chicagotribune--2020-02-05--Fenwick sinks Evanston on buzzer-beater after naming locker room for longtime coach Dave Power

“ I ’ m not going to lie , I just really threw it up there , ” Heneghan said @ @ @ @ @ the clock .
There were four seconds left , so I just took three or @ @ @ @ @ it up there .
I didn ’ t think it was going to go in @ @ @ @ @ .

Fenwick girls basketball coach Dave Power raised his arms above his head and waved them back and forth as he headed to the other side of the court as fast as he could.
According to school records, Power had won 985 varsity basketball games heading into the Feb. 4 showdown against Evanston. He’ll have a hard time topping career win No. 986.
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Fenwick sophomore forward Elise Heneghan supplied a Hollywood ending to a great night for the Friars. She banked in a halfcourt shot at the buzzer to lift Fenwick to a thrilling 45-43 upset win against Evanston. The evening began with a dedication ceremony, as Fenwick unveiled The Power Locker Room, named after the longtime coach.
In front of numerous alumnae, including Devereaux Peters, Erin Lawless and Tricia Liston — the only three players in program history to have their numbers retired — Heneghan stole the spotlight from her illustrious coach. Power has the second-most wins in Illinois girls basketball history. Power is the only girls basketball coach Fenwick has ever known, and he’s guided the Friars to two state titles, a runner-up trophy and three third-place finishes.
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“I’m not going to lie, I just really threw it up there,” Heneghan said. “I looked at the clock. There were four seconds left, so I just took three or four dribbles and just threw it up there. I didn’t think it was going to go in. Everybody played so well.
Fenwick girls basketball coach Dave Power makes a brief speech after a locker room was named in his honor Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2020. (Jon Langham / Pioneer Press)
“(Coach has) done so much for the team, such a great coach. It was special. We really wanted to win this game."
Even Power, who is normally quite talkative, was at a loss for words following the improbable ending in front of so many former players and friends. Evanston came into the game ranked fifth in Class 4A in the latest Associated Press poll.
“I’m speechless,” Power said. “It was a great, exciting game throughout, just seeing all the alums and players."
Before the varsity game, Power was honored by Fenwick athletic director Scott Thies. During his five-minute speech, Thies, a 1999 Fenwick graduate, told a few stories about how Power has made an impact on his life and continued to pursue excellence relentlessly.
“Coach Power impacted so many lives, so many who have gone on to be successful in life,” Thies said.
Thies presented Power with a plaque that will be displayed outside the doors of the main locker room near the gymnasium. An anonymous donor gave $500,000 toward the locker room.
Power spoke for a few minutes before telling the large crowd that it was time to start the game.
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“It’s a great honor,” Power said after the game. “The development people and anonymous donor who believes in Fenwick basketball, that donation was mind-boggling. But the night belonged to all of the players, the alums, former players, showing them the tradition still goes on. The tradition they started many years ago, continued through the years, you can never count the Friars out.”
Peters, a two-time WNBA champion, said it was the first time she attended a Fenwick game “in two years.”
“That was awesome, literally the perfect ending to this night,” Peters said. “It was an exciting game, a lot of fun. To come out with a win like that was the best way to end the night.
“I’m really excited for Coach. He’s the reason we all came out here tonight, to support him," said Evanston coach Brittany Johnson, a 2005 Fenwick graduate who played for Power. "He kind of started the process for me, and I was really happy to come here and support him on this night. He’s really touched a lot of people’s lives that have come through this school.
“It was actually interesting coaching against him, having played with him for so long, just hearing him use the same phrases and calling timeouts the same way,” Johnson said. “I’m really happy for him, and this moment to be honored this way and have his kid hit that shot. It was a tough game for us. Kudos to him, it was a great win.”
Bob Narang is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
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Twitter @Pioneer_Press


chicagotribune--2020-02-05--Sean Hayes of ‘Will & Grace’ will star in new play at Goodman Theatre next year

Wright ( “ I Am My Own Wife ” ) said that the project originated with Hayes himself , but @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Oscar was the first comic to speak about his own mental health issues @ @ @ @ @ “ He was both America ’ s closest approximation to Oscar Wilde and , in @ @ @ @ @ shock jock .
He sent seismic waves through the Eisenhower era .
”

