Weekly Wilson

An update to the storm I suffered through in a basement in Bridgeport, a southwest suburb of Chicago (home of the White Sox and Mayor Daley’s birthplace) on Monday, August 4^th (article posted on www.associatedcontent.com).

It was some storm! I was impressed with the lightning. I learned that, over four hours, about a half-year’s worth of lightning bolts bombarded Chicago. It was truly a historic thunderstorm, with 90,000 thunderbolts hitting northern Illinois (according to the Lightning Detection Network).

At the storm’s peak, it was detonating 800 bolts per minute. In six months’ worth of time, we usually don’t have that much lightning.

WGN meteorologist Tom Skilling (brother of the OTHER Skilling of Enron fame) said on Tuesday, August 5th, “There was no precedent for this. In every way imaginable, that storm last night was in its own league.”

The amazing thing: nobody was struck by lightning and no fatalities were reported due to the massive and truly awesome display of electrical tension, which began when positively charged ice crystals at the top and negatively charged water droplets at the bottom created a volatile mix. As the warm, moist air floated to the clouds, the powder keg exploded. Most lightning is negatively charged, but there are indications that ,during parts of the Monday storm, there was more than two and one-half times the usual percentage of positively charged lightning bolts which are more powerful.

Skilling said, “Not only were the total numbers just off the charts, but there was a disproportionate number of strokes that were positively charged. That was an especially dangerous lightning display.”

Nearly 10,000 lightning strikes were recorded in the 10 miles around Chicago’s loop, one of the highest totals ever seen for an area of that size. While there were at least 7 fires caused by the lightning hitting homes that burned down (Woodridge, Lisle, Aurora, Schaumburg, Frankfort, Barrington and Lemont) the wind did more damage. Some good quotes were obtained from employees of the Signature Room on the 96^th floor of the Hancock Building. Apparently, the patrons thought it was all great good fun and filmed the bar glasses as they moved back and forth.

Manager James Kuehner said, “You could tell when the building was getting hit, because everything was bright light and thunder at the same time.”

Yikes! We almost walked over to Chinatown, but the tornado sirens did not enhance the experience, for me, so, instead, we sat on the floor of an interior hallway, away from the windows, cranking the weather radio I had just bought at the Natural Disasters exhibit at the Field Museum. (We learned that cranking it did not work that well, but putting batteries in it did.)

I walked down to the Bennigan’s opposite the Art Institute in Chicago on Tuesday, July 29^th,  planning on having a nice lunch inside this always-busy restaurant, which, I have learned, was, in fact, the busiest restaurant in the entire chain.

Imagine my surprise when, taped to the window (see picture) was a sign that told me it was closed. I haven’t been that surprised since…well, since I drove to Cheddar’s in Davenport, Iowa—another very busy and popular restaurant—and had exactly the same experience.

Bennigan’s filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Tuesday (apparently) and closed all 150 of its corporate-owned stores, including the Jewel in its Crown, the Bennigan’s in Chicago at 225 N, Michigan Avenue. The stark sign said it all: “Closed for business as of Tuesday, July 29.”  Apparently even the employees were surprised, because one of them, Caleb Kosek, age 24, had just shown up for his first day of work, only to learn that the Metromedia Restaurant Group, which owned 150 of the cafes (another 140 are franchisee-owned) was now defunct.

Metromedia is owned by a billionaire named John Kluge, but he wasn’t responding to requests for comments on Tuesday. There were lots of Bennigan’s in the Chicago area, but only one (in Elgin) and three in northwest Indiana are owned by franchisees. It is also true that the area around the Art Institute is not exactly lousy with restaurants, so this location was primo.

Other restaurant chains in the “medium” price range are suffering as well, most notably Cheddar’s, mentioned above, Steak & Ale and Village Inn. In the chilly economic climate we are experiencing, people are either eating at fast food chains like McDonald’s or they are eating at home. Ruby Tuesday and Applebee’s stock (I own one share) were trading at their lowest ever, as a result of the glut of restaurants like these and T.G.I.F. abroad in the land at a time when jobs are in short supply, the minimum wage has been raised and food prices are soaring faster than the ice cap is melting.

