A crucial public service, or a place to lounge? The purpose of a dog park

Reviewing the various aspects of the budget that officials prepared for Illinois state government’s upcoming (beginning July 1) fiscal year, there’s one aspect that has managed to catch my eye – dog parks!

Rocco, Carmelo encounter a friend (left) at the local dog park. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

It seems that Illinois officials thought to include some $400,000 that will be given to officials in Chicago and Aurora to be used to either develop new, or improve existing, facilities where pet owners can legally let loose their animals.

AS IN THOSE areas completely fenced in so that a dog owner can legally bring their precious pet, unhook their leash and let them run about. Working off the frustration of being chained up the rest of the day.

The idea is that it’s pet exercise. They can run. They can play. They can interact with other dogs – although one aspect of every dog park I’ve ever seen is the separate portion maintained for dogs who act up.

Almost like a ‘doggie jail’ for those pets who just can’t “play nice” with each other.

My own experience with dog parks involves the two canines my father and step-mother have. I help out with their walking, and periodically am the one who puts the dogs in the car so we can make a 5-minute drive to their neighborhood dog park.

WHICH I HAVE to admit, it’s like the two dogs (Rocco and Carmelo, a black standard poodle and tan goldendoodle respectively) eagerly anticipate the trip. Getting them to climb in the car is never a hassle. Although sometimes, Carmelo tries to then move to the front driver seat – and oftentimes will have his paws up on the steering wheel as though he’s going to take the automobile out for a spin.

Carmelo (right) encounters a pack at the park

Then, we arrive at the dog park (which is a fenced-in area about the size of two football fields where it is legal to unleash the animals and they’re encouraged to run around to their heart’s delight). It’s like the excitement level boosts the moment the dogs realize exactly where they’re going.

In fact, the real trick is to wrestle with the dogs long enough until we actually get past the locked gates that demark the point at which the municipal “leash” laws no longer apply.

Plus, I always find it intriguing the notion that any dogs who happen to already be in the park come running over to the gate to “check out” the newcomers.

WHICH INVARIABLY CREATES a noisy racket – everybody in sight is barking at each other, and it doesn’t end until the dogs are safely inside and off the leash.

Then, there’s the sight of dogs galore running all about. And sometimes my father’s pooches managing to find another doggie or two whom they feel some special bit of attention for. They make a new “friend,” so to speak. Other times, they “wrestle” with each other.

Carmelo gets playful at the dog park

Personally, I find it enjoyable to know I can let the dog off the leash and they can have some freedom (of sorts) to run about as they please. Which is why I find it odd that some people seem to think the dog park is a place to find a bench to sit in the sun and watch while their own dog is perched nearby. It’s like those people won’t let their pets have any fun.

Then again, I’ve heard of some dog owners insist they’ll never take their pets to one of these public parks. They insist their precious pooches will get contaminated by the germs carried about by everybody else’s mutts!

OF COURSE, I have to admit that Rocco once developed a pretty serious cough – one severe enough that he was taken to the “vet.” Who ultimately diagnosed it as “kennel cough,” and said it most likely was something he caught off another pet at the dog park. Some medication and a two-week time period away from the park turned out to be the cure.

My father playing w/ pooches at park

Now I know some communities have had these facilities for some time, while others are trying to turn any sizable plot of land they have into a dog park. I know in Gary, Ind., officials are contemplating using a one-time Little League baseball field as a dog park – on the grounds that the outfield fences already are in place. A one-time center field can become a new doggie playland.

Over here in Illinois, the General Assembly signed off on providing $50,000 to the Chicago Public Schools to develop a dog park in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood, and $200,000 to the Chicago Park District for a place in the Hyde Park neighborhood and another such facility elsewhere. While the Fox Valley Park District will get $150,000 for a new dog park in Aurora and upgrades to an existing park in Montgomery.

It might be the smartest money spent, if it encourages people to not let their pets roam free and unleashed. Now if only we can get all pet owners to pick up their animals’ poop, we’d have a better world.