Sean Hayes will star in "Good Night, Oscar" at the Goodman Theatre during the 2020-21 season. (Provided by Goodman Theatre)
Sean Hayes, the Chicago-born actor who found fame playing the character of Jack McFarland on the groundbreaking NBC sitcom “Will & Grace,” will star in “Good Night, Oscar” next January at the Goodman Theatre, a new play written by Doug Wright. It’s about the concert pianist, comedian and raconteur Oscar Levant, a regular and frequently subversive guest on Jack Parr’s “Tonight Show” and the late night television of the 1950s.
“Oscar is an incredibly intriguing figure to me,” Hayes said in a Wednesday telephone interview. “He understood the power of comedy and of television and how to use them to break barriers.”
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Wright (“I Am My Own Wife”) said that the project originated with Hayes himself, but he found it similarly intriguing. “Oscar was the first comic to speak about his own mental health issues,” Wright said. “He was both America’s closest approximation to Oscar Wilde and, in a way, the first shock jock. He sent seismic waves through the Eisenhower era.”
Hayes also said that the Broadway producer Beth Williams had helped with the project, which will be directed by Leigh Silverman. The Broadway producer Barbara Whitman is also part of the project.
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Hayes and Wright both said they were focused on the Goodman production, but given Hayes’ celebrity and Broadway history (he starred in “Promises, Promises,” among other theatrical projects), it is likely that the show is being teed up for Broadway.
Levant appeared in many Hollywood movies in the 1940s and 1950s, often playing a pianist. He died in 1972.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com


chicagotribune--2020-02-05--L’Patron owner opening carnitas spot, plus more Chicago restaurant openings and closings

DES PLAINES — Japanese chef and restaurateur Kenta Ikehata is known for his work at Tsujita in Los Angeles and @ @ @ @ @ the Chicago suburbs will get a chance to taste the beloved ramen at his new @ @ @ @ @ Don ’ t miss the tsukemen , a dipping ramen , plus a white and @ @ @ @ @ Noodles are sourced from Sun Noodle , a Hawaiian company owned by a second-generation Japanese @ @ @ @ @ its noodle texture and quality , and toppings include soft-boiled eggs , menma ( marinated @ @ @ @ @ onions , char-siu , nori , corn and vegetables .
The restaurant will have 20 @ @ @ @ @ lunch and dinner .
The ramen restaurant was slated to open Jan. 24 , but @ @ @ @ @ so check back for updates .
578 E. Oakton , Des Plaines

