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Studs Terkel by a mile for the most beloved Chicagoan. I met him twice and he was everything he appeared to be from afar. He was a truly genuine, lovely man. A writer who listened to everyone and retained a humanist optimism despite all. The best of the best.

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Daniel,

I’m sitting in a rural diner with a bronze plaque stating the building dates 1892. Pictures of miners, farmers and military—all using horses. Do urbane urbanites ever get out in the country? If there was Metra, BART or CTA around here at least riders could drive the crime off the cars and platforms.

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I do occasionally go into the countryside, but I am a city kid, I readily admit it. Over 83% of Americans live in urban areas, and that is what this book is mostly about. America used to be a very rural country. The Ford Model T was very much a farmers' cars! It is not any more though. And even in rural areas, the cars people drive are far heavier and more polluting than they need to be and the roads are insanely dangerous. You're less likely to be a victim of crime in a rural area but you're way more likely to die a violent death, in a flaming car wreck!

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I don't think being an urbanist necessarily implies disapproval of rural lifestyles. That is my POV, at least. IMO, the issue is how to plan and zone in urban areas. Urbanists want ways of planning and zoning that make it possible for most residents of urban areas to avoid dealing with traffic. That is simply not an issue in rural areas. The target of an urbanist's criticisms are urban dwellers who want to build up in a way that makes it necessary to drive to everything.

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This seems like voters’ broad political judgments – as pessimism, optimism, and realism – may come from within the character of the candidates as expressed in past professional achievements: Johnson seems inclined to emotional pie-in-the-sky campaigning as a utopian appeal to voters who largely want a whole fairytale remake of the City; Vallas has been level-headed and pragmatic, rational in his past administrative work and his current campaign speaking. Aside from other things, this difference may appeal to voters within a broad range of separate views -- including the sophisticated -- but considering both candidates' personas, which approach is best for the City as a whole in 2023 and why?

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Mar 30, 2023·edited Mar 31, 2023

Eric, your analysis of the flaws in the pro-charter position on education, and your critique of Vallas's position on education, is Spot On. Highly informed and very in-depth, especially for someone who is not an education specialist, as such. There are important provisions in the education positions of both candidates that are worth delving into and discussing, too, but on this important provision -- the impact that privatization has on education, and the re-direction of charter schools away from their original intended purpose to be laboratories to improve public education for all -- you nail it, in my view.

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In my opinion, we the people are our own worst enemies. We bemoan the mud slinging, distortions and negative ads by politicians. Yet polls show that kind of advertising works. The voting public buys into it. So if a candidate wants to win, he must resort to it or go down in defeat.

The same applies to our demand for cars, gas stoves etc. we fail to react to the long term i plications, and insist on short term gratification.

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I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago (maybe NPR’s Planet Money?) where the observation was made that cars came along just in time to keep cities from being buried in horse poop. The ecological savior of one generation becomes the scourge of the next. Wonder what will happen when all those wind turbines reach the end of their service life. .

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I, too, read about how cities had reached their size limits at the end of the Victorian era (or soon afterwards) due to the amount of dung that had to be managed.

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It's true and a point I make in the book! If cars had replaced horse carts 1 to 1, it would have been a radical improvement to cities. The problem is they replaced them 10 to 1!

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I can't read the Picayune without having a comment box open. You list several good thoughts for readers to ponder regarding do we really want Vallas to lead the city. Then regarding Johnson - you hit the money mark - "double talk." If I look at the run off as Vote for "Mr Have you consider his plan" vs "Mr Double Talk" - Vallas is the choice. You may or may not like what he plans - but you at least get a sense that he won't say something one day and try to recant from it later (Johnson). 2. Sarcasm Alert: How far we've come from identifying others with yellow stars to identifying ourselves with a blue check mark. 3. Classic Edits Novels: I guess we can take the next step. A gallery for the David (Original) and a gallery for the David "covered up" for the squeamish.

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Regarding "updates" to Christie and Dahl books: sorry, but I smell a PR stunt. Reminds me of sports teams that come out with a new take on a jersey/sweater/uniform every two months to goose sales. What better way for Puffin to revive old titles then to throw them into the cultural war turmoil and then come up with a "solution" (to a problem they created) that placates both sides? Call me cynical, but I think we're being played. And they've won because of all the free publicity.

