Mayor cake

Goodbye Mayor Daley and thanks for the years–

Love,

The Art Institute of Chicago, saying it with CAKE.

Gooney birds, or what I learned today

Fact-checking some stuff a guy told me in a story I’m trying to finish today. Among them: He saw the gooney birds on Midway Island, he said.

The what?

The gooney birds. Big birds that live on Midway Island in the South Pacific.

Real birds?

Yes.

Oh, I say, vowing to look them up.

Here. No wonder they merited a mention. Now I want to go see this silly too.

 

‘A ‘celebration of the century’ for Grandma Clara’

See the photos, while you can, right here.

By Lauren FitzPatrick
lfitzpatrick@southtownstar.com

They lined up Saturday afternoon in Orland Park to see the queen, the birthday queen, their great-aunt, their grandmother or great-grandmother, their longtime friend, at the party they called the “celebration of the century.”

Because on Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2011, also known as 1-11-11, Clara Niedbala will turn 100.

The best part, she said, is “just getting there.”

Her laughing face dominated the scene at Orland Chateau, where 200 people who adore her turned up to toast her.

“We are who we are today because of her,” said her granddaughter Joan Gotfryd, of Oak Lawn.

“She acts like she’s not 100!” Gotfryd’s 15-year-old son Matthew chimed in.

At every table lay cheery old photos of the birthday girl, her beloved chocolate bars covered with her picture as a beautiful young woman, and song sheets with words, her daughter Sharon Panick said, from her favorite songs, including “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” “Show Me The Way To Go Home” and “You Are My Sunshine.”

Clara’s Life

Niedbala’s lived in Chicago’s Marquette Park neighborhood for the past 80 years.

Born during the William H. Taft administration, she moved to Chicago from western Kewanee, Ill., when she was 10. Her family lived in West Englewood. She graduated from Lindblom High School and went to business school. Clara married John Niedbala and had two girls.

She worked first at the Stoll Magazine Company then at Carson Pirie Scott as a secretary in the department that did the window displays.

“Grandma throws me all of her bones,” said granddaughter Jackie Pujol Felix, who traveled from Arizona with one of Niedbala’s fancy black hats and her Carson’s fur coat. “So I thought, I have to pull out the Grandma stuff.”

Niedbala never bothered about a driver’s license. And she showed her children and grandchildren how to navigate the city on the Chicago Transit Authority.

“She used to take the bus everywhere,” said Lorelei Witt, the niece Niedbala took into her own home. “And as she got older, Sharon told her, ‘Don’t go taking the bus downtown.’ So she’d sneak on the bus and go downtown and tell the people at the bank (where Sharon worked), ‘Don’t tell my daughter I was here because I’m not supposed to be down here!’ ”

She taught her family to bowl.

“She was the bowler of the family,” granddaughter Linda Marth said, as family photos — of Niedbala helping tiny children shove bowling balls down lanes — confirmed. “She was pretty good back in her day.”

Around Niedbala’s 80th birthday, the family started an annual bowling party they continue every March, though Niedbala put her own ball away about 10 years ago.

And she made things happen.

Godson Jim Valentine remembers one of the times Niedbala took him to see the White Sox at old Comiskey Park.

“After the game was over, I had a little autograph book and the visiting team buses used to be outside the ballpark,” he said. “So she had me up by the buses trying to hand up my autograph book (to) the Boston Red Sox to sign … and it wasn’t working so well. So she picked me up and shoved me through the window.”

Niedbala hugged, kissed and greeted all of her guests. She took her seat up front at a table with her grandchildren while everyone raised a glass to her.

And then, per the birthday queen’s request, 200 of her friends and relatives sang with her:

“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here
What the heck do we care now?”

As published in the SouthtownStar, Jan. 9, 2011

Fun with language, robot translations

Found this comment on this Soldiers Own Words post. It just appeared, got flagged as spam. The links in fact appear to be spam. But I like the prose. Reads like a robot translation, like, say, my own written French.

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On dialogue: Old soldiers, young Marine

Spent the morning as I have all week: With a delightful veteran of World War II, and with his wife of 61 years.

Then the afternoon looking for a delightfully profane Marine in Afghanistan.

Found this (potentially offensive) cache of hilarity. Couldn’t stop laughing.