But watching Bennigan’s on Michigan Avenue and a chain in business since 1976 go belly-up is still painful for those of us with a yen for a MonteCristo sandwich.

So, I DID drive home when I left at the break (Quad Cities of IA/IL) and, of course, we were hit by a ‘mini-tornado” at 6 a.m. on Monday that knocked out power to 100,000 homes, including ours. It blew trees down in our back yard and through people’s cars and bedrooms and houses, (in 3 cases, homes of people I personally know.) Neighbor across the street: tree down. Neighbor next door: tree down. Mother-in-law: tree down.  One young couple had to fly home from Vegas when the news reached them that their house had had a HUGE tree fall on it and there is only one crane in town large enough to hoist it off their house (and, of course, THAT crane was already occupied. Isn’t that always the way?)

 I had to use a Coleman lantern to pack to leave for Chicago on Monday, and we had no A/C until 11 p.m. last night. The winds reached 94 mph. Moline declared a State of Emergency. (In East Moline, nobody thought to turn on the sirens,. Typical.) Across the river in Davenport, Iowa? Fine, just fine. No problems at all. Weird.

The fast food joints were JAMMED with people lined up 20 cars deep at 2:30 P.M. when I left to drive back here on Monday. Why so many people lined up at Hardee’s and McDonald’s? My husband theorizes that it was because nobody could cook. Our freezer full of meat: gone bad. He had to sleep in the basement and said he went outside on the deck and listened to the Cubs game on a transistor radio until it got dark and he couldn’t read any more. No TV. No computer. No fun. They closed the MALL, for crying out loud! The MALL. OH THE HORROR! Hospitals had to operate on generators, as did the supermarket (where I picked up a refill for my prescription of sleeping medication.)   100,000 people without power and they say it might take “3 to 4 days” to get it back on.  My sister had an electrical wire on fire outside her house and, when she called it in, it took 2 days to get electricians to come fix it because of the vast numbers of others without power. It was a larger power outage than the huge one we had during an ice storm last winter.

I finally got a “wrap” at a Subway in Colona, Illinois, where the two Indian (or Pakistani?) boys minding the store were doing so in about 100 degree heat (no A/C). They said, immediately, “We don’t have any bread,” Why no bread? Apparently, they bake it, and the ovens wouldn’t work. Only one microwave worked, and they had 2 cookies left (which I bought.) The younger of the two said, “I think we could just lay the bread dough out here on the counter and it would cook.” (True statement). We were all like pioneers, and the Indian boys described how they had been CAMPING with 15 family members near Lake Kenyada when the winds hit and BLEW THEIR TENT INTO THE LAKE. I’m not kidding. They ran for their cars and sat it out. (I always hated camping. My idea of roughing it is black-and-white TV. Or NO TV. Or sleeping on the floor of a college-aged group for 5 days in Denver.)

Me?  I went to bed at 2:30 a.m. on Monday morning after extensive posting on several blogs and slept through the entire thing. I did notice it when I was trying to pack in a dark interior room the next day, however. Had to dry my hair outside in the sun and a Coleman lantern really does not give off enough light to pack your suitcase by.

                                           More Chicago News
The Whole Foods store near Lincoln Park failed a Health Inspection test not once, but twice, in the past two days. The store was handing out $5 gift certificates to people who were being turned away by the closing, and one wag suggested that the mouse droppings the Health Inspectors had found could be “packaged nicely as a topping for toast points and get $10.99 per ounce.”

Apparently, not only was mouse poop found, but an actual mouse, caught in a trap. Gack! The store asked for a second inspection immediately, one occurred an MORE mouse poop was found. (Will the mouse poop never end?)