Gabriela's Carnitas is a new carnitas restaurant by one of the brothers behind L'Patron. It will serve carnitas with tortillas, salsas and pickled vegetables. (Cesar Gonzalez)
After years of operating L’Patron, the successful Logan Square Mexican restaurant, with his brothers, Cesar Gonzalez is stepping out on his own to open Gabriela’s Carnitas, a restaurant named after his mother and inspired by the carnitas she made as a celebration food when he was growing up.
He’s not going too far, just a block away — after all, he’ll still be helping out at L’Patron — and the menu will be simple, focusing on those carnitas, handmade tortillas and grilled chicken, all made with family recipes.
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“Maybe they got adjusted a little bit along the way, but they’re just family recipes that have been passed along through generations,” Gonzalez said.
The carnitas are marinated with limes, oranges, garlic and salt before being simmered in pork lard for three to four hours. With each order, you’ll get a pile of carnitas, plus four to six tortillas, salsas and pickled vegetables like carrots, cucumbers, red onion and habaneros.
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For nonpork eaters, Gonzalez is cooking pollo asado, marinated whole chicken cooked in the oven and finished on the grill. This dish comes with a side of handmade tortillas and seasoned potatoes. On Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, he’ll serve menudo.
In addition to serving flan for dessert, Gonzalez will also offer a Mexican gelatin dessert, yellow, green and red cubes served with milk-flavored ones, and a traditional version of horchata, made with white rice, rather than the commercial mix. And don’t forget to order the guacamole and chips, which will use a roasted serrano pepper instead of the jalapeno you’d find at L’Patron.
“We’re offering a home-cooked meal,” he said. “We want to basically bring back childhood memories.”
Gonzalez hopes to open Gabriela’s Carnitas by the end of February.
3721 W. Fullerton Ave.
More openings
DES PLAINES — Japanese chef and restaurateur Kenta Ikehata is known for his work at Tsujita in Los Angeles and in Japan. Now, the Chicago suburbs will get a chance to taste the beloved ramen at his new restaurant, Chicago Ramen. Don’t miss the tsukemen, a dipping ramen, plus a white and a red miso ramen. Noodles are sourced from Sun Noodle, a Hawaiian company owned by a second-generation Japanese noodle maker and known for its noodle texture and quality, and toppings include soft-boiled eggs, menma (marinated bamboo shoots), green onions, char-siu, nori, corn and vegetables. The restaurant will have 20 seats and be open for lunch and dinner. The ramen restaurant was slated to open Jan. 24, but the date has been postponed so check back for updates. 578 E. Oakton, Des Plaines
LAKEVIEW EAST — Black & Caspian, a wine bistro, is open. The menu has Mediterranean and Italian influences with dishes like kebabs, salads and seafood risotto, plus steaks, pastas and desserts, like baklava and chocolate fudge cake. The restaurant also serves brunch. 2908 N. Broadway, 312-975-0609, theblackcaspian.com
BUCKTOWN — Red & White Wines will reopen as Noisette in February with an expanded menu inspired by Paris and the natural wines for which the shop is known. Red & White Wines opened in 2008 as a natural wine store before adding a wine bar in 2018, serving cheese, charcuterie, oysters, salads and dishes like ravioli with kuri squash or quail with smoked cipollini. Now, it will not only serve wine, but also cocktails and coffee. More details to come. 1861 N. Milwaukee Ave., 773-486-4769, redandwhitewineschicago.com
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RANCH TRIANGLE — Stella Barra has become Stella Barra Pizzeria & Wine Bar after adding new antipasti dishes, pastas and tavern-style pizzas, and tripling its wine list to focus on Italian varieties. Try one of three flavors of pizza, such as the sausage and peppers, topped with pork, spicy pepperoni and cheese, or one of the new pastas, such as bucatini cacio e pepe. Nontavern style pizzas still remain and now have crust dips, which include warm tomato sauce, garlic butter or truffle Gruyere fonduta. 1954 N. Halsted St., 773-634-4101, stellabarra.com
ICYMI
CHICAGO — Bar Louie gastropub chain files for bankruptcy, closes 38 restaurants
FULTON MARKET — Last Cemitas Puebla, maker of epic Mexican sandwiches, closing in Chicago
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RIVERWALK — Chicago Riverwalk gaining its first indoor dining space when Beat Kitchen opens new location this spring
LINCOLN PARK — Last call for Drawl Southern Cookhouse and Whiskey Room in Lincoln Park
OLD TOWN — A sushi bar in a hotel room? Sushi Suite opening in Hotel Lincoln, offering 60-minute omakase dinners
SOUTH LOOP — Review: Stellar beer and food pairings could make Moody Tongue only the second Michelin-starred American brewpub
THE LOOP — First Look: Hayden Hall offers DMK-curated bites, natural wine bar and a second Ada St. location
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Closings
LINCOLN PARK — Yard House closed Jan. 22, according to an automated phone message. Its Glenview and Lombard locations remain open. 1500 N. Clybourn Ave.
gwong@chicagotribune.com


chicagotribune--2020-02-06--In Illinois — the Prairie State — little prairie land remains. But work is being done to save what’s

In Illinois — the Prairie State — little prairie land remains. But work is being done to save what’s left in Cook County and restore more.

With most of the trees and brush gone , the volunteers are able to spread seeds they collected from other @ @ @ @ @ prairie plants .
It ’ s best to do this in cold weather , with @ @ @ @ @ say .
Ross said crews still have to remove about 4 to 5 acres of @ @ @ @ @ Prairie .
When the project is complete , most trees will be gone , except @ @ @ @ @ .