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So sad if would-be voters have already tossed this election cycle out w/ trash

I had reason to be wandering through the Beverly neighborhood on Sunday and couldn’t help but notice the dearth of political signs set up on front yards.

Election sentiments of certain voters?

While just a month ago prior to the initial election, Beverly seemed flooded with signs touting the mayoral merits of Jerry Joyce – who got barely 40,000 votes and whose 7 percent support even ranked below that of Amara Enyia’s mayoral campaign.

ON SUNDAY, WITH the run-off election being just over two weeks away and so many people eagerly trying to convince us that history is taking place, I just don’t see the enthusiasm.

I managed to find one lone lawn sign touting the mayoral bid of hopeful Lori Lightfoot – erected by a homeowner along 103^rd Street.

By comparison, I actually found more signs touting Joyce’s campaign – although admittedly one was stuffed in a trash can along with, I wonder, the hopes of whatever individual has already done their house cleaning of sorts.

This shouldn’t be shocking. What with all the candidates who managed to get on the ballot, the reality of the Feb. 26 vote is that two of every three who bothered to vote (and most registered voters didn’t even bother) cast their votes for someone other than Lightfoot of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

I HAVE NO doubt there are many people across the country who are viewing the act of voting again as pure drudgery – after all, they already cast a ballot for the person they think “should have” won.

Is it their fault that everybody else screwed up and didn’t pick their person?

All I know is that this is a depressing sentiment for would-be voters to have at a time when they’re being asked to pick a new mayor for the first time in eight years. The departure of Rahm Emanuel come mid-May is not going to create a great abundance of joy.

Sign looks so depressed and droopy now that it's for a defunct campaign

If anything, there is one sentiment I have heard oft-expressed. It’s that in a run-off election in which there’s really not a whole heck of a lot of ideological difference between Lightfoot and Preckwinkle are those who say they’re willing to cast a ballot for Lightfoot – the candidate who is a Lesbian married to another woman, with the couple raising a daughter.

BUT THE PEOPLE expressing such thoughts say they’re mostly doing so as a way of “pissing off” all the right-wing ideologues who will be grossly offended by Lightfoot’s holding a position of such authority.

Almost as thought they view a vote for her as a great big “f--- you” to all of those types who are enjoying this Age of Trump our society is now entangled in.

As for the rest of the politicians, six of the failed mayoral candidates have since endorsed Lightfoot’s bid – including that of Joyce. It probably would be a significant pickup for her if the people of places like Beverly, Mount Greenwood and Sauganash (the historic enclaves where Chicago cops and firefighters live to comply with residency requirements) were to swing over to her.

In fact, it may well turn out that Lightfoot has a certain level of momentum – with far too many people voting against Preckwinkle solely because she actually has experience on the job and with the kinds of issues that city government would face.

I KNOW IN my case, that level of experience is the reason I’d be inclined to cast a ballot for Toni – which I’m sure will offend all the nitwits who are determined to say they’re using this election cycle to punish her for that “pop” tax she fought for as Cook County Board president.

I suspect many such as this bungalow resident were more concerned Sunday with St. Patrick's Day. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

But I’ve also accepted some two weeks out that Lori has the momentum over Toni – although I also encountered someone Sunday who said that reading the Chicago Tribune’s endorsement of Lightfoot seemed like more of a backhanded bit of praise in that it acknowledged Preckwinkle’s merits for the mayor’s post.

The real key to comprehending this election may well be in remembering that old axiom – talk is cheap. Forget all the rhetoric about first African-American woman as Chicago mayor.

I suspect most people will either hold their noses while voting, or find reasons not to bother. The end result will be Chicago suffering from their ambivalence.

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Sometimes, the answer is so stupid

The Chicago Sun-Times on Sunday devoted three full pages inside the newspaper to reporting on the official city investigation into a 2016 incident in which an off-duty police officer shot-and-killed a black man.

The death of Joshua Beal in one sentence

The man, as was reported at the time, was from Indianapolis, and was only in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood on the city’s far southwest corner because he was serving as a pallbearer for his cousin – who was buried at one of the cemeteries nearby.