Also, the big news was nuts. Nuts as in Jesse Jackson’s comments about Barack Obama’s. See it on YouTube as Jesse whispers his derogatory comments. Jesse seems, to me, simply to be jealous that he is not in Obama’s shoes at this point.

On a sadder note, Officer Richard Francis was shot and killed in the line of duty on July 2, while struggling with an irate, 4-foot-11 inch woman who was allegedly causing a disturbance with a CTA bus passenger. The officer joins these others killed in the line of duty in Chicago:

• Aug. 15, 1998 – Michael Ceriale, on drug surveillance at a public housing complex.
• Jan. 9, 1999 – James Camp, shot with his own gun during a routine traffic stop.
• June 30, 2001 – Brian Strouse, who walked into an alley and identified himself as a police officer to a young man he encountered there.
• Aug. 19, 2001 – Eric Lee and two partners rushed to protect a transient being beaten by a man who then shouted, “F*** the police” and opened fire.
• March 18, 2002 – Donald Marquez, Sr. – while serving a 77-year-old man with a warrant for a housing code violation.

In the Quad Cities, Officer Tom Peterson was shot while attempting to serve a warrant on a suspect in the robbery of a convenience store in Watertown. His bulletproof vest saved his life, although some wounds are still healing slowly that he sustained beneath the vest and, I’m sure, he may be re-examining his choice of careers, as are others who knew Officer Richard Francis, who, from all accounts, was a model police officer, working alone in a squad car at the time of his death.

    A quick look at Chicago’s news, where I now report from, tells me that there are some issues in Chicago that have not made the local Quad City newspapers. For instance, there was a shooting near the Taste of Chicago, which Mayor Daley is trying to play down as having had anything to do with that massive annual event. The cab talk is all about whether it will have a negative effect on Chicago’s bid for the Olympics. If the shooting outside Grant Park and off the Festival site doesn’t do it, then will the 10.25% sales tax deter visitors to this fair city?

     Another city vignette: a newborn baby boy was found abandoned in the courtyard of an Uptown apartment building at about 2:00 a.m. The 5 lb. Baby boy left in the 4600 block of North Beacon Street inside a grocery bag amid shrubbery was crying to save his life (which it did) in the 70-degree temperature. His body temperature had dropped to 86 degrees in the cool night air and he might not have survived if one of the apartment’s residents had not gone outside to investigate, found the child, and taken it to a nearby fire station. The child had cried for at least two hours before anyone thought to investigate, but it was after 2 in the morning.

      A third interesting story detailed how a Lake Hills man known as Edward F. Bachner IV tried to hire a hit man to kill his wife, after he had taken out a $5 million dollar life insurance policy on her. The odd thing is that the wife didn’t know about the “hit-for-hire” until she found out in court, and the method that the would-be murderer eventually settled on to do her in: Pufferfish.  I just wrote a story entitled “Pufferfish.” Who knew that Pufferfish venom is among the most deadly of poisons? Dr. Frank Paloucek, clinical expert in toxicology, says that the Tetraodontidae family of poisons (specifically, the deadly poisonous pufferfish) “would be a terrible way to die, in my opinion, because you could be very easily conscious at the time you stop breathing. You wouldn’t be feeling that you weren’t breathing, and you would be conscious of it, and you would die because you would pass out. The death is a respiratory death. Your lungs stop working and your brain loses enough oxygen for long enough, and then you’re dead.” Yup. That’ll do it. Stay away from Pufferfish. Edward F. Bachner IV had apparently pretended to be someone who had a legitimate reason for owning pufferfish poison, and he had a bunch of it! He also had 50 knives, garrotes that could be used to choke people to death, a gun, two passports, and a phony CIA badge. Wow! The Pufferfish Conspiracy has made all the papers, and I’m thinking that I was way ahead of THAT learning curve with my little story! Just so you know: “If it was a 220-pound person, you would need one-thousandth of a gram, or one-32,000^th of an ounce to kill an adult” with Pufferfish poison. Another wow, there. The reason given? Marine animals have to be far more poisonous than land animals to kill their pretty, because they are operating in 3 dimensions instead of 2. (I’m not sure I understood that last part, but I’m just here to report the news of the day in Chicago by the Lake.)