When walking in Cook County forest preserves back in the 1990s, John McMartin always thought the woods didn’t feel quite right. They were crowded and dark, unlike the open and airy woodlands near the farm he grew up on in Minnesota.
Years later, he learned why.
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Most of the land in Cook County was once prairie, before it was farmed and later developed by European settlers who came to the area. In the 1940s, the Cook County Forest Preserve District reclaimed acres of land and planted trees, thinking it was the best use of the land. But most of the trees were not native to the area.
That resulted in a fast spread of invasive species, which blocked sunlight and stopped the prairie, which often contains thousands of types of plant life, from flourishing, according to ecologists and county officials.
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“We do understand more now. You shouldn’t plant trees on prairies,” said Linda Masters, a restoration ecologist for Openlands, a nonprofit conservation organization. “They don’t belong there.”
Illinois is nicknamed the Prairie State, but less than 1% of its original prairie remains, experts say. In Cook County, only a fraction of a percent of original prairie is intact.
Now, the county is reversing course, more than 20 years after earlier attempts at restoration sparked controversy. Workers are removing some of the trees that were planted in the 1940s in an effort to restore prairie and save the remaining original prairie. The work has resulted in patches of land that have been returned close to their original state. In the 1990s, the DuPage and Cook County forest preserve districts put such restoration work on hold after residents complained about the removal of trees.
One of the larger projects underway is in Northbrook, where crews are working on land that surrounds 12 acres of pristine prairie, untouched in the centuries since settlers arrived in Illinois.
Eryngium yuccifolium, also known as rattlesnake master, is a native plant, shown on Jan. 29, 2020, in the Somme Prairie Nature Preserve in Northbrook. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
That patch of intact natural prairie is a rarity in the state. Funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Cook County and a group of volunteers from the North Branch Restoration Project, including McMartin, are preserving the natural prairie and restoring the land around it. The work will culminate in a 72-acre prairie in the northern suburb by about 2021.
It’s part of an ambitious Cook County plan to restore 30,000 acres of prairie, woodlands, savanna and other natural space to good ecological health in 25 years. The plan also calls for expanding the forest preserves to 90,000 acres from their current 69,000.
“What we have left is really precious,” Masters said. “We would be doing ourselves and future generations a disservice if we didn’t take care of them.”
A project decades in the works
On a recent cold afternoon, McMartin, of Northbrook, and three other volunteers gathered grocery bags filled with millions of plant seeds and trudged through a thin layer of snow to scatter them across the ground at Somme Prairie Nature Preserve.
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“Everyone take a little,” Laurel Ross, a steward leading the group, told her fellow volunteers. “See how much ground you can cover.”
The area, located between Dundee Road and the Edens Expressway Spur, has gone through a noticeable transformation this winter as volunteers and crews with the Cook County Forest Preserve District have been working to clear trees, bushes and other invasive brush, leaving acres of open land.
Somme Prairie Nature Preserve is part of the Somme complex, which includes Somme Prairie Grove, about 85 acres of mostly oak savanna, and Somme Woods, 255 acres of mostly oak woodland. The nature preserve is the only part of the complex protected by the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission for its high-quality natural area.
Laurel Ross spreads native prairie plant seeds on Jan. 29, 2020, in the Somme Prairie Nature Preserve in Northbrook. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
Lisa Musgrave holds native prairie plant seeds on Jan. 29, 2020, for scattering in the Somme Prairie Nature Preserve in Northbrook. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
