U. of C. Eating Disorder Clinic for Youth Seeking Patients

8.31.2011

Daniel Le Grange has a problem: He has more free health care to offer than patients.

Le Grange is director of the Eating Disorders Clinic at the University of Chicago Medical Center and has funding from the National Institutes of Health to treat 248 anorexic and bulimic teens free of charge. The problem is finding the patients, which shouldn’t be hard since the disorder affects more than one in 16 Americans teens age 13 to 18.

The British- and South African-trained psychologist has tried a bevy of options to promote his services. He took out newspaper ads. He put fliers on

windshields. Maybe you saw him in a polo shirt and khakis or one of his two assistants passing out promotional fans at the Air and Water Show.

Le Grange seems like an agreeable person to receive treatment from. He is a leader in the field of the psychological

treatment of eating disorder. He wears dark-rimmed glasses and speaks with a calm and dignified South African accent. But for every seven people he can convince to call the clinic, only two will show up for their appointment.

Once, he gets patients in the door, most stay for the duration of the treatment. Better than 90 percent of anorexic teens will see out the full six months of treatment. More than 80 percent of bulimic teens ride it out.

Le Grange attributes his difficulties partially to common misperceptions of the disorders.

“These are not self-afflicted fads - there are serious consequences,” Le Grange said in his cool dim office at the medical center on Aug. 24.

No Sugar Pills

Six percent of U.S. adolescents have been diagnosed or have symptoms of anorexia or bulimia, and the consequences of leaving the disorder untreated can be horrifying. The starvation of anorexia can cause cardiac arrest and cause the bones to become slowly brittle from a lack of nutrients. The effects of bulimia can be similar with the added threat of a ruptured esophagus from the associated vomiting.

Treatment involves frequent visits to a pediatrician and psychologist and often involves medication because of the other bodily ailments the disorders invite. All that medical care can rack up some steep bills.

“At $400 a visit for six months … the charges add up,” Le Grange said. He said it is not unknown for a patient to accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

Though free care is an enticing lure, Le Grange may have a less obvious problem.

Le Grange is a clinical researcher in psychology, and to his ears billing his clinic as providing “evidenced-based care” is a stamp of excellence. But putting forward the care as part of a clinical study requires Le Grange to also overcome negative associations with medical experimentation.

“What we do is not very experimental,” Le Grange said. “We want people to come to our services and not feel like guinea pigs.”

He was adamant that the studies do not include many of the things people commonly associate with research. There are no placebos or sugar pills. There are no randomized control groups, a subset of patients that receive no care so researchers can compare a treatment to just leaving a well enough alone.

Le Grange provides every patient with top-level care. He is researching whether offering additional assistance, such as an online support group, is helpful.

It would be illegal to do any less. To work with children, federal law requires researchers to provide treatment to all patients - no control groups, no placebos, according to Dr. Laine Friedman Ross, a medical ethicist at the medical center, who led seminar on ethics for young medical researchers on Aug. 23.

The days are long gone of children research subjects being “cheaper than calves,” as one Swedish physician put it, according to Ross. Children as young as seven are now able to say no to a researcher and it must be honored, Ross said.

The ease of opting out of a study dramatically increases the rights of children, but also slows research. Because of his difficulty in recruiting and retaining patients, Le Grange said his study will take about seven years to complete. That’s far longer than the two-year timeline of a medical scientist working with mice.

“One subject dies, just order another one,” Le Grange said to contrast the relative ease of some bench scientists’ research.

He said the difficulty of the patients and the rules of research can discourage scientists from entering the field. Despite anorexia and bulimia being indentified more than 130 years ago, less than 10 randomized controlled clinical studies have been published on each disorder - ever.

‘My Kid’s Not Mad’

The slow pace of research may have more dire consequences for Le Grange’s other area of study: obesity.

“There has been little success in studying obesity in kids or adults,” Le Grange said.

Thirty-five percent of children in Chicago are obese, well above the U.S. average, according to a 2009 study by Trust for America’s Health.

Le Grange received funding from the National Institutes of Health to treat 80 obese adolescents for free, but he has largely failed to attract patients. He faces all the same obstacles of conducting any clinical research, but also the rationalizations and explanations parents give for overweight children.

“My kid’s not mad. Why should I take him to a shrink?” Le Grange gave as a common excuse. He said it is often hard for parents to accept that something is wrong when a child is obese.

Anorexia and bulimia both present symptoms that make parents cringe. A child vomiting after eating or not eating at all both trigger a primal instinct in parents that says something is wrong, according to Le Grange. With obesity, there are none of those obvious signs and it’s often easy to explain away overeating.