Look at that handsome face! No, he’s not the point, the caption indicates.

My elderly gents filter their stories and their turns of phrase after so many years, you know? They apologize for their verbal slips or drop their voices when dropping profanity. One made me turn the recorder off so he could talk about circumcisions as medic training.

This young Marine uses no filter in his profile and his frankness is damn refreshing. Enter the corporal and his constant companion, the F-word. He’s a man of few words, carefully chosen. He knows what he likes and who he wants to be with. He won’t apologize to you or anyone.

Here’s another winner. And another. They just keep coming.

Good job, vets. If only you got jobs out of the story.

SO great to win this. I’m excited for these guys. But I also sigh at the little progress so far on their job front. Everybody’s still plugging away.

SouthtownStar wins 23 awards in statewide contests

May 1, 2010
BY THOMAS FINN

The SouthtownStar has won 23 awards, including four first-place awards, in statewide journalism contests sponsored by the Illinois Associated Press Editors Association and the Illinois Press Association.

In both contests, the newspaper competed against the largest newspapers in the state, and it captured a third place in the important category of general excellence in the IPA contest.

…And staff writer Lauren FitzPatrick won a first-place award for her story on the difficulty that returning veterans face in trying to get jobs.

…

In the Illinois Press Association competition, the SouthtownStar won five second-place awards, including one for news design. Also honored were FitzPatrick and Becky Schlikerman for their reporting on the grave-reselling scandal at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip; staff writer Casey Toner and former staffer Duaa Eldeib for their school board coverage in Rich Township High School District 227; photographer Matthew Grotto in the category of personality portrait and designer Chad Merda for his illustration, “Building a Better Mousetrap.”

Read the whole story as published in the SouthtownStar, May 1, 2010.
SouthtownStar wins 23 awards in statewide contests || The SouthtownStar

It’s an honor just to be nominated

Right?

Right.

I went Scorsese at Friday’s Lisagor awards. Zero for two. Lost to a SouthtownStar colleague, then with another SouthtownStar colleague to the Daily Herald.

Boo.

Boo because it meant I didn’t get to call up my vets and soldier mamas with good news.

But the best part of the night was the lifetime achievement tribute to Phil Kadner.

Made being part of the SS tables a total blast. Like what I imagine being part of the Illinois delegation at the DNC may have been like.

And we had a funny video, too. I’ll find a link sooner or later.

Opening: The Aldermanic 50

Super fun Friday night. 50 artists interpret and capture the likenesses of 50 aldermen. I read the paper every day and there were reps I’d never heard of before, like they never open their mouths to say boo.

Like John Rice, who, another Alderman told me, ended up with such a ridiculous portrait because he never called his artist back. This is as close as I could get. In his absence, he was super popular. My buddy bought him up.

Ariel Reboyras. HIlarious. On scene. Thrilled with his Lego face.

Sharon Denise Dixon also hung out.

Did not see Ed Smith in the flesh. Just on velvet.

Ginger Rugai got off easy.

And Sandi Jackson’s poster vaguely looks Obamaesque. She’s got to be thrilled about that.

We should have gone downstairs and tried the Stroger. And just when you think $1 is a deal for a whole lotta pork, look closer at the “service fee”.

It was the first time I showed up to something Carlos Hernandez Gomez should have been at. He’d have eaten the scene up.

Mister said our guy from the First Ward had been there – was on his way out the door. Good thing I missed him. I wanted to yell at him for abandoning us to take a better gig.

‘R. Kelly hassle factor rankles cops in Olympia Fields’

I imagine R Kelly is something of a thorn in the side of these police. They sure were annoyed when I had to check out a rumor of potential misconduct at the R&B singer’s palatial game. But THAT annoyed?

I wondered what R Kelly was worth to Olympia Fields. Then asked for the right documents so I could do the math.

I think the police are still ahead on this one.

The word out of Olympia Fields police department this week was chaos.

Once rumors broke on the Internet about the village’s most famous resident, R. Kelly, madness ensued – constant ringing madness.

The phones wouldn’t stop! The media won’t let up!

Police said they fielded phone calls from TV gossip shows for three days. One receptionist threatened to close her window in the village hall Tuesday if any TV cameras showed up.