      There was also a story about a 96-year-old man who has a lot of opinions (Garrison Keillor) and a happy story about a young boy who was lost for hours, but was found unharmed. That, at least, was a “happy” ending.

Party Unity the Word for Democrats Today

I saw part of a speech given by Barack Obama from New Hampshire today, with Hillary Clinton standing there lending moral support. It was the usual outstanding speechifying from the electrifying Obama, and Hillary did her pant suited best to look enthusiastic. (It is said that Bill could only manage a written “endorsement” of the party nominee, but I saw a picture of the two of them, together, looking cozy, somewhere.)

Now begins the character assassination and the jockeying for power and all the rest of it.

I was called to attend a “meeting of interest” to be held at someone’s office. When I asked what the “order of business” was to be, the person calling me (who had been quite insistent that I call her back, even though I had to call long distance, at the time) said that she was trying to organize a “demonstration” that would highlight John McCain’s ties to Big Oil. This would involve being out in the streets with placards, as I understood it.

I don’t go out in the street with placards until I know the entire fact(s) of a situation. I have protested in the streets at least three times, but I need to know the facts of what I am protesting and be pretty honked off about it before I carry paper and wood into battle. I had just done a big piece on the Second Coming of John McCain, for www.jollyjo.com. Admittedly, I was not looking for ties to Big Oil, but, to me, far more dangerous for us are McCain’s ties to war and warlike behavior.

Anyone who had the childhood nickname “McNasty” because he loved to pick fights, who once had a fight on the Senate floor with Strom Thurmond (of all people), whose great ancestors fought on the Confederate side during the Civil War (from Mississippi) and whose grandfather and father commanded the Pacific fleets during two different wars (WWII and Vietnam) has far bigger things to protest there than whether he took money from Big Oil. It is my guess that EVERY BODY took some money from Big Oil.

After careful consideration, I did not attend said meeting, I’m in the Quad Cities about half of the time, and I don’t want to spend it carrying a sign that may (or may not) be true around in the street, protesting something that may (or may not) be true.

When “W” was getting ready to launch all-out war against Iraq and everybody thought that was a hunky-dory idea, THEN I protested. When we needed to get out of Vietnam (1965) THEN I protested (on 2 college campuses). Is it necessary for me to carry a sign linking John McCain to Big Oil on a busy street at this time in history? Methinks not. I will do far better writing about it…if it is true…on this blog, which I promise you will happen, sooner or later.

The stock market plunged a great deal today. It recouped slightly by the end of the day, but it is scary to think of all the controls that have been lifted that would (possibly) prevent another “crash” of the stock market, such as occurred during my father and mother’s lifetime. My father (a banker) predicted a Depression would occur for years and, Dad, if you’re looking down from heaven, you may just be right. If this isn’t a full-out Depression, it sure is beginning to feel like something close.

Now that Cedar Rapids has been inundated, check out what it did to their YMCA by “linking” to the link posted here.

My last post detailed how the flooding of the Cedar and Iowa Rivers had inundated the towns of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. My alma mater, the University of Iowa, was hard pressed to keep the Arts Campus, as it is known, dry, and close to 20 buildings took on water, including Hancher Auditorium, which had water up to the stage, I am told. The Union, the English-Philosophy Building, the Journalism Building, Mayflower Residence Hall…all were hard hit. As my daughter lived in Mayflower Hall her freshman year of college, I can imagine that the flood will not have treated the residence hall kindly.