If the child and parents are both overweight, it is easy for parents to rationalize that being stocky is just a character of the family. Recognizing that a child is obese may also prompt parents to make uncomfortable admissions about their own health.

If a child is obese and the parents are not, it may be easy to explain it away as a phase -uncle James was big as a kid too, and he grew out of it.

“It’s one of the few disorders where people don’t mind being unwell,” Le Grange said.

All this compounds to result in only one patient showing up for every four scheduled for their first appointment with Le Grange. Of those who do show up, half drop out part way through the treatment.

“Treatment is only good as the dose, and if take the whole dose, you benefit,” Le Grange said.

Le Grange said adolescents do not need to already be diagnosed to come in for care, and often a parents’ suspicion that something is wrong is usually correct.

“Parents are almost always right,” he said.

For more information about the Eating Disorders Clinic at the University of Chicago Medical Center, call 773-702-0789 or visit eatingdisorders.uchicago.edu

Chicago’s police superintendent plans to shut down the local district house in Hyde Park and hand over control to the neighboring 2nd District commander. At the superintendent’s last visit to the neighborhood, he talked about how much control he plans to put in the hands of local commanders.

The local alderman down here, Will Burns, is not happy with this arrangement and is hosting a community meeting with the police superintendent at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 17, at St. Paul The Redeemer Church, 4945 S. Dorchester Ave.

The following is my Oct. 5 story, in which Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy outlines his current conception of the department.

McCarthy vows to improve police business

10.5.2011

Chicago Police Department Superintendent Garry McCarthy stopped by the Sept. 29 3rd Ward meeting to explain how to solve the city’s crime problems: More cops on the beat and more accountability in the local districts.

“We know how to reduces crime,” McCarthy said, outlining a plan that called for less centralized authority and more cooperation with community stakeholders. “I don’t think we’ve ever done this in an organized fashion to affect the big picture of the crime on the street.”

McCarthy said he would put the organizational authority for such a plan in the hands of the neighborhood’s police district commanders.

The audience reacted with applause to the superintendent’s plan, but was hesitant it would be put in action after recent rumors of a reduced number of police districts.

“The district is the backbone of crime reduction,” McCarthy said. “Is it the building or the cops? The answer is the cops.”

At times McCarthy sounded more like a CEO than a cop, saying he planned to streamline a cluttered department.

“The result is going to be a better product,” McCarthy said.

21st District

The audience was also hesitant about McCarthy’s suggestion of scaling back CAPS, or Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, which is a program that puts the community and officers in contact at monthly meetings to discuss crime concerns.

“I don’t want a program for community policing, I want a philosophy in the departments on community policing,” McCarthy said. “What we’re going to do with CAPS right now I’m not positive.”

McCarthy said more of these decisions were going into the hands of district commanders — and more of the responsibility. To free up commanders’ resources to meet the responsibilities, the superintendent said he wanted to scale back on the number of 911 calls the districts respond to.

Currently, police must respond to every 911 call.

“We respond to too many,” McCarthy said. “These are not jobs for the police, yet we respond anyway.”

The superintendent suggested scaling back responses for what called “cat in a tree” calls. He was not specific about the types of calls police would hesitate to respond to, citing instances like kids fighting over the television remote control and complaints about children who refuse to go to school.

“It’s about managing a business, and the business is service,” McCarthy said.

A lot of my job is tracking people down. I use all the obvious tools, public records phone books, etc. But I thought I would share one that is a little less obvious.

In 2008, then-candidate Toni Preckwinkle had her campaign website content replaced with a message from a group advocating for prayer in schools. The campaign staff had no idea how it got there and there was no contact information on the site at the time to track down the advocacy group.

Here’s where the Internet gets fun. All domains are registered. Using a WHOIS search, I tracked down the home phone number, address and name of one of the group’s leaders. My calls were not returned, but I use this all the time to track down sources. If they have a website — if they have almost any online footprint — I can find them.

The following is my unpublished story from August 2008.

Preckwinkle site taken over by prayer group

8.11.2008

Ald. Toni Preckwinkle’s office confirmed that they are not associated with content on the website citizensforpreckwinkle.com.

The alderman’s staff said they noticed the site had been “hacked” several months ago and are looking into who is behind it.

The alderman’s campaign website was replaced with the content of Operation “Put it Back,” a group advocating for prayer in public schools.