With most of the trees and brush gone, the volunteers are able to spread seeds they collected from other areas that will grow into prairie plants. It’s best to do this in cold weather, with the ground frozen, experts say. Ross said crews still have to remove about 4 to 5 acres of trees and brush from Somme Prairie. When the project is complete, most trees will be gone, except for some along the boundaries.
The 12 acres of intact natural prairie, left untouched over decades by happenstance, lay several yards beyond where the group was laying seeds. The volunteers have been slowly working in that area for decades, trying to save the original prairie and restore the area around it. They started the project before the county had much of a budget to help.
“This has been going on for 40 years,” said Ross, who has volunteered for about 30 years. “We’ve been removing the trees, doing it a little at a time.”
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The work hit snags in the mid-1990s when anti-restoration backlash took hold, as some area residents grew upset that volunteers were removing trees. Though scientists and ecologists supported the prairie restorations, some people raised concerns.
“They are cutting down healthy trees to create savannas!” an opponent said in a 1996 Tribune article.
But in the last several years, the forest preserve district has worked with the volunteers to accelerate the project with grant funding, said Rebecca Collings, a senior resource ecologist for the district.
The county has been in touch with the village of Northbrook and has placed a sign on the property to keep residents informed about the project, said Carl Vogel, a spokesman for the forest preserve district. Officials have also fielded some calls and emails with questions from passersby who have seen the tree removal.
Vogel said the county has “no plans" to remove all the trees that were reforested decades ago across all forest preserves.
“Almost everyone has been good with it once they hear that it will remain a part of the forest preserves and that we have a plan to restore a prairie,” Vogel said. “And even for the few who would not want that change, it’s been a fair and civil conversation.”
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Most of the 72 acres has been restored, with about 21 acres remaining. The project’s final push has an estimated cost of about $150,000, with about half paid for by the federal grant, said Troy Showerman, resource project manager for the forest preserve district. The county is funding the other half.
The project is scheduled for completion next year, though it may take years more to resemble a true prairie.
“It might look pretty rough,” Showerman said. “It’s going to take a couple years for the area we are working in to really recover."
‘Our natural heritage’
When the prairie becomes fully grown, it will be grassy with lots of species of sunflowers, asters and other flowers, ecologists say. It will be a natural habitat for butterflies, grasshoppers and other insects.
While seeding the ground at Somme Prairie, the volunteers dropped hundreds of seeds of rigid goldenrod, which will grow into a yellow flower.
“It’s perfect for this,” Ross told McMartin and the others.
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As a child, McMartin would venture out into the Minnesota woods with his mother every spring, enjoying the emerging plants and animals after a long winter.
“We would go out and try to identify the wildlife,” he said.
Volunteer Lisa Musgrave scatters native prairie plant seeds in the Somme Prairie Nature Preserve in Northbrook. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
Now, he volunteers his time restoring the Cook County prairie to remain close to nature.
The goal of the restoration is to preserve the ecosystem, rather than provide a place for picnics and hiking. There is one informal trail that circles the nature preserve and is used by some locals as a walking path.
“It’s not closed to the public by any means,” Ross said. “But it’s not a park with a recreation mission.”
The county estimates that hundreds of species of plants and insects live on the prairie, two of which are on the federal endangered species list.
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“It’s kind of a window into what was here originally,” Collings said. “We call it our natural heritage.”
mabuckley@chicagotribune.com


