Limit Accessibility of Ammunition

Everywhere there are devastating stories of gun violence. There have been school sprees, such as those in Winnetka, Columbine and Virginia Tech, to name only the most notorious. There are family sprees, snipers and, as was commemorated here last weekend, hate sprees.

Even more devastating, violence from guns is something we as a country have come to accept. The local evening news has become a dramatic reading of the police blotter.

Most of these shootings are carried out with handguns, packing a lifetime of harm into a person-to-person missile.

The gratification and immediacy of a handgun leave no time for contemplation when one is angry, upset or disturbed. The instantaneousness of a bullet leaves no time for regrets or second thoughts.

It is appalling that in this country there are those who would spend their money and time to purchase and use an instrument solely designed to inflict injury and death. Just as appalling is the ease with which this can be done.

Legally a handgun can be procured if one has the proper permits and identification.

Procuring one illegally involves no paper trail and less time.

An amendment to Illinois Senate Bill 1095, calls for "coded ammunition." If passed, it would mandate registration of ammunition by the manufacturers and the seller. The amendment is at present held in the Judiciary Criminal Law Committee of the Senate. Other legislation is not so comforting to those who deplore handgun violence: Senate Bill 440 would allow Internet sales of ammunition.
While the bill purports to have some controls, such as the requirement that the purchaser submit a copy of his firearms identification card, we do not believe there could ever be sufficient safeguards for essentially blind transfers of ammunition by mail or other carriers.

Years ago a bumper sticker campaign proclaimed "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." It is people who choose to purchase guns, put bullets into them and pull the trigger who kill people.

Representative Julie Hamos and State Senator Jeffrey Schoenberg support the coding of ammunition.

So do we.

Hospice

By Charles Wilkinson

My sister died on June 6 at 12:50 a.m. PDT. She lived in Fresno, Cal., and was 77 years old. My brother and I were with her at the time, as were three of her California family, two of whom were hospice volunteers.

She died in her living room.

There are many stories contained in the above paragraph but only one I wish to tell here.

In early May I spent two weeks with Marie as she dealt with a cancerous brain tumor and radiation treatments. A lifelong smoker, she knew her time was short so our time together was precious.

There was nothing we did not talk and, especially, laugh about. She assured me she was "ready to go," that she was at peace within herself and thankful for her life. Earlier, she had planned her funeral, choosing the readings and music for the Mass and even drafting her own obituary, which she asked me to edit. When I left, I did not say goodbye, knowing I would be back.

She was soon under the care of hospice. Her best friend was a volunteer at Hinds Hospice/Fresno and knew just when to ask for help. My sister was still mobile at the time. And alert, even up to her final hours. What hospice gave her was beyond priceless. They fed and bathed her, teased her, prayed with her and told her how honored they were to be part of her journey home.

When I returned the Saturday before her death, Marie had round-the-clock care from her California family and hospice. She was on her deathbed in, oddly enough, her living room, which hospice made a sacred place.

For the next three days my brother and I and Marie's "sister" and friends loved and helped her on her way. Her eyes let us know she heard everything we said; they laughed when we laughed, and they told us always that she was at peace. When she died, a hospice volunteer came at 1:30 a.m.to be with us, to console and to certify the moment of death. Later that day a hospice social worker came by to see how we were coping.

The point of this story? There may be someone reading this who has no idea about hospice or its existence, or who thinks hospice is only about dying and sees it as a kiss of death. Well, I can tell you firsthand that hospice is all about living, about a part of life all of us will experience. Hospice honors and dignifies the lives of those under its care. And far from being a kiss of death, hospice is an embrace for the journey ahead.

Marie was a deeply spiritual person. Hospice met her, and all of us present to her dying, in that place and helped us to know and treasure her final gift to all she loved, peace. I will be forever grateful.

Gaping Gaps

By Peggy Tarr

"The tyrant is only the slave turned inside out." - Egypt

"Instruction in youth is like engraving in stone." - Morocco

"Knowledge is like a garden: if it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested."-

Guinea

On several occasions friends and acquaintances have made references to the article "The Making of A Slave," based on a speech in 1712 by Wilie Lynch, a British slaveowner. For those not familiar with this article, as the title suggests, it is a treatise on how to make people (specifically, black slaves in America) assume a slave mentality so that they subsequently enslave themselves and their offspring and other members of their group.