It is unclear whether the group had any involvement. The Operation “Put it Back” website, operationputitback.org, was registered July 15 to Herstine Wright of the Sunflower Publishing Company of Dolton, Ill., which shares a post office box with Operation “Put it Back.” Calls to Wright were not returned by press time.

Information registered with the Domain Name System, a sort of “phone bank” for urls that lists administrator names, shows  citizensforpreckwinkle.org is still registered to Citizens for Preckwinkle, 4646 S. Drexel Road. The registration was created on Nov. 14, 2002, updated on Dec. 10, 2006, and is not set to expire until Nov. 14.

The code of the sites revealed little of the content’s origin beyond that both were created using the popular web-authoring program Dreamweaver MX, citizensforpreckwinkle.org on July 14 and operationputitback.org on July 22.

Pam Cummings at the alderman’s office confirmed they had not authorized the content to be put on their site.

The University of Chicago is opening up its planned development for revision. To be frank, this happens a lot. But it’s not often that a big meeting is called to discuss the changes.

Zoning is a big concept to get one’s head around. It’s even more difficult when you don’t have the documents to reference.

What I’ve included here:

• A primer on planned developments and the specifics of the University of Chicago’s plans as they’re currently known.
• An interactive map of the properties to be included in the amendment.
• A report from the university’s first public meeting on the planned development.
• The original planned development document from the city, unamended.

I’ll be the first to admit this can be confusing for most people. For those who want to be involved in the process or just want to be aware of what’s happening, this should begin to answer your questions.

If you have questions I haven’t answered, please leave them in the comments.

I’ll be updating as the process goes forward.

University to alter planning documents, invites neighbors

June 22, 2011

About 1,000 Hyde Park homeowners have received a letter in light legalese from the University of Chicago asking them to attend a meeting to “update a formal document called a planned development.

“Whenever we request a change in our PD, you, as a nearby landowner, receive legal notification, and we want to let you know that you will be receiving such a letter later this summer,” says the letter from Civic Engagement Director Ellen Sahli.

The letter has confounded some the homeowners around the campus’ perimeter.

“It was very, very vague,” said Linda Thisted, who lives on the 5700 block of South Woodlawn Avenue. “It’s impossible to tell what it’s about.”

The letter asks Thisted and others to RSVP on a university website for a 6 p.m. June 22 meeting at International House, 1414 E. 59^th St. The website asks for the name and address of attendees, but provides no additional information.

Molly Sullivan, a spokeswoman for city’s Department of Housing and Economic Development, said the department was not aware of the university’s desire to change a planned development. She said the department is not aware of any pending projects that would require the university to send out a letter.

The university is planning to amend in late summer a massive document guiding how it can use its property under the zoning restrictions. Currently at 159 pages, the file goes back to 1966 and pulls all university-owned property between South Cottage Grove Avenue to South Blackstone Avenue and East 61^st Street to East 55^th Street into a single zoning district called Planned Development 43.

The city requires universities to bundle its property in a planned development, a special zoning designation that sketches out the long-term use for the land.

Prior to the creation of the planned development in 1966, the university’s property was a patchwork of different zoning designations, mostly limiting construction to four-story mixed-use buildings, with a few areas for small-scale retail south of the Midway Plaisance.

The planned development changed the main function of the land from residential to academic, medical, housing, laboratories, research facilities and related uses. Like any zoning, there are still rules and government oversight guiding what the university can build on its land, but it adds some flexibility. As a planned development, could it build a crematorium? Probably not. Could it build a research building for the purpose of dissecting cadavers? Probably because it could be considered an academic research use.

All construction projects must still be approved by the city, but it opens the university to build projects like the 11-story Logan Center for the Performing Arts without going through the extended process of changing the zoning for each individual project.

The planned development was last changed to approve the Logan Center in September 2010. It was a small tweak to the document. What the university is preparing to do now is a full amendment.

“Every once in a while, you have to go in and update that planned development if you want to change it or if you acquire new properties,” said Steve Kloehn, a spokesman for the university.

The planned development must remain contiguous - and the university has recently acquired 11 buildings just outside the current boundaries. There was a major amendment to the document in 2005 to add 26 properties to the planned development, nearly all of them on the 5600 blocks of south Maryland and Drexel avenues.

The university declined to release the full list of buildings it intends to absorb this time around, but it will likely include recent acquisitions like the former homes of the Chicago Theological Seminary and the Meadville Lombard Theological School. The university cannot absorb any homeowners’ property into its zoning bubble.

