A  Short History of Oak Park, Volume One, 2004-2005 is on sale at Oak Park’s independent Book Table, on Lake Street across from the Lake Theater.  $14.

Chatting with Debby Preiser, the events lady at Oak Park Public Library, yesterday, I got a glowing account of a recent session with Iraq and Viet Nam war vets, all but one of whom (five in all) regretted their and our participation in those wars.  Interesting, she said with a smile, and I smiled back.  She had glimmed my No Obama ‘08 cap (my Rohrshach test of tolerance levels) before recounting the vets’ session, held I assume in the library’s Veterans Room.

I felt somewhat buffeted by the account, but Debby is a sales person, and selling gets that way sometimes.  In any case, it put me in mind of a trend I have been noticing and storing in the back of my crowded, cluttered mind, that our library serves its supposed constituency a steady diet of progressive (let no man say liberal) programs. 

In this case, the vets endorsed an anti-war position, and that could have been merely the luck of the draw, reflecting Oak Park and literary Chicago’s widespread firmly held convictions.  A similar program in Mississippi or Oklahoma would have produced a different response, I imagine.

Nonetheless, assuming it was accidental in this case — pure chance, let us say — we cannot help notice that library programs tilt heavily to the left.  That’s us in Oak Park, yes, but we are also literate, urbane, highly educated, and keenly interested in intelligent, even intellectual debate and discussion, are we not?  Including conservative ideas in a debate atmosphere. 

Why not a debate, to give an example, between an Al Gore acolyte (Al would be great, but he declines debate) and a nay-sayer, each of some professional heft and platform style.  Sounds like money to me, and not available from the Great ATM in Washington probably, but who knows?  Stranger expenditures have happened and will happen, now that happy-go–lucky times are here again.  Meanwhile, our library movers and shakers might give it a thought.  After all, why be left all the time?

Oak Park village president David Pope is moving on two commission-chair appointments, of seven waiting to be made, village clerk Sandra Sokol told one of the commissions last night, 4/1. 

He’s very thorough about it, said Sokol, who noted that the issue, or at least commissions in general, had come up the night before in a candidate-forum debate.  Indeed, opposition candidates in the April 7 election have accused incumbents of downgrading the commission structure.  Commissions and boards are volunteer groupings of citizens whose job is largely to advise the village board.

Last night’s meeting was of the Community Involvement Commitee (CIC), which recruits and recommends members for the 25 other commissions and boards, including the Zoning Board of Appeals, which is more than advisory but has statutory authority.  Each commission has an appointed village board liaison.  Sokol, who is retiring as clerk after 16 years, is laison to the CIC. 

Four citizens came before the CIC last night as prospects for appointment to a commission:

* a historic-preservation professional, with a view to joining the village’s Historic Preservation Commission

* a lawyer willing to take on the time-consuming and sometimes-hot-seat zoning-board or Plan Commission duties

* a building-rehab contractor who has served on other commissions and for whom CIC members seemed to prefer the Community Design Commission

* a woman in her early 20s, raised in Oak Park (she named the junior high), who had got off class in her master’s program early so as to make the meeting.  She mentioned two commissions, Community Relations and Housing Programs Advisory.

The members, eager to find younger citizens willing to serve, were especially glad to see this woman.

All four, none older than in his or her 40s, were typical in my experience of watching CIC prospect sessions, being earnest, willing, and apparently quite competent.

The good news was, the metal detectors worked at Proviso East last night.  The man behind it, among many milling about on both sides of it, kept calling out to us on the other side, “Single file, folks.  Single file.”  And hats off, not to anyone in particular but to the goal of civility in closed places.

The bad news was, the Huskies lost decisively to the Dolphins of Whitney Young.  As Fenwick had seen the writing on the wall after two, maybe three quarters, but wouldn’t believe it but bounced back to provide excitement for the finish, so did OPRF come back from nowhere at the end, giving us something to cheer about.

But Shumpert the Man fouled out late in the 4^th.  He had put the Friars away almost by himself on Friday at OPRF, but this time he got flummoxed by better players who seemed, truth to tell, better coached.  Too often in the first half, after Young’s 17–0 run following OPRF’s opening 7–0 run (!), the Young team drew the whole damn OPRF team to the ball carrier, leaving the guy in corner or even closer to take his shot unmolested on the pass.

The Young team also too often spread the OPRF field, biding time for their opening, leaving lots of room in the middle.

Anyhow, nobody loafed, and the season ended not with a whimper but with feverish, if not successful, effort.

Meanwhile, long past metal detection at the entrance, we got another slice of life at P-East with the nutty announcer at courtside who regularly, maddeningly served up the latest for the severely sight-impaired among us for whom the two big, brightly lit scoreboards, one at each end of the generously proportioned gym were inadequate. 

We all were sight-impaired in his book; he gave us the score and time remaining at every opportunity, and in dramatic fashion.  He also now and then told us who was entering the game as subs — but at least once assigned a number 31 to the Young team, which had none, and another time told us in dramatic fashion which team had the ball after a time-out, getting this wrong too.

He was like the barking dog that keeps you awake at night but stops now and then to catch his breath, at which time you doze off, forgetting about him completely.  But then he starts again.  So we could watch this game and forget about him periodically.  But then he’d start again.

