Bill Savage

YouTube video by Rick Steves' Europe Rick Steves' Iran (2009)

This is a beautiful portrait from the inimitable @ricksteves.bsky.social of the people who are suffering in Iran, both under its theocracy and from our nation's warmongering.

Fascinating. . .

Mount Hope is where Buck and Helen Weaver were buried many years later.

bsky.app/profile/buck...

Chicago: City on the Make “Once you’ve become a part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.” Ernest Hemingw...

Don't know when it was closed, but I figured out that there once was a gate there from Nelson Algren's Chicago: City on the Make - specifically in Section 3, "The Silver-Colored Yesterday." (Notes by David Schmittgens and @rogersparkman.bsky.social)

A document stamped "THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY FOR RESEARCH & EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY" with a diagram of burial plots SECTION I DIVISION 1 DEED NO. 3627 PURCHASE [blank] OWNER NAME Ferdinand L. Barnett MONUMENT [Unfilled square] MARKER REG. [Square marked with "X"] CEMETERY CARE COSTS 155.00 TERMS 55.00 200 INTERMENT DATA NUMBER LOCATION NAME 26186 1 3½E-3½S Mary H. Barnett - Adult, 1st wife 40513 2 2E-4N Horace C. Barnett - Adult, Brother 55709 3 4W-4S F.K. Barnett - Adult, Father 81509 4 1½W-4½S Martha A. Barnett - Adult, Mother 117513 5 4½N-2E Ida B. W. Barnett - Adult, 2nd Wife 123846 6 5E-4¼N Ferdinand Lee Barnett - Adult, Himself BILLNG INSTRUCTIONS GRASS CUTTING 1936-1979 250.00 IMPROVEMENTS 2.00 … TOTAL $252.00

Ida B. Wells papers at U. of C. include this document showing Ferdinard L. Barnett owned a lot and used it for six burials — including four deaths before Oak Woods was segregated circa 1920 (his first wife, who died in 1890; his brother Horace, 1893; his father, 1898; and his mother, 1908).

Kristi Noem on her first day as Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas

Us: "Abolish ICE."
Dems: "Yes, we DO need to fire Greg Bovino."
Us: "Abolish ICE."
Dems: "This is total mismanagement under Greg Bovino."
Us: "Abolish ICE."
Dems: "I am listening and Bovino must go."
*Bovino fired*
Dems: "VICTORY!!!!"
Us: "Abolish ICE."
Dems: "Yes, we DO need to fire Kristi Noem."

Your Card of the Day: Gene Packard was a Packer. He played for the Kansas City Packers of the Federal League, winning 20 games in both 1914 and 1915. As this 1914 Cracker Jack card shows, Eugene did the cap twist long before Fernando Rodney. @sabrbbcards.bsky.social

three levels down, Lower Wacker Drive

Prejudice ‘follows us to the grave’: The segregated past of Chicago cemeteries Mayor Harold Washington is buried in a cemetery that was once for “whites only.” Protests and legislative fights desegregated area cemeteries.

I wrote about that in this story. Her husband had purchased the family plot before Oak Woods before the cemetery began its policy of segregation. www.wbez.org/curious-city...

Thanks!

Another notable burial during this time period was that of great civil rights leader and journalist Ida B. Wells Barnett following her death in 1931. Wells was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). These burials were the few "exceptions" made during this time period. It is likely that they had purchased plots prior to the cemetery's attempts to restrict black burials all together, or that white families purchased the plots on their behalf.

She was one of the rare pre-1963 exceptions, according to www.hydeparkhistory.org/oak-woods-ce...

Chicago Poetry: Then and Now, Black, White, and Brown Chicago literature always grapples with two fundamental questions: What is this place, Chicago? And who are we, Chicagoans?

Y'all: Spaces are still available in my @newberrylibrary.bsky.social online seminar for this term! It's a discusson of Chicago poetry, from Sandburg and Brooks to our lucky city's contemporary poetry Renaissance: Coval, Olivarez, Marshall, and Ewing. Check it out: www.newberry.org/calendar/chi...

Just got an email about the Heartland Radio show, and I realized: I have no idea whom the Heartland gang would endorse in the 14-candidate horse-race clusterfuck in that is IL9 right now. But, meanwhile:
Where are my goddamn nachos!?

Question: So, Oak Woods was racially "restricted" until 1963: how were Ida B. Wells-Barnett and her husband, who died in the 1930s, interred there? Originally buried elsewhere, and then relocated, I presume? Wonder about the story of that move . . .

If you're at the airport and Kristi Noem is doing the ominous little message from the TSA screens, you no longer have to do anything she says. Leave your laptop in the case, whatever.

Korean Hair Extensions: $670

Botox: $530

Lip Filler: $475

Misquoting Orwell while being the last person in the room to know you've just been fired: PRICELESS

Correction. Orwell never said this. He did however, warn that: "political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” (That's Politics and the English Language, one of my favorite essays)

I just dropped of my mail-in ballot at an early voting location

Cope and seethe, bitches

Good to hear. Hope it happens! Sorry about my ill-informed negativity.

Donald Trump released a man from jail and then that man molested 2 kids. If you can't do anything with that, Democratic messaging assholes, then get out of politics.

Just like every kid dreams of winning the big game.

1889 newspaper question and answer column that ruminates on the baseball of a decade earlier, when bettors and gamblers nearly ruined the game

1889, when sportswriters looked back on the era of sports gambling as a haunted time for baseball

When the Senate was a real place, not one Senator would've left his seat for anything less than Secretary of State.

A Reductress post features a photo of Kristi Noem with the headline, “Kristi Noem Put Down for Being Too Hard to Train”

Screaming

Would love to be surprised (in a positive way) for once. The trades unions who have a lot of power in Chicago always oppose pre-fab. Bungalow Belt alders always oppose three-flats. Maybe make the pre-fab components be constructed by apprentices in training at union HQs on West Side?

Can’t outlive (at my age) the decades-long fight over building/zoning code changes to allow such a thing.

NC Youth Pastor Arrested In Child Sex Sting [VIDEO] - Joe.My.God. The Raleigh News & Observer reports: A former Wake County teacher and youth pastor has been charged with multiple child sex offenses, and his wife, an assistant principal in Wake County, is facing fel...

Re-upping my call for a National Youth Pastor Registry.

www.joemygod.com/2026/03/nc-y...

All me.

Painting of a woman laying her head on a table with my caption “happy women’s history month to all who celebrate”