THE INCIDENT ERUPTED into black activists coming to the neighborhood to protest the police and make comparisons between local law enforcement and the Ku Klux Klan. Which provoked outcries from neighborhood residents against those activists.

It was an ugly racial moment and came right at the point of the 2016 Election Day in which Mount Greenwood wound up being one of the few places in Chicago where Donald Trump actually got significant numbers of votes. “Make America Great Again,” indeed!

The Sun-Times went into great detail in reporting the city’s investigation, which it turns out the newspaper only found out about because they had to sue Chicago city government in order to get the documents.

So after all this hassle and all the outcry, it seems the moment that sparked anger on all sides was one so banal that it seems pathetic in today’s day and age. Except to those, I suppose, who really think this Age of Trump we’re now in is improvement.

IF ANYTHING, THE newspaper’s front-page headline kind of summarized up the whole affair to where we may not need to read the lengthy news report. It shows just how insipid the whole affair was.

Just another stupid slur that likely is heard in barrooms and households across the city – only usually slightly whispered so as not to provoke a brawl.

So if there is a grand lesson to be learned from this affair, it’s actually one that I would have hoped most of us already knew. The sad part of this affair is that someone out there is probably taking a perverse sense of pride that this was said.

They may even think that somehow, their right to freedom of expression is being silenced by reporting just how stupid the comment was. Which is the ugly part of this whole affair.

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Societal tensions are going to linger amongst us long after Election Day

This year’s election cycle turned into an ugly display over the tensions we have in our society from people who can’t handle that everybody isn’t like themselves, and we don’t somehow grant them superiority status over the rest of us.
 

A place for those not enthralled by urban life

Take the latest rant of conservative commentator Ann Coulter, who suggested that Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations would have been a complete-shoo-in, IF ONLY we restricted the ability to vote to people who could document that all four of their grandparents had been born in this country.

ANN, OF COURSE, is often off-kilter. I don’t doubt she’s just trying to get a rise out of those more rational amongst us in society. But the sad thing is that she’s not alone – of that I have no doubt.

It’s an incident in my beloved home city, and in fact on my preferred Sout’ Side, that makes me see the kinds of hostilities that this year’s elections placed a magnifying glass to are going to linger on for awhile.

At the crux of it was yet another police shooting. A man from Indianapolis got into a fight with an off-duty police officer who wound up using his weapon, resulting in the man now being dead.

Yes, it was a black man, who was only in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood this weekend because he was attending a funeral. Anyone familiar with the neighborhood at the far southwest end of Chicago near suburbs such as Alsip and Evergreen Park knows there are a lot of cemeteries located nearby.

BUT THAT APPARENTLY wasn’t a good enough reason for a black man to be in a neighborhood that is overwhelmingly white, and also a cop enclave (for the record, I once had an uncle, now deceased himself, who lived there in large part because he was a Chicago cop).

It’s one of those places where people choose to live if they want to be isolated from the daily realities of Chicago, or want to be isolated from certain kinds of people they wish weren’t a part of Chicago’s daily reality.

In short, the kind of people whose votes Trump might very well have sought out – if he weren’t busy looking for each and every excuse he could to demonize Chicago to get himself the votes of people from elsewhere.

Socorro Salas, later Vargas, was the only one of my four grandparents to be born in the United States. I guess the ideologues think I shouldn't have a vote either.

This shooting incident predictably enough resulted in activists coming into the neighborhood, and local residents turning into counter-demonstrators wishing to show their outrage at what some referred to as “animals” who “ought to go back home.”

ANYBODY WHO KNOWS anything about Chicago and its past won’t find any of this surprising. If anything, it’s a wonder that the alleged counter-demonstrators controlled themselves to avoid bashing anyone’s skull in. Although a second round of protests that took place Tuesday got a little more physical, as police had to separate black protesters from local residents.

