News flash. From a recent press release from the city’s Department of Housing: “Most of Chicago’s low and moderate income residents are faced with finite resources.”
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Urban denial leads to urban renewal. Why don’t the stars turn out to save the remains of Maxwell Street? “The blues greats are the ones who are most likely to think they did it on their own,” Roosevelt University professor Steve Balkin tells Mark Guarino of the Daily Herald (July 13). “If you talk to Buddy Guy, he’ll say he never played (on Maxwell Street) and he’s proud he never played there. I know Buddy Guy visited Maxwell Street, but he’s proud to say he didn’t play there. A lot of the top people don’t like to recognize the humble roots of the music.”
“The grotesque over-coverage of the Kennedy-Bessette deaths is further evidence of the degree to which the media has replaced the church in America,” writes Sam Smith in the “Progressive Review” (July 19). “It picks our gods, tells us for whom and how to mourn, defines our rites of passage, hears confessions, grants absolution, prescribes our creed, and asks for money before the sermon.”