chicagotribune--2020-02-06--Should Chicago open safe sites for drug users? There’s already a makeshift network — and it’s saving

Should Chicago open safe sites for drug users? There’s already a makeshift network — and it’s saving lives

Instead of staff “ just handing you needles and inviting you to go to the bathroom at McDonald ’ s @ @ @ @ @ users to “ sit down right here in a space that is clean and designed @ @ @ @ @ substances , ” Doe-Simkins said .
The users would then be in a better position @ @ @ @ @ provided at the site .

David Cole, 57, living at a homeless encampment at Belmont and Kedzie avenues, helps one of his neighbors insulate his winter camp on Dec. 12, 2019. He said he has been using heroin for years and has saved other users by administering naloxone. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)
In the year he lived in an abandoned building in Humboldt Park, David Cole says he came to the aid of at least six people overdosing from drugs. And maybe saved their lives.
One time, a woman took cocaine and heroin and “just kind of laid back,” said Cole, 57, a user himself. “I thought she was chilling, so I was reading a book. And I look over and I said, ‘Whoa, her lips are blue.’
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“I calmly took the stuff out and gave her a shot,” he said, referring to naloxone, a medication that can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose. “She came through.”
Cole left the building about a year ago and moved to a long-standing homeless camp under the Kennedy Expressway viaduct at Belmont and Kedzie avenues. Since then, at least two people passing by were given naloxone after overdosing, he said.
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In abandoned buildings, encampments, vacant lots and other secluded areas throughout the city, drug users have found spaces where they can be watched over while using drugs. This makeshift network — hundreds of places, recovery workers estimate — has grown as groups have distributed naloxone more widely over the last two decades.
But rescues are a matter of chance, of being in the right place at the right time.
Used syringes in a pile of garbage near a homeless encampment on Chicago Avenue, just east of Kedzie Avenue, on Dec. 12, 2019. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)
Community groups and some public officials, including Cook County’s top prosecutor, believe it’s time for Chicago to set up its own safe sites: Places where people can legally use drugs under medical supervision, where staff is on hand to administer naloxone and where medical checkups, referrals to housing and other services are offered.
Called safe injection sites or overdose prevention centers, they have operated for years in Europe and Canada, where studies have found sizable reductions in the number of fatal overdoses.
No sites exist in the United States, despite an opioid epidemic that continues to grow. In Chicago, there have been more than 3,400 opioid-related deaths since 2015. Despite the increasing access to naloxone, the number of fatal overdoses each year in the city has climbed 100% from 2015 to 2018. In Cook County last year, more than twice as many people died from opioid overdoses than from gun violence.
A man injects heroin he bought on the street at a safe injection clinic in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2011. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)
While the American Medical Association has come out in support of safe sites, polls show public support remains low. A 2018 survey by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found only 29% of respondents supported such sites.
Chicago’s tolerance may be tested soon. In June, a group including Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx flew to Toronto to visit sites there. Then in July, Foxx and more than 60 other law enforcement officials across the country signed a legal brief in support of a nonprofit in Philadelphia that hopes to open the first site in the United States but is battling the federal government in court.
Protesters demonstrate in support of supervised injection sites in Philadelphia on Dec. 3, 2019. (Matt Rourke / AP)
While Foxx told the Tribune she thinks Chicago urgently needs safe consumption sites, no solid plans have surfaced. “I would love to be able to see a site in a place where the community welcomed it ... like yesterday,” she said. But before a site can open, “you need the collective to come together and say that we need this.”
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Mayor Lori Lightfoot declined to take a position on safe consumption sites during her election campaign and still won’t say whether she supports them. In a statement, her press secretary said, “Chicago has been following the national conversation about ‘safe use sites’ closely. Currently, we prioritize spending on harm reduction approaches including syringe exchange and naloxone distribution, and we will continue to gather information about this emerging practice.”
Besides Philadelphia, efforts are underway to open sites in New York City, Boston and San Francisco. Recovery workers say Chicago can’t wait any longer.
Greg Scott, a member of the Chicago Recovery Alliance, said users he’s encountered have been “adamantly advocating for the establishment of safer consumption sites” for almost two decades. “I’ve literally had a thousand conversations with a thousand different people about their desire to have a space where they can use their substances and not die.”
‘A very small incremental step’
For eight years, from roughly 2005 to 2013, Steve Kamenicky lived in a shack near railroad tracks by 5th and Cicero avenues. Other users would often come by to take drugs because they “wouldn’t worry about police or neighbors spying on them,” he said.