Yet then, we see the behavior of students at Marist High School, a Catholic school in the neighborhood that is a popular choice of many South Side and surrounding suburb kids whose parents don’t want them in public schools with “those kind” of people.

A text message being passed around the study body shows that some of these high school students are in full agreement with their parents’ behavior – and want to view the “problem” as one of a guy who didn’t have the sense to stay out of a neighborhood he should have known better than to set foot in.

Also, the few students who tried responding to the text in ways to show their disgust with bigotry wound up being laughed at. Administrators at the high school say they’re “devastated” and want to try to teach the young people about tolerance and brotherhood.

YET I CAN’T help but think that many of these young people are going to wind up yawning, paying a bit of lip service to the concepts, then wind up going about feeling the way they feel.

 

Certain attitudes passed down through generations?

Which may largely be the same as their parents who may have cast their ballots for Trump on Tuesday out of a belief that finally, there’s a guy who “gets it” and won’t try to put them on a guilt trip for feeling the way they do about those who are different.

Is it really any different than that incident earlier this year when students at Andrean High School, a Catholic institution in Merrillville, Ind., tried to turn “Build a Wall” into a taunt to be used against a rival high school with a significant Latino enrollment?

This election cycle forced us to see how ugly a certain segment of our society has become. Incidents like these amongst our young make me wonder how long it will be before the stain can truly be washed away?

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Police shootings always a complex matter; just like the rest of life

I have to admit to sighing when I first learned of the incident this week in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood where Chicago Police officers shot an off-duty firefighter.

Because on the surface, the officers shot at an unarmed man when they mistook his wallet for a firearm of some sorts.

BUT LIFE IS never that simple, and I suspect that when this investigation is complete, these officers are going to be found to have conducted themselves professionally – although I’m sure in firehouses across the city, jokes about donut-stuffed cops who can’t tell the difference between a wallet and a Tech 9 are being told.

The incident in question, which is one of the most unusual police shootings I ever have heard of, occurred in one of those “cop enclave” neighborhoods at the far southwestern edge of the city – one of those places populated by police and firefighters and other city workers who have to live within the municipal boundaries even though they’d probably prefer to live just a few blocks further south in a suburban community.

Which is also one of those places where shootings just don’t happen – which also adds to the “bizarre” factor of this whole incident. As if “cop shooting firefighter” wasn’t weird enough.

For it seems the wife of the firefighter had called 9-1-1 after he called her and told her he “couldn’t take it anymore.” She took that as evidence he was suicidal – hence, her call to emergency services to inform the police.

SO WHEN POLICE encountered him in the area around 103^rd Street and Pulaski Road and they saw him with a black object in his hands while in a crouching position, they presumed the worst.

They defended themselves, according to the Fraternal Order of Police. Although I’m sure certain others will not want to believe that.

None of this particular commentary ought to be interpreted as trying to shift blame on the firefighter – who according to news reports has been with the Chicago Fire Department for about two full decades and was also trained as a paramedic. It is more one of those tragic incidents in which there probably is no “good guy” and trying to come up with blame is pointless.

Because everybody manages to share some form of blame for what happened. At this point, what we all ought to be focusing on is the physical well-being of the firefighter – who on Friday remained in critical condition at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.

WE SHOULD BE hoping that he manages to recover from his wounds; both the physical ones he received Thursday and the emotional ones his wife thinks he has been suffering from for some time.

And as for the police involvement in this? If my attitude toward law enforcement opening gunfire on an unarmed man (it seems the pistol he owns was at home, and not on him) comes across as nonchalant, perhaps it is because of being a reporter-type person for some 26 years.

I have always thought of police officers as being people no better or smarter than the rest of us – but who take on a risky job in which people can get killed when they screw up. In short, their “bad days” are worse than those of you or me. There’s also the fact that we give police deadly weapons because we anticipate times when they will have to use them.

So while I fully sympathize with an injured firefighter whose wounds have an element of stupidity behind them, I’m also not going to be surprised if some sort of official investigation ultimately determines this particular incident to be “justified” use of force.

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