As Olympia Fields police shot down the rumors that underage girls were cavorting at the Kelly place, though, they left the impression that keeping Mr. Robert Sylvester Kelly in town wasn’t always worth the trouble.

“We get hundreds of calls,” Deputy Chief Randy Kickert said when asked about any recent police responses to Kelly’s mammoth gated complex.

Apparently a lot of loud parties go down at One Maros Lane, home of the largest taxpayer in the village of 4,700.

For his spacious 11,000-square-foot home, the R&B singer kicks in a whopping $258,996 in property taxes, according to public records. His tax bill for 2007 was higher than the village’s median home price of about $248,000. And the property taxes he paid were nearly 10 times those of the guy with the second highest tax bill – about $31,000.

Kelly’s taxes equal a tenth of Olympia Fields’ annual police budget for fiscal year 2008, $2.6 million according to the state comptroller.

So even if the dirt gone viral online wasted three whole days of the entire police force, the cops still are ahead. That $2.6 million budget broken down by day equals $21,369 for three solid days on the telephone.

Chump change for the Grammy-award winner.

Published in the SouthtownStar, July 5, 2009.

PDF 2009-07 R Kelly hassle factor rankes cops || The SouthtownStar || A2

‘No pay-to-play for small-time Southland donors’

So we asked ourselves in the wake of the Blagojevich pay-to-play allegations — that the Governor who got arrested on Dec. 8 had been making folks pony up bigtime to do business in the state of Illinois — what did his teeny donors get?

Sadly, the PDF got et up in the system.

The response from donors we found using campaign donation data: Whole lotta nothing.

Such a typical smartass Southtown story, really.

By Lauren FitzPatrick and Nathaniel Zimmer
Staff writers

For $8 million in aid, Gov. Rod Blagojevich wanted the CEO of Children’s Hospital to cut him a campaign donation check for $50,000, according to federal authorities.

And in exchange for $25,000 steered into the Blago war chest, Tony Rezko could get donors cushy appointments to state boards and jobs.

Blagojevich is now charged in connection with various pay-to-play schemes, including trying to wrangle himself and his wife posh jobs in exchange for an appointment to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-Elect Barack Obama[0]. He denies any wrongdoing.

But Southland donors to the governor’s campaign coffers generally pale in comparison to such high profile donors, most of whom come from Chicago and the northern suburbs.

Likewise the favors paid back to them were mostly underwhelming.

So in exchange for $450 donated in June at a Blagojevich event, Kathleen Maher of Homewood got, um, breakfast.

“I didn’t want anything, I wasn’t looking for anything,” said Maher, a grandmother of 12. “I’d never been to a fundraiser or anything in my life. I thought, ‘Well, this is fun.’ It was just another
experience in your life.”

Maher said she just liked Blagojevich.

“He had a funny name, his parents were immigrants, my parents were immigrants, and I just though, well, this guy, what is he up to?”

But now she’s shocked by what she called the governor’s stupidity.

“He said to people, ‘Better not talk about this on the phone.’ And he’s on the phone. The stupidity is overwhelming.”

Tracey Alston, of Orland Park, president of a PR firm, donated $7,000 to Blagojevich’s campaign in 2004 and 2005.

“It’s a sad day for Illinois,” she said. “This is really just unbelievable When he first came on the scene, it was very promising. He had all of the right intentions.”

Alston’s firm has done work for the Illinois Department of Transportation, and there’s nothing wrong with that, she said.

“As a business owner, you are always looking for opportunities to do business with the state,” she said.

But the news about Blagojevich “blew me away when I saw it in the paper,” said George Paige, of Crete, who’s listed as donating $1,000 in June. “We certainly have a legacy with governors, don’t we?”

Paige said he doesn’t remember writing the check; likely it was his wife, Billie Paige, a longtime health care lobbyist, who signed from a joint account. She’s donated to all kinds of candidates, he said.

But $1,000 drawn from George Paige’s account hasn’t translated into any sort of job or contract for jobs for him. He said he hasn’t worked in 19 years now.

“Not me, I’m just a retiree playing golf.”

Lauren FitzPatrick can be reached at lfitzpatrick@southtownstar.com or (708) 802-8832.