An Evolving Document

The document has been opened for major changes numerous times over the last 45 years, and numbers so many pages largely because it is a compilation of amendments. The planned development was amended in 2009 for the new Chicago Theological School building on the south end of campus and the expansion of the Laboratory School on South Stony Island Avenue. To get city approval for the projects, the university needed to change a formula built into the document that dictates the density of campus.

The planned development chops the neighborhood into 11 sub areas that can encompass anywhere from six to 35 city blocks. The density of each area is guided by two variables.

The first variable is the maximum amount of space that can be covered by buildings. Buildings can be packed in to cover more than half of the land in some parts of the planned development. While in other areas, buildings must be spaced out to cover only one-fifth of the land.

The second variable is called the floor-area ratio, which tells you how big of a building can be built on a lot. Multiplying the square footage of the lot by the ratio gives you the maximum number of square feet the building can constitute. If you have a ratio of 4, like the university does near the new hospital pavilion, you can build bigger buildings than you can if you have a ratio of 2.2, like the area around the campus quadrangle. A 10,000-square-foot lot at the center of campus can accommodate a 22,000-square-foot building. The same sized lot near the medical research buildings can accommodate a 40,000-square-foot building.

The two numbers determine density: A high floor-area ratio and high land-coverage percent means big buildings close together. A small ratio and a small percent means little buildings spaced far apart.

The planned development says that when you average all the sub areas, buildings should not cover more than 35 percent of the available land and the floor-area ratio should be 2.5, which means the average university building should be a well-spaced, four-story building on an average sized lot.

When the university amended the planned development in the past, it swapped these numbers around in some sub areas to reach the agreed upon averages.

When the university wanted to build the new Chicago Theological Seminary, it amended the planned development because the building would bring it over the amount of land it had agreed to cover with buildings in that area. So the document was amended to agree to squeeze in fewer buildings in another sub area to fit the seminary into an area that is supposed to be only sparsely covered.

The floor-area ratio has not been tinkered with since 2001, when the ratios for the blocks between South Cottage Grove Avenue and South Ellis Avenue from the Midway up to Stagg Field on East 55^th Street were bumped up to accommodate bulkier buildings.

Planning without a plan

Kloehn, the university spokesman, said residents were unlikely to hear any surprises at the meeting, which is open to the entire neighborhood.

“There’s nothing imbedded here that people haven’t already heard about,” Kloehn said.

In the past, the university laid out master plans for the expansion of medical and biological research facilities on the west side of campus and a variety of new buildings on the tract of campus south of the Midway. Kloehn said the university no longer creates these sorts of master plans for campus expansion, instead opting for a piecemeal approach that can adapt to changing projects and priorities.

The university is candid about its plans, but the details of some remain opaque. Exact plans for a daycare center near the hospital have not been laid out. On Friday, the university announced plans to build a second daycare center next to the Lab School’s new Early Childhood Center, 5800 S. Stony Island Ave.

Without large-scale documents showing the expansion of campus, the planned development is becoming one of the few sources of the long-range thinking at the university. The planned development’s formulas will likely be changed to accommodate the new daycare facilities, and may give clues to other university plans.

If the university changes the formula for the sub area around the quadrangle, it may reveal larger plans for the University and Woodlawn Avenue blocks closest to campus. Preservationists in Hyde Park worry the blocks are on the minds of university planners and have sought a landmark district to protect the neighborhood character of the blocks. The university said in the past it has no plans to alter the character of the blocks.

Again, the university is unable to change the zoning of any property it does not directly own, but is opening its planning process to its neighbors.

The meeting will be 6 p.m. June 22 in the Assembly Hall of International House, 1414 E. 59^th St.

Attendees are asked to RSVP at uchicago.edu/rsvp/communitymeeting “so we know if we are in the right sized room, have enough cookies, etc.” according to Kloehn.

Here’s an interactive map of all the properties to be added to the planned development.

View UChicago PD43 new properties in a full screen map

The first meeting was in some ways a frustration for the neighbors. They wanted something tangible to debate. What they got were broad planning priorities. The following is a report from the first meeting.

University searches for guidance on planning principles

June 29, 2011

At a June 22 meeting, University of Chicago planners talked about their principles when considering new development, but the audience of about 100 was anxious to jump into the details of the institution’s zoning.

For the first time in six years, the university is proposing to amend the document that guides how it can use its land. All contiguous parcels around the main quad, about 214 acres of university-owned land, are bundled into a single zoning district, Planned Development No. 43.