I beg to differ with Wed. Journal’s esteemed features editor, Ken Trainor, in the matter of “cuckold.”  First, how old is the word as for being available for use today?  Answer: it’s current.  It’s not obsolete, that is, and won’t be as long as male adulterers festoon our land. 

(Adultery is expensive, concluded the very young but highly literate Edith Wharton, on reading the ferry boat sign, “Adults 50 cents, Children 25 cents.”)

However, Ken T. gives time in his latest column to the meaning “cuckold” has acquired in a sexual underground: some sort of kinky sex.  Not necessary: neither John Hubbuch nor the objectors to his column had this in mind — though it did occur to a Wed. Jnl co-worker.  Hmmm.

In fact, as recently as last September “The Magnificent Cuckold,” billed as “the astonishing classic farce (“Le Cocu magnifique”), written in 1920 by the Franco-Belgian playwright Fernand Crommelynck,” was presented at the Connelly Theater, on East 4th Street (between Avenues A & B), in New York City.

No need was determined in this announcement to specify that the sexual-underground meaning was not intended.

BTW, personal to Ken: you made the right choice in running the Hubbuch column as is.  BTW 2, where the heck is this column of yours on the WJ site?

The fire-Hubbuch movement is under way.  Good.  Throw him and his out on the street.  It’s in this letter from an Oak Park woman whose attention he caught with a column in which he mentions Hillary as “the most famous cuckquean in American history,” explaining for the semi-literate that this is “a woman whose husband strays” from connubial obligations. 

Comments by me are in brackets:

2/26/2008
Dear Mr. Trainor,

You should have pulled this [column] or excised part of it. Remarks regarding Hillary Clinton’s qualifications for president were derogatory to all women. [Italics added]  She does have the qualifications independent of her husband.  [Matter of opinion here, but not to be excised.]

Bill Clinton was a fine president. His term of office grows in stature compared to our current president. He and John Kennedy were womanizers during their entire terms. The U.S. sees these actions as more important than George Bush’s pre-emptive war in Iraq and the destruction of the U.S. economy. [Italics added.  Don’t bother putting H. and his out on street; we are all heading there already.]

Hillary has a longer term as senator than Barack Obama. I support her, but will work for and vote for the Democratic nomination.

Hubbuch lacks intelligence and sensitivity. You have control over his employment. [Fire him]

Donna L. Cervini

It’s give and take like this that makes Oak Park great, yesssss.

Only in Oak Park did a splinter gay congregation, once part of Chicago’s Good Shepherd Metropolitan Community Church, survive:

[O]ver the years, many troubles came to plague Good Shepherd. First, the congregation repeatedly split due to ideological differences, spawning satellite MCCs, such as Christ the Redeemer in Evanston, Church of the Resurrection in Hyde Park and New Spirit in Oak Park [542 S. Scoville, 708-848-5460] — only the one in Oak Park survives today. [Italics added]

This is not surprising.  Oak Park has been a major church-oriented town from the start.  If a church can’t survive here, it can survive nowhere.

Then there are “Welcoming Gay Friendly Churches” in Oak Park:

 Ascension

Oak Park Catholic   St. Catherine of Siena-St. Lucy Oak Park Catholic   Grace Church Oak Park Episcopal   Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Oak Park Lutheran   Oak Park Mennonite Church Oak Park Mennonite   New Spirit MCC Oak Park Non-denominational   First United Church Oak Park UCC, Presbyterian   Pilgrim Church Oak Park UCC   Euclid Avenue UMC Oak Park UMC   First United Methodist Church of Oak Park Oak Park UMC

Worship at New Spirit MCC is Sundays at 11am (June through August at 10am), with Wednesday Prayer and Hymn Sing at 7:30pm.

INSPIRED BY CHANGE MAYBE? — A letter writer has warmed globally to Sen. Obama as reminiscent of JFK almost 50 years ago with his stirring “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” But O’s message is just the opposite, consisting entirely about what your country should do for you, though admittedly details are vague even about this.

This is huge.  Just dismantled the improvised computer-riser that allowed me to stand and deliver blogs and columns (not book copy, because it called for too much standing time) and am now SITTING and typing!

It’s one small step for mankind by the stiff-legged man whose casts were sawed off only a few days ago!  Yahoo!  On to book-length copy production, not to mention even greater blogging and columning.

What do you say as a school administrator when asked why so many black kids are disciplined, far more than white kids?

You vaguely question teachers’ and administrators’ sensitivity to black kids’ needs, refer to the little-known and less-appreciated cyclic nature of student misbehavior, and cite vaguely how different is each child’s experience — with the latter countering the widespread impression that each child’s experience is the same or at least similar:

Kevin Anderson, [District 97’s] assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, hesitated to hazard a guess when asked why he thinks African-American males are receiving the majority of out-of-school suspensions.

“Is that a sensitivity issue on our part? Are we going through a cycle of kids acting out right now? It would be so different for every child, I can’t guess at this time,” he said.

Not fair to nail the guy for off-cuff comments, or at least not entirely fair, you say.  But would we expect something more pointed and informative in a considered official statement?  It would be a first for a schools bureaucracy anywhere.