The consequences of this effort are seen in 2007: Many black people do not perceive themselves as equal and consequently, consciously or unconsciously, aid and abet those who would keep them down. And so we must look at the gaping gaps between the privileged and disenfranchised in housing, employment, salaries, disease, medical care, infant mortality, and education (to name a few) with an awareness of a system that endorses these gaps and the complicity of those who embrace the role of slave.

It is often proposed that peer pressure keeps many black students (the young) from pursuing good grades so that they don't appear to be "white-folksy."

The question is: Who set up this mindset that getting an education is only to be valued by white folks? It is not just a youth thing.

Adults (both black and white) need to look at the messages they send - what they say, do and value. There is a different system of expectations for blacks that is manifested in schools, the workplace and the community.

A high school counselor of color stated that a black student had an identity problem, because she only observed the student with white students at school. Of course, the counselor failed to consider the fact that the student was in advanced classes in which she was the only student of color (hopefully this ratio has changed) until I heatedly pointed that out to her. But why should this have been the counselor's concern?

In the workplace, mentally enslaved blacks are often put in supervisory (overseer) positions over other blacks to keep/ make blacks submissive.

Coupled with this black-overseer setup is the (master's) awareness that many blacks will not complain about abuse from black people because of loyalty to the group.

Fostering a slave mentality serves no one well in the end. It only leads to ignorance, poverty, increased want, fear, hostility, crime and war (revolts).

"What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--

...Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?"

(A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes)

Letters to the Editor

New Regional Taxes Needed for Public Transit
Editor:

With the fate of the region's transit system now in the hands of the Illinois legislature and the Governor, let's review the facts:

Fact # 1: There is a transit funding crisis. The transit agencies aren't bluffing, and the problem won't go away. We haven't added to transit operating revenues for 24 years, so we're overdue to make needed investments for the next two decades. We don't need another one-year bailout - only a steady stream of funding for CTA, Metra and Pace will avert service reductions, fare increases and deferred maintenance.

Fact # 2: No one likes the idea, but the only smart way to address this regional issue is with regional taxes collected in the six counties served by the RTA. The House Mass Transit Committee, which I chair, is proposing an expanded regional sales tax of ¼ percent as well as a small increase in the Chicago real estate transfer tax. The sales tax increase would mean an extra 25 cents charged on each $100 purchase. An extra 1/10 of 1 percent of the value of property would be charged when selling residential or commercial property in Chicago - often only once or twice in a lifetime.

Fact # 3: Funding increases should be accompanied by strict accountability measures for regional coordination and planning, fiscal oversight and pension reform. These will be the necessary elements of comprehensive transit legislation. You can read more about the amendments to Senate Bill 572 by visiting my website at www.juliehamos.org.

Fact # 4: Everyone - whether transit riders or auto drivers - in the metro area benefits when 2 million rides are taken on transit each day. The availability of quality transit increases the value of property and provides for a healthy business environment. Reliable transit reduces congestion on our roads, which positively impacts both the environment and public health. That's why this transit problem requires a regional perspective and solution.

Fact #5: The legislature and the Governor must act before the end of the legislative session. If you agree, tell them so. You can make a difference.
--State Representative Julie Hamos
Chair, House Mass Transit Committee

Rats! Now We Wash the Garbage
Editor:

I now have the cleanest garbage in the neighborhood. It's so clean, it shouldn't even be called "garbage." Maybe "refuse" is more appropriate. "Refuse" brings to mind little bags of je ne sais quoi left over from our daily lives that our butlers gracefully conduct, nose in the air, pinky extended, to the rubbish bin. Come to think of it, "rubbish" sounds good, too.

Anyway, I've taken to washing my refuse lately. Every can, box, Styrofoam tray, paper towel, plastic bag, chicken bone. Everything. I'm not kidding, my recycling pile gleams. So why, you may ask, am I suddenly, after 40-plus years, channeling my obsessively clean Croatian grandmother? Why have I gone through a bottle of dishwashing soap in half a week when it would normally take months? Why am I sacrificing quality T.V. time (can anyone catch me up on "America's Got Talent"?) to rinse coffee filters and soak milk jugs?

One word: rats. We have an infestation of rats in our Evanston neighborhood. How they got here and why they've multiplied so rapidly is a subject for another article, but suffice it to say I have seen them sniffing out my deck, burrowing in wood chips, scurrying across my neighbors' yards, and smoking cigarettes in our alley. (That last one might have been a teenager.)