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Mar 30, 2023·edited Mar 30, 2023

Still, anything that introduces Agatha Christie to a new generation is a good thing. What a wonderful writer and tale-spinner.

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I agree on Christie. So she's an odd choice for a cultural update. I guess I missed the Twitter feuds of people claiming to be offended by her writing. Agatha Christie? Did Miss Marple fail to extend a pinky finger when sipping tea at some point?

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Miss Marple was always correct, of course, but in the books there were sometimes unkind references to and stereotypes of people of color (Black and Brown) and to the Jews. And to various British stereotypes as well, including the upper crust. They reflect the times. One can be unhappy, I think, about what those times were like, but changing the books is simply unfaithful to history.

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EZ, i don't know where to begin to address your attack on charter schools and other variations on school choice, w/o writing an essay as long as yours. so i will limit my rejoinder to three elements. 1] you question 'how much choice will there really be for the poor?' well, how much choice do they have in your ideal system? i know that my kids have a choice as to where they send their kids to school. i had choice of where to send my kids to school, back in the day - my guess is you and your wife did, too. why? because we had income and/or assets that put us in a position to choose. don't like your kids' school? move somewhere else, where the school[s] is[are] better. w/o charter schools and other schools of choice, poor people don't have choice - they're stuck with their attendance area public school. - the vast majority of which in big cities fail to educate children at a basic level.

2] you suggest we should get the best and the brightest working on improving public education. let me clue you in - the best and the brightest have been working on improving public education for decades. and the current public education system? WYSIWYG. public education in big cities has been a gross and egregious failure, also for decades. we can discuss/debate the reasons - but it's not due to a lack of effort by concerned citizens, grantmakers and many others to develop models that work, including and specifically for minority children from low income families. there is one answer that is a total non-starter: more money. the real [not just nominal] per-pupil expenditure for public education in big cities has far outpaced inflation over the course of many years. academic achievement is no better, maybe worse - far too high a percentage of kids in those schools can't read even close to grade level, can't write literately, can't do even basic math.

3] last, having known many parents of low income families over the years, almost all people of color, i know that they want school choice for their kids. and i know that they are competent to make that choice. will some make a mistake of choice? of course - the upper middle class and wealthy sometimes make bad choices for their kids' education. but, as i stated earlier, people with income and/or assets always have choice.

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Thank you for injecting these very material points to the discussion on school choice.

More school funding is certainly not the answer. Presently, Chicago public schools are funded about $29,000 per student and the teachers are among the most highly compensated in the country. Yet, student test scores continue to decline with a horrific number of students now unable to read and do math at grade level. Ever more funding would be simply throwing good money after bad.

My wife and I fostered a black CPS student through her junior year at Senn High school. When she first came to live with us we were horrified to learn that she read at a third grade level, could not even do the 2's of her multiplication tables, told us matter of factly that she had never done homework in her life, yet was receiving A's and B's for obviously no academic performance at Senn. I sat with her every night at the kitchen table after dinner to do worksheets and attempt to get her caught up, but I fear the little bit that we were able to accomplish was not nearly enough to offset the criminal neglect she had experienced in CPS all her life.

Conversely, we had the opportunity to mentor a black youngster from the inner city who was given an opportunity to transfer out of CPS and to attend Loyola High School through the Boys Hope program. His freshman year at Loyola he struggled because he had so much catching up to do. But we supported him, he worked incredibly hard and by his sophomore year he won an award for the most improved student. He graduated with excellent grades and received a full scholarship to Drake University which he subsequently completed and is now living a very productive and happy life. This was very unlikely to have occurred if he was unable to get out of CPS.

Many inner-city children are born into very disadvantaged circumstances through no fault of their own, and they truly deserve every opportunity to be able to succeed in life. If we really care about these children, school choice is something that they must have.

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I hear you. I just wish that to the extent some charters have a secret sauce when it comes to otherwise low-performing students -- and it seems that some do -- we could spread the magic district-wide. I share Zorn's concern about the wider population and worry about a chaotic process whereby children, for the choices (or non-choices) of their parents, are left behind.