Now, however, the flood is moving to other parts of the state: Burlington, Keokuk, Oakille, and into Illinois. Finally, Governor Rod Blagovich got around to surveying some of the flood damage, well behind Chet Culver of Iowa and….the very last guy who will be coming….tomorrow, to Cedar Rapids, they say, is our own beloved fearless leader George “W” Bush. Yes, the very same “heckuva job, Brownie” Bush who has been touring France and the rest of Europe on his “farewell tour.”

I can hardly wait to hear good old George’s impressions of pigs stranded on a roof and other such unusual flood sights. He’ll probably pose with some of the locals like he did during Katrina and then disappear forever.

Meanwhile, crops are ruined at a time when the economy is struggling under the cost(s) of $4+ gasoline, and the long trek to cross Iowa (Interstate 80, the main east-west thoroughfare was closed until recently) added an additional 110 miles to the trek.

The recession George denied we were in has now been confirmed, the farmers are hurting (along with a lot of other sectors of the economy) and we can all look forward to much much higher prices for food, after this flood devastates the nation’s breadbasket.

My sister and two nephews live in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, area (Marion, Hiawatha, respectively) in northeast Iowa, and I grew up 38 miles north of Cedar Rapids. The Cedar River has overflowed its banks, leaving 400 downtown city blocks underwater, 3,000 people living in homeless shelters, and only 1 (of 4) water towers with drinking water for the city still usable. The lone remaining water source was saved due to the late-night heroic efforts of local citizens.

One of those local citizens was nephew Chris Castelein, who received a call at 10:30 p.m. on Thursday night (June 12^th) from Mike Duffy, who is an official responsible for sub-roads in the Cedar Rapids area. He told my nephew that all 12 of his men were sandbagging around the final remaining operative water tower (of 4) and that he needed as many able-bodied individuals as could be gathered to rally to help save this final water source for the city of 100,000 in the northeast portion of the state.

Chris and his wife, DJ, report that, once KCRG television station began broadcasting a call for help, literally hundreds of citizens streamed to the site and were able to sandbag around the water tower to “save” the drinking water for Hiawatha and Robbins in the northeast suburbs of the city. However, they have only enough water for drinking purposes, at the moment.

Chris had just spent a fruitless night helping his father, Ed, attempt to save his house near Ellis Park. He and brother John wet-vacuumed his father’s house near the river all night, but rising waters from the torrential rains finally claimed the entire house, even though it stands on a hill. Ed was one of many Cedar Rapids residents forced to abandon his home as the floodwaters advanced. Damage estimates are topping $737 million and 83 (of 99) Iowa counties have been declared disaster areas.

I was driving home from Chicago on Interstate 80 from 9:30 p.m.until 1:00 a.m. when torrential rains and high winds blew a truck heading east towards Chicago from the highway (Interstate 80) near midnight and left a tree downed in the far right west-bound lane, approximately one hour away from our destination of the Iowa/Illinois Quad Cities (Bettendorf, Davenport in Iowa and Moline, East Moline and Rock Island in Illinois).

We had to swerve to avoid the tree.

The lightning lit up the night like daylight. Sheets of rain covered the highway by 2 to 3 inches to the point that it was necessary to slow to 30 mph and watch for the centerline white markers in order to be able to see the highway at all. It reminded me of sand blowing in the desert. The spray from cars traveling to the east (Chicago) flew up at least 8 feet, illuminated by oncoming car headlights. The four large semi-trailer trucks I was following all were driving with their blinker lights on, and none was going faster than 37 mph. I was also concerned about the height of the water on the highway, as I was driving a hybrid Prius. (Would my car “short out” if the water reached the electric motor?) It was a white-knuckle drive, for sure. The temperature had quickly dropped by at least 20 degrees from when we left Chicago, late, and headed out on the highway.