Planned developments are a zoning designation for large, complicated areas that do not easily fit into the normal zoning categories for industrial, commercial or residential. All universities are required to use the designation.

“It creates a roadmap for how we can use our land,” explained Alicia Murasaki, a planner for university, at the meeting.

The university wants to amend its planned development partially to pull new properties into its zoning realm. The university can only absorb property it owns, and it has acquired 17 parcels since 2005 that lie just outside the current zoning boundaries. Most of the addresses are for recently purchased apartment buildings on South Drexel and Maryland avenues just north of the new hospital pavilion on East 57^th Street.

The nine properties on the west end of campus are currently zoned for four-story residential buildings under the RM-5 designation. Once included in the planned development, the land can stay residential, but it also opens new categories, including academic, medical, laboratories, research facilities and related uses

That western edge of campus is becoming increasingly dense with research and medical buildings, and that choice for density was intentional.

“It helps us develop areas of the campus that should not be more dense,” Murasaki said.

Properties on University and Woodlawn avenues, where the neighborhood character changes to single-family homes, will also be absorbed. The university is also proposing including a parking lot at East 60^th Street and South Cottage Grove Avenue and a lot next to the Breckinridge House at East 59^th Street and South Harper Avenue.

“When do we get to object to all the parcels you’re adding?” asked Michael Rosen, who lives next to the 59^th and Harper lot, which is currently zoned for residential. Rosen was concerned that the property, which bookends the largely residential Harper Avenue, would not be developed as housing.

Others in the audience were concerned that properties in residential areas should not be brought into the planned development and academic, medical or research uses should remain out of bounds.

“I object now and will object at the next meeting to including these buildings,” Lauri Burgess said of several homes converted to offices on Woodlawn and University avenues that she felt should be restored as housing to improve the safety of the block. “Buildings do not protect other human beings, people protect other human beings. What would make this area safer is to have human beings interspersed among these buildings.”
Many of the former single-family homes are already included in the planned development, but the amendment would bring in recent university acquisitions, including the former Chicago Theological Seminary main building and the McGiffert House, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave., and the three Meadville Lombard Theological School buildings on Woodlawn Avenue.

Murasaki and Ellen Sahli, director of civic engagement for the university, spoke in broad terms about planning and their desire through the process with neighbors to better define the university’s planning principles, which would then be codified in the planned development’s language.

Murasaki described how in the past the university has used the analogy of a cloister to shape development — a focus on university buildings facing each other more than their outside neighbors. The university is searching for new ways to describe how planning should progress.

The exercise was frustrating for many in the audience, who brought immediate problems with parking and access to their property. Several apartment building owners on the west side of campus expressed unease that there was no clear plan for the university property at the edge of the growing medical and research area of campus.

“I wish I could say we have a plan, but we really approach it as a process,” Murasaki said about planning at the university.

In the past, university planners would periodically release master plans that would lay out all the projects they hoped to complete in the coming years. The university no longer prepares such documents and now proceeds incrementally on a project-by-project basis.

The principles now under discussion are intended to step in for the former plans to provide some security for neighbors worried their home will soon be surrounded by academic buildings.

Changes to the planned development are expected to be presented at the next meeting, which is not scheduled yet. University officials said the meeting would be held in the coming weeks.

Here’s the original planned development document. Sorry, this version doesn’t have my annotations.

PD43

The following are my early thoughts on how to edit for intellectual risk takers:

I think you can break the audience down into two segments: The invested and the dis-invested. I mean that kind of literally. Papers like the Chicago Tribune (and nearly every other publication) cater to the invested, readers who have a vested interest in long-term stability. So, if I had kids, I’d care about schools. If I had a house, I’d care about property values and all the things that drive them up and down. If I had a 401K or a pension, I’d care about all the various things that cause tremors in the market. And I would be strongly biased towards low-risk proposals to change any of those.

Since I and other dis-invested (or not-yet-invested) readers don’t have a large financial stake in any of those things, we have the freedom to focus our attention on trends — things that by their very nature are still volatile. The easiest example is culture. What band is doing something interesting? What artist is doing something innovative? etc. But that’s the narrow reading. I am also free to explore the underlying assumptions of institutions like education, markets, science, government because I have little vested interest in their stability. In fact, I often rely on them changing dramatically — we always think our innovative ideas will get us in the door and then our experience will keep us in. As I’m in a position to take large risks because I have little to lose, I am attracted to emerging ideas not only to satisfy myself intellectually, but also to identify ideas to take a risk on: What new thing can I make my fortune on? What institution is unstable that I can influence? What field is emerging that I can shape? So invariably, a publication that caters to the dis-invested would also often be a compendium of failed ideas and momentary trends. I don’t see any harm in that.