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Thanks for your reply and thoughts on this jake. Unquestionably, there are some disadvantaged children who are not going to be helped by school choice, either because of disability requiring special education, or by the total lack of parental involvement and support for education which tragically seems very widespread in the Inner city has witnessed by the abysmally high chronic truancy rate. We witnessed this first hand with the girl we fostered through her junior year as we learned that her mother (no father present in her life) had never attended a single teacher conference in the child's life.

These children are going to require additional support and resources from our public education establishment, and the funding should allow for delivery of these resources. But, we cannot and should not allow that to hold back the majority of children who will take advantage and be able to succeed with school choice. We also witnessed this first hand with the young man who we mentored and achieved exceptional success first at Loyola Academy and then at Drake University.

There is no question that all children are now suffering from deficient education while they are enslaved to the failing inner-city public schools without any other options available to them.

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hundreds of thousand of students are being left behind by CPS every yr. choice is not exacerbating that problem - if anything, choice is shining a light on that problem.

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Is there a word for when you were once impressed with someone but not anymore (like Zorn with Johnson)? Not unimpressed. Dis-impressed?

Re Christie, you don't want to know the original title of her classic "And Then There Were None."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None

I think updating her books to remove casual racism from another era is fine. It's not as though they're literary masterpieces. Perhaps the books should come with a little addendum at the end explaining the change(s). Christie began writing in England in the '20s when antisemitism and racism were very much in vogue among the cool kids.

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On the subject of cars and climate change, my mileage per year has decreased significantly since the onset of the pandemic three years ago. I used to average about 19,000 miles per year. The last three years, the average mileage per year is about 6,300. I am an attorney, and this decrease in mileage results from the fact that I have been working from home, and court status hearings, which used to be in person, are now conducted by Zoom or WebEx. I spend a lot less on gas, and my car will last longer before it has to be replaced. I’ve been monitoring the debate about whether workers outside of manufacturing and retail should return to the office, and it seems to me that those who are advocating a return are trying to hold on to the past.

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Fortunately cars aren’t going away. We’re entering a new golden car age. Zero emissions, fewer accidents, self-driving for old and handicapped and impaired people, less maintenance, self-parking after dropping you off at home, work, wherever... And, in a decade or so, private car tunnels as an alternative to clogged roads.

It will be glorious, and just in time for me to enjoy it.

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When I hear Branden Johnson say that he wants to end the shot spotter technology and thinks "community policing is code for targeting black and brown communities", or that he wants to spend our limited funds on targeting the root causes of crime and mental health, it reminds me of the Republicans that that say they do not want to take AR-15s away from law abiding citizens and that more money for mental health will solve all these mass shootings. Meanwhile, average people all over Chicago are nervous to walk or drive in their neighborhoods for fear of shootings and car jackings and people all over America are afraid to go to a theater, church, or send their children to school. The far left and far right are denying the rest of us safety and security. We can't wait for all the underlying issues that might cause street crime and mass murder to be solved.

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I don’t see that “chaotic” differences in how families choose and manage their kids’ schooling is a problem. If that bothers you, how do you make peace with the fact that almost anyone can have and raise their own personal humans? Does that whole chaotic situation suggest any default public solution, like collective parenting?

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"You Didn't See Nothin'" was an excellent podcast for 6 episodes. Compelling, nuanced and creatively produced. Then came the last episode, which was disappointingly loaded with the typical anti-productive overreach rhetoric on matters of race. Anyone comparing this case to Michael Brown clearly isn't following along.

It may not be so obvious what was in the heart of Rev Martin and others. Growing up on the south side, abuse came both ways. In one episode of many, a friend of mine was jumped by a group of black kids, skull cracked, and put into the hospital for about a week. His response was "they probably had a rough childhood, I'm not mad at them."

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Regarding "too many cars". Advocacy for high density seems to be having a moment. The Wall Street Journal has and article citing economists who claim cities have long had too much parking (https://www.wsj.com/articles/parking-problem-too-much-cities-e94dcecf?mod=hp_lead_pos8). "Transit oriented development" has been tried out of the last several years, which is where apartment buildings near built near mass transit have less of a parking requirement than zoning codes would otherwise require.

I am all for it. Build neighborhoods for people who live in them rather than people who drive into them. Also high density makes mass transit more efficient.

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