky hat, and cheer loud enough, the team will win. I'm not a fan, I've only been to one game this year. But I know how important this is to people, and want to do my part. Boldly predicting defeat Sunday night and standing by that prediction, even if wrong, is the best guarantee that they may somehow win. If they lose, when they lose, then I will have been correct. And if through some miracle they somehow manage to win, well, I'll look bad, but I'll also know that I've played my part in their victory.  It worked for Br'er Rabbit.
     And if this all sounds crazy well, remember, it's sports commentary. It's supposed to sound crazy.