Kamenicky, 62, known as “Ponytail Steve,” always had clean needles and naloxone handy. He reversed around 130 overdoses in his eight years there, he said. “I was pretty much running a safe consumption site.”
Kamenicky now works for the Chicago Recovery Alliance, a group whose work has helped make such informal safe sites possible.
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Around the clock, seven days a week, the Alliance sends out workers in a small fleet of boxy silver vans across the West and South sides. They distribute syringes and naloxone, as well as train people on using the supplies safely. By its count, the Alliance hands out millions of new needles and around a hundred thousand naloxone vials every year.
Though the Alliance’s work has been accused of encouraging drug use, it has gradually become more widely accepted. Last year, Illinois passed a bill clarifying that needle exchanges, where clean needles are traded for used ones, are legal.
Scott, of the Alliance, believes the next logical step for Chicago is to accept safe consumption sites. “People treat it like it’s a colossal jump,” he said, but a sterile site where consumption can be monitored by medical staff is “a very small incremental step.”
“We already have unsupervised injection spaces in Chicago and they’re called alleys and vacant lots and abandoned buildings,” Scott said. “The only question is do we want drug use to be indoors or outdoors, and do we want it to be supervised or unsupervised?”
Jill has seen the answer to that question many times while living with her husband in a camp under a viaduct near Chicago and Kedzie avenues. In the past 2 ½ years, she said her husband has come to the aid of about 25 people who overdosed while passing by their tent.
Jill, 48, a user herself, said the people “fell out right in front of us,” all within her husband’s line of sight. One time, “someone literally nodded out into our tent.”
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The one time recently when someone died near them, they didn’t see him, said Jill, who did not want her last name used. “We weren’t aware that he did it in his tent."
The same happenstance governs rescues near a recovery clinic in Austin, which provides all the medical services a safe consumption site would, except for the supervision of drug use.
People often use drugs near the clinic, run by the University of Illinois at Chicago, because “they know if they inject outside a clinic, (it’ll be) more likely that someone will be walking by with Narcan and be able to help them,” said Dr. Sarah Messmer.
One time, staff members brought in a man who had been behind the clinic. “All of a sudden, he went out on us,” said Robert Banks, who operates a needle exchange attached to the clinic. “I hit him three times with naloxone and he didn’t come back,” so the staff called paramedics.
“At least they were in the right place, just see if they had been somewhere else with nobody around,” Banks said. “You would have never known.
“See that’s the whole thing. We give them the needles, we give them everything they do to keep them safe, but then after they leave, how are we going to keep them safe? It’s impossible.”
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Health educator Robert Banks demonstrates how to prepare a dose of naloxone on Oct. 21, 2019, from his desk at University of Illinois at Chicago clinic in the Austin neighborhood. Banks, who runs the needle exchange at the clinic, said he has given the emergency treatment many times while waiting for paramedics to arrive after a drug overdose. Banks believes opening a safe consumption site would be a safer option. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
‘The best hope’
Foxx said in an interview that she initially couldn’t get behind safe consumption sites. She felt resources should instead go toward treatment for drug users. “It’s also — if we’re being honest — very discomforting to think of a place where people are just using.”
Her thinking changed when she visited sites in Toronto. While talking to people at one of the sites, “in the midst of it, the first person went down,” she said. Staff immediately responded and “the person recovered and re-engaged with us during the same meeting.”
“My thinking was, that person could have died, but for the fact that someone was there,” Foxx said.
A month later, Foxx and 63 other law enforcement officials across the country signed a legal brief supporting the Philadelphia nonprofit trying to open a site. “We’re here about the prevention of death,” she said. “And I view (safe consumption sites) as a tool to do that.”
Ronda Goldfein, vice president of the Philadelphia nonprofit Safehouse, emphasized the same point. Safehouse’s model, she said, “will offer the best hope to save people’s lives.”
In the model, users would first be provided with safe injection equipment and strips to test for fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that can be deadly even in small doses. Heroin is often mixed with fentanyl on the street.
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“Staff will not touch anybody’s drugs,” Goldfein said. “They’re not injecting anyone, they’re just watching.” If users show signs of overdosing, staff can immediately reverse the overdose through administering naloxone and oxygen.
“Proximity to care” makes the sites effective at saving lives, Goldfein said.
It’s a message painfully clear to Cole. For all the people he helped, he wasn’t around to save his son’s friend, a new mother.