Now I am no stranger to wildlife on (and worse, in) my property so I'm normally pretty level-headed when I encounter an animal intruder. That's a complete lie. I hate strange animals around my house, but I've dealt with a lot of them and it's toughened me up. To illustrate: After we first moved in and started gutting our fixer-upper, my husband and I discovered two opossums starting at us from inside a wall.

We screamed liked girly-girls, clanged pots and pans, sprayed the poor things with bug spray, and were genuinely surprised when they didn't respond. Later, after some internet research, we learned that the expression "playing possum" - meaning to curl up in a ball and not move - comes, interestingly enough, from the actual animal, which, when threatened by say, loud noises and bug spray, tends to curl up in a ball and not move.

Then there was the time a bat swooshed over us in the middle of the night while we slept. (By the way, "swoosh" is totally the right word to describe the flutter of wings a bat makes when it flies over your head in the dark.) Initially we screamed like girly-girls, clanged pots and pans, and-this is totally true-one of us even donned a pith helmet and armed himself with a tennis racket. (I won't say who.) Later, after some internet research, we learned that our visitor was probably a young brown bat that had lost its way. My point is I now know that opossums are gross, but mostly harmless and easily trapped, and that outdoors bats are our mosquito-hunting friends. I can handle them. What I can't handle are rats.

After a lot of girly-girl screaming and some Internet research, here's what I know about rats: They like wood, weeds, piles of stone and brick, dirt, vegetation, water, and garbage. Now here's what I know about my backyard: It contains a hill of wood chips from where a tree was taken down, weeds growing quite healthily out of the hill, a pile of bricks I've been meaning to make a patio out of for the last ten years, and a lot of dying vegetation because I don't want to give the rats the satisfaction of quenching their thirst with water from my hose. Here's what rats don't like: metal and clean garbage.

So now my husband and I are looking at a summer of fun exploring the possibilities of landscaping our yard in chicken wire and steel wool. In the meantime, I continue to wash my banana peels.
-- Abby Brennan

Déjà Vu for This Architect
Editor:

Five and a half years ago, on Jan. 12, 2002, I sent this letter to then First Ward Alderman Art Newman and also to Max Rubin and sent similar e-mails to the Evanston RoundTable:

"As I am writing this note to you, I am wearing quite a number of different hats - one as your constituent, another as a local architect and planner, another as an Evanstonian greatly concerned about the continuing decline in our community's architectural environment, still another as a member of the Site Plan and Appearance Review Committee and, finally, another as a veteran.

It is my Veteran's hat, however, that made me sit down and send this note to you. And this is what it is all about:

The condition of Evanston's ceremonial plaza, a Memorial dedicated to the men [and women] of our community who gave their lives in defense of their country, is absolutely deplorable. It is an embarrassment to the veterans of the City of Evanston to see the annual Veterans Day memorial services held in these shoddy surroundings.

While I realize that, some years ago, plans were developed for a radical redesign of the whole Fountain Square Plaza area, the current conditions of the City's finances will, in all likelihood, keep that redesign from being implemented in the foreseeable future.

Still, replacing the broken up, poorly patched brick paving within the plaza area will not require a significant public expenditure, and I am certain the necessary funds can be found.

Since the Fountain Square Plaza and the Memorial are in your ward, I urge you to take the appropriate steps to have the Council direct David Jennings to have the paving replacement work under contract by next spring and accomplished soon thereafter.
Hans A. Friedman, FAIA"

No one in our City Government ever took any action. This is essentially the same crowd that in another case of inexcusable inaction let time and the elements inflict great damage by deferred maintenance on our Civic Center Building.

Now, five and a half years later, Mayor Morton has spoken up. Perhaps we will get some action now.
-- Hans Friedman, FAIA

Missed the Ball, the Volleyball
Editor:

As a frequent reader of your newspaper I again enjoyed your June 13 edition.

Being the parent of a couple of girl volleyball players, one of whose ETHS varsity team made it to the IHSA supersectional last year, I was, however, discouraged to see that Nick Battle's otherwise fine article "A Look Ahead to Fall/Winter Sports at ETHS for 2007-08," failed to mention, let alone acknowledge, the tremendous accomplishments of that team or to note the extremely talented group of players returning from last year's varsity team or othewise trying out for this year's team.

I for one am looking forward to the upcoming season of ETHS sports, due principally to the prospect of watching the girls volleyball teams compete at all levels and with high hopes that this year's varsity team makes an even deeper run in the state tournament.

Go, Kits' V-Ball!
-- Jeff Teske