When we reached the outskirts of the Quad Cities, we learned that Interstate 80 had been closed from Tipton’s Exit 267 on to the west. My college roommate, who had spent the week with me in Chicago, but had planned to drive another 3 hours to Des Moines that evening, spent the night here, instead. She had to drive an extra 110 miles to get home, as Interstate 80 traffic was routed up 61 to Dubuque, Iowa, then over on Highway 20 (which goes past my former hometown of Independence, Iowa) and down to Des Moines on 35. Her trip began today at 9:30 a.m. She did not reach Des Moines (from the Quad Cities) until 4:30 p.m. This drive usually takes 3 and ½ hours, but took between 5 and 6 hours today, Friday the 13^th.

The Cedar River crested Wednesday (June10) in Waterloo, Iowa, at 25.39 feet (June 13, 2008, Quad City Times, Davenport, Iowa.) Flood stage is 12 feet. The Cedar River in Cedar Rapids was expected to crest at 24.5 feet. Bridges have been washed out. My nephew’s wife, Dona Jane, told me that Quaker Oats and General Mills, which have plants near the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids employing in excess of 500 people, have been inundated. Questions abound as to whether they will rebuild.

Mercy Hospital downtown had to be evacuated. Prisoners from the jail on the island were being taken out in buses. At least 3,000 people were driven out of their homes and into homeless shelters. I’ve lived in the area for six decades and I have never seen a flood in the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) area that rivals this one. I’ve also never driven through a downpour like last night’s, which seemed to have “fingers” of rain, interspersed with relatively dry areas, and some marble-sized hail.

Ironically, here in the Quad Cities on the Mississippi, the flood does not seem to be as bad as ‘ 93, but it is much worse along the Cedar and Iowa Rivers, which are tributaries of the Mississippi.

The Iowa River, right now, is threatening the University of Iowa Hospital complex, as well as the University of Iowa Union building and other student buildings on campus at the University of Iowa. Forecasters say the Iowa River could top 30 feet; flood stage there is 22 feet. As for the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids, it was predicted to crest today (Friday) at 24.5 feet. In the Iowa City (Iowa) area (and it is now impossible to drive the one-half hour drive on I-380 between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids), water began flowing over the spillway at Coralville Reservoir about 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 10^th, only the second time in the dam’s 50-year history that this has occurred, according to John Castle, operations manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Traffic in the state of Iowa is severely hampered, especially with the closing of I-80, the major East-West thoroughfare for the nation. Truckers, already paying over $4 for gas, have to add an extra 100 miles to their routes to drive around the flooded and closed Interstate.

My nephew, an amateur photographer, has been sending his flood photos to KCRG, but I hope to receive one to post that has not already been used by that Cedar Rapids television station whenever he gets a chance to rest from sandbagging. It could be a while.

These messages from Chicago, where the Blues Fest just concluded in Grant Park.
Things at the Blues Fest would have been a whole lot better if there had not been a full-out thunderstorm around 1:30 P.M. This turned the grass to mud and it was definitely shades of Woodstock.
Still, the headliner at 8:15 p.m. on the main stage was B.B. King, who, I was told, had not played the Blues Fest for some years. We heard him and then mucked out way back to my place, with completely dirty shoes and feet.

The other fun thing I did recently in Chicago was to attend Avenue Q for the second time. The first time, I saw the New York cast at the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas.

This time, the lead male part in Chicago was actually better than the New York lead, and all the other performers were just as good. This is a great show: fun, insightful, and delightful.

I’ll be letting you all in on the Field Museum’s new exhibit about natural weather forces, which features experiencing what it is like to stand in the path of a tornado, from a camera experienced same. Other natural disasters are also explored. The George Washington Carver exhibit remains on view through some time in July, and it is well worth the price of admission.

I was struck at what a big debt Carver owes to the state and colleges of Iowa (he was admitted to Ames, Iowa State University, and he later taught there). I was disappointed at the dragons exhibit, but the kids seemed to like it.

Attended Printers Row on Saturday. It is the largest book publishing event in the Midwest. Likewise, the Blues Fest is the largest free blues fest in the United States.

Stay tuned for further bulletins on what the newest Field Museum exhibit about natural disasters is like.