Just one month after Cole administered naloxone to her, she overdosed again. That time, “she was with somebody who didn’t have Narcan or didn’t care and they just threw her in an alley, took all her money, her purse, and left her dead in an alley,” he said. “She was like 28, 29.”
Cole himself has come harrowingly close to dying. A Logan Square native, Cole has a history of substance abuse since he was 30 when he began taking painkillers after medical procedures for his back and gallbladder. After using for more than 20 years, he said, he overdosed for the first time about a year ago.
Cole and his adult son both took heroin from a dealer who was not his usual one. On his way to work, Cole said he collapsed at a bus stop. He woke up hours later at a hospital with “burn marks from the defibrillator. … They said they shot me up four different times because I was so full of fentanyl.
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“It was a total surprise. I was shocked.”
While his son didn’t overdose, the prospect of that occurring someday haunts Cole. “I don’t see him as often as I like, ‘cause he’s not here and I don’t know why he won’t come here,” Cole said. “I worry about him all the time.”
‘The dignity of seeing you’
Jennifer, 44, is a patient at the Austin clinic, participating in a substance abuse treatment program. She fears safe consumption sites could keep her on drugs because she would think, “Now I’m going to get a good high every time.”
But she noted that was the same argument critics made against much of the clinic’s work providing treatment to users and giving them safe supplies. And the clinic’s work has helped rather than hurt her efforts to get sober.
Jennifer, who asked not to have her last name used, relapsed after two years of sobriety and “it’s the nonjudgement aspect of (the clinic) that allowed me to come back.”
“Any other place you’re going to hang your head like, ‘I can’t go back there, they already think I succeeded and became well,’ ” Jennifer said. But when she returned to the clinic, “they’re just, ‘Come on in, what do you need?’ ”
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Safe consumption sites are designed to provide that same “dignity of seeing you and seeing this situation,” said Maya Doe-Simkins, communications director of the Chicago Recovery Alliance.
Instead of staff “just handing you needles and inviting you to go to the bathroom at McDonald’s,” staff would instruct users to “sit down right here in a space that is clean and designed for you to use your substances,” Doe-Simkins said. The users would then be in a better position to ask about other services provided at the site.
At the proposed Philadelphia site, for example, users would have access to medical services such as wound care and infectious disease testing, and referrals to social services such as housing support.
“That’s the biggest thing with us — asking for help and the degradation,” said Jill, while standing outside her tent near Chicago and Kedzie.
She said she wants to get sober but can’t bring herself to seek treatment.
“I know it’s possible to get sober because I’ve been sober for 10 years,” she said. In that time, when living in Arlington Heights, “I went to a meeting every day for 10 years. I went to see a counselor once a week for 10 years.” Then after taking painkillers for back surgery, she relapsed.
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“The shame and the guilt of trying to get sober and facing everything is, it seems, almost impossible,” she said. “It’s all shame and guilt — not wanting to face people, not wanting to see what I look like now.”
‘Lots of people are talking’
As efforts in other cities show, opening a site is not easy, even when local officials support it.
“Any one of us could make a site happen tomorrow, if it were politically and legally feasible for us to do that,” said Scott, of Chicago Recovery Alliance.
In Philadelphia, Goldfein said Safehouse began working on putting up a site after officials, including the mayor and health minister, expressed support. Because the nonprofit is not a licensed medical entity, it didn’t need approval from the state’s health department.
In New York City, city officials, rather than a private organization, want to open four sites but are awaiting approval from the state.
Both cities still face federal opposition, as well as the challenge of persuading communities to accept the sites. In Philadelphia, some residents of the neighborhood where the proposed site would be located have objected to Safehouse’s plans. In New York City, officials in Staten Island — a borough with one of the highest rates of overdoses — have opposed the sites.
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In Chicago, advocates have been adamantly trying to sell the idea to local officials. The Alliance organized the Toronto trip that included Foxx, as well as state Rep. LaShawn Ford, Ald. Chris Taliaferro, 29th, and city and state public health officials.
Ford and Taliaferro said that, like Foxx, they came back from Toronto in support of safe consumption sites. Last month, Ford introduced a bill that would allow the Illinois Department of Public Health to approve the operation of safe consumption sites and would require the department to develop standards for approval. It’s unclear how much support the bill has.
Before the City Council discusses the opening of a site, Taliaferro wants to see support from more state officials. “There has to be continued dialogue,” he said.
Scott said in other countries where sites have opened, there were “many years of talking while many thousands of people were dying.”
“It’s no different here,” he said. “Lots of people are talking. Lots of people are dying.”


chicagotribune--2020-02-06--So ‘Hamilton’ will next be a movie — more proof of just how clever is