Once you’ve accepted that most ideas your publication pushes will fail, it’s easy to slip into writing about radical politics or emerging technology, especially if you bracket the audience within the too easy definition of “early adopters.” Good editorial leadership would avoid that over-saturated market and look for stories that flip our understanding of familiar ideas and institutions. NPR nationally seems to have made it a priority to attract people who think in this way. When these shows get it right, they have an overflow appeal past their core demographic. When Planet Money first aired, everyone was talking about that. Why? How can that approach be adapted to local problems and issues?

With a couple weeks of hindsight, this still feels like a good tactic for editing. You could probably spin this into even more normative terms, like readers as venture capitalists. Seems like it would naturally lend itself to forms that challenge norms, like humor writing. You may not reach a huge section of middle-age golfers with such a model, but I don’t think it at all limits one to appealing to only the young.

Still just an idea. I don’t really see the Reader taking up this idea wholeheartedly any time soon (I’ll admit it does try this to a limited extent).

There are certainly other models out there for the alternative press.

State Rep. Will Burns (D-26) is way ahead — I mean like looking down on the other candidates from atop his mountain of cash ahead. In a race where other candidates are largely bankrolling their own campaigns, it’s surprising how much of that money Burns is spending. I would venture to say that Norman Bolden and George Rumsey are the only other candidates with any real name recognition in the ward, and they’re both relegated to little pockets they don’t venture out of too often. Still, Burns spent $22,500 on polling from Anzalone Liszt Research, a firm that seems to have a solid hold in Illinois despite its Alabama Zip Code.

Burns has the right wallets open to afford it though. Fred Eychaner, the reclusive president of Newsweb, downtown parking lot king and Dem booster, pitched in $10,000 to the campaign.

With the huge Michael Reese Hospital parcel opening up for development in the near future, a lot of donors may be getting in early with the new gatekeeper. I mention the pharmaceutical industry’s donations in the article, but there are a fair number of retail-connected firms throwing in a few bucks too.

• McLaurin Development Partners and owner Zebedee McLaurin, $2,500 total. A large real estate developer with ties to national retail chains. Brought strip malls to Chatham and other South Side neighborhoods.
• Target Corporation, $500.
• Sears Holdings Management Corp., $500.
• Meijer, $1,000.
• McLane Company of Temple, Texas, $1,000. Supplier to fast food chains like KFC, Arby’s and others.
• Knight Partners, $1,000. An engineering and architectural firm with contracts with the Chicago Department of Transportation, Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Park District and others.

You can see a little of the back-and-forth in the releases too. The Government Navigation Group, $1,000. Lobbying firm. Burns paid $1,000 for an event ticket for one of their clients, the antigun group Brady PAC Illinos.

There’s plenty more to dig through. Everything seems above board. I questioned a $5,000 donation from Medley’s Self Storage, a company owned by Howard C. Medley, a former CTA board member convicted in 1993 of taking a $25,000 bribe from a contractor. Another contribution came in recently from Medley’s, pushing it up to $10,000 total for Burns.

The late money is always interesting. David Weinberg, the artist associated with the Weinberg Gallery and also a charter school booster on the board of Illinois Network of Charter Schools, donated $2,500. ASGK Public Strategies, where Burns is a managing director, also pledged $1,500.

What does all this say? That Burns is a politician, just like he’s been saying the whole time on the campaign trail.

Toni Preckwinkle set the precedent here. She always said, you can take money from whoever you want as long as you and they both know they’re not buying anything with their donation.

I’m just surprised none of the other candidates have tried to use Burns’ money against him. Hasn’t happened yet.

Burns ahead in cash

4.9.2010

During the last six months of 2010, many 4^th Ward candidates got their campaigns rolling with an infusion from their own wallets, according to disclosures posted by the state late last month.

Lori Yokoyama loaned her campaign $25,259. Her only individual contribution at the time was $600 from a Park Ridge, Ill., resident.

Brian Scott’s wife lent his campaign $860. The campaign received no other donations during that period.

Norman Bolden boosted his campaign with $445 of his own money, and then gave his campaign another $1,500 of his own funds shortly after the beginning of the year. It is Bolden’s only reported contribution thus far.

George Rumsey raised $9,735, nearly all of it from Hyde Park residents in the 4^th and 5^th wards.

In just a month, Will Burns has raised more campaign money than all the other candidates combined raised over six months. With backing from the AFSCME and SEIU unions, Burns campaign war chest swelled by an additional $15,000 in a single day, adding to the $92,885 he raised in the prior six months.

Burns enjoys the prowess of a sitting politician and built on an existing pot of more than $109,000 from his state representative campaign.

Reports filed with the state reveal Burns’ financial backing from many political committees, including state Speaker of the House Michael Madigan (D-22), Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner Deborah Shore, city Treasurer Stephanie Neely and Burns’ old boss former state Senate President Emil Jones.

One of the largest individual contributors to Burns’ campaign came from Medley’s Self-Storage, which pledged $10,000 in total. Medley’s is owned by Howard C. Medley, a former board member of the Chicago Transit Authority who was convicted in 1993 of accepting a $25,000 bribe from a contractor.

Burns campaign also received numerous donations from drug makers, including Maryland-based MedImmune Affairs Inc., the Abbott Laboratories Employee PAC, the North Carolina-based GlaxoSmithKline PAC and the D.C.-based Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

One of Hyde Park’s largest property owners, New Jersey-based Antheus Capital, used the many limited liability corporations set up for its buildings to contribute $7,500 to Burns’ campaign. An Antheus employee in Hyde Park also contributed $375 to the campaign using the company’s New Jersey address.

Candidates James Williams and Adam Miguest did not file campaign disclosures. The state only requires reports if a campaign raised more than $500.

Only contributions of greater than $1,000 will be reported to the state between now and the Feb. 22 election.

I didn’t spend much time on photos over the last year, choosing to focus on writing instead. Of the ones I did take, I think this one from the Chicago Blackhawks’ victory parade is my favorite — probably just because I come from a family that still spends Thanksgiving arguing about college hockey over pickled herring.

I’m pretty happy with this one I took on one of my few forays out of the city to the Wisconsin Dells, but it doesn’t say much about the last year. The same trip produced my favorite portrait of the year.

There is still one roll on my desk from this year — this could all be moot.

Not that it changes anything, but these are all shot on film with a Contax TVS.

My portrait of then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-14) during an October 2006 meeting of the Daily Chronicle editorial board.

photo Marc Monaghan Feb. 1, 2010

I spent Sunday riding with Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th), who’s running for president of the Cook County Board. I spent a lot of time thinking about the cultural differences between the South and West sides of Chicago as our columnist Timuel Black describes them, though I don’t know if I’m confident enough in my own assessment to write heavily on it.

The title of this post is a reference to a quote that didn’t make it into the story. Giannoulias is the “surer bet” to get elected, according to Preckwinkle. If that’s the case, Preckwinkle is the surest bet.

There are very subtle tones of how class is discussed in these communities that I still want to ruminate on for a while. The way Preckwinkle describes herself in relation to Obama is telling, particularly considering her audience.

The following story ran on the front of the Lakefront Outlook and buried in the middle of the calendar in the Hyde Park Herald this week.

Preckwinkle pushing for Quinn on West Side in final days

10.26.2010

Rev. Steve Greer reflexively leaned back as Toni Preckwinkle leaned in to give the kiss on the cheek that is the ingrained symbol of esteem in the South Side wards. But this was the West Side, where Preckwinkle was out campaigning in the last days before the Nov. 2 election.

On Sunday, Ald. Preckwinkle (4th) spent the morning urging parishioners to vote at West Side churches with her guide Bobbie Steele, the first Black woman to sit in the Cook County Board president seat Preckwinkle is now seeking.

At Rev. Greer’s Greater St. John Baptist Church, Preckwinkle began warming up a joke that she would retell four times at churches in Austin, Garfield Park and Lawndale.

“The president lives in my ward,” Preckwinkle said. “He lives on the north side of 51st Street where the mansions are. I live on the south side of 51st Street where the condos are.”

As a former history teacher, she plays stern better than jocular, but earned her laughs, before making her pitch that, though he’s not on the ticket, the upcoming election is about President Barack Obama.

The Republicans want to win big in Illinois so they can use it to embarrass Obama — rub it in that his home state doesn’t support him, Preckwinkle forewarned. “That’s what is at stake here, the president’s prestige,” she intoned.

Preckwinkle and Steele would invariably arrive early at each church, followed by a limping Robert Steele, Bobbie’s son and a Cook County commissioner recovering from surgery on his ankle.

“I wanted to bring her to the West Side so you know what you’re going to get,” Robert Steele introduced Preckwinkle at Holy Starlight Missionary Baptist Church.

Preckwinkle would tap her foot, sing along with the choir and drop a few dollars in the collection plate at each church while patiently waiting to retell her Obama joke after Bobbie Steele’s quick pitch for the Democrats.

“We don’t want to sit at home and sleep or watch soap operas and expect something is going to happen on our behalf,” Steele told the congregation at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, where people grinned and reached out for Steele’s hand as she walked between the pews but seemed disinterested as talk turned to the election.

“I’ve never seen this much voter apathy,” Steele said, as they drove down South Independence Boulevard, which was littered with campaign signs from Dorothy Brown’s and Danny Davis’ failed primary bids for the slot Preckwinkle won in a landslide.

Preckwinkle is now out most weekends trekking around the county trying to invigorate Democratic voters that sat out the primary election. She said it’s now been months since she’s talked about her own policy platform, instead sounding the rallying call for U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias and Gov. Pat Quinn.

Campaign signs for Quinn were few and far between on the West Side, where candidate Scott Lee Cohen, a pawnbroker financing his own independent bid for the governorship, has monopolized most corners.

“He’s a plague,” Steele said of Cohen.

On the ride between churches, Preckwinkle sounded hopeful Cohen would be a blessing in disguise, attracting the disaffected voters that would have otherwise turned to Republican Bill Brady.

“I think we’re going to eke it out,” she said, predicting a win for Giannoulias and Quinn.

It’s a hectic pace Preckwinkle now runs and after a morning of stumping for Quinn, she didn’t notice that he was on the other side of the table with his arm around a constituent answering questions at a meet-and-greet mostaccioli dinner in Frank Zuccarelli’s Democratic fiefdom in South Holland.

Quinn was easy to miss at an event so crowded with politicians — at one point, Quinn, Preckwinkle and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan were all shaking hands at the same table as little kids plastered with campaign stickers tore past them trying to avoid knocking over judicial candidates.

Already seven hours into her day, the Herald left Preckwinkle as she tried to make a dash through Bears traffic to get to several events in Evanston that would last late into the evening.

My style has matured in the last year-and-a-half, so forgive the looseness of some of the syntax.

Zimmer’s philosophy allows no room for stasis

4.23.2008

University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer lifted the veil April 17 during a brown bag forum “What Matters to Me and Why” revealing a worldview that is guiding new initiatives at the university.

“When I look out into the world, what do I see?” Zimmer said. “I am constantly struck by two things: what a physicist would capture as entropy and structure.”

In terms of the university, Zimmer said, he sees it as a structure that requires an enormous input of energy — focused, imaginative energy — without which it succumbs to the omnipresent tendency towards entropy.

Zimmer said he sees no lack of energy or imagination at the university, but that energy lacks focus.

“I can get interested in any problem,” he said. “But to allow oneself to do that is a perfect example of how one allows themselves to dissipate.”

The former mathematics professor reinforced his devotion to the core values of the university: academic inquiry. The devotion to that core value of pure inquiry is unique to the University of Chicago, Zimmer said. He said articles on serving the public good written into the charters of many public universities should not be misinterpreted as the core of the University of Chicago.

While we strive to serve the public good where we can — through the hospital and charter schools run by the university — it does not serve the university if it is separated from the core values of academic inquiry and research and moves the institution towards dissolution.

The charter schools will wither if they are separated from our main research goals, Zimmer said. If we ever reach the point where the University is just running schools or the hospital, we will look for someone else to take over responsibility for those programs, he said.

“Do we believe what we do serves the public good? Yes,” Zimmer said. “But we do it as a function of our primary focus of advancing inquiry.”

A public letter from Zimmer released on March 21 revealed that the university plans to invest heavily in the medical center in the coming years. A new hospital is the next “key project,” according to the letter. New research laboratory facilities are also in the planning phases.

More immediately, the university plans to increase funding for the Cancer Research Center and the recently established Ludwig Center for Metastasis Research. Zimmer also said in the letter that the university would work collaboratively with the South Side healthcare providers to “reorganize services and optimize expertise.” An initiative that Zimmer said at the forum included taking pressure off the emergency room at the university medical center.

The university is exploring ramping up support of its activities in the charter schools through a new Center for Urban School Improvement, which would “provide a highly coordinated structure to support the university’s efforts to understand and improve K-12 education,” Zimmer said in the letter.

“The long-term prospects for the university are intertwined with the economic health of our surrounding communities,” Zimmer said in the letter.
We have set it as a priority to stimulate and catalyze economic development in Hyde Park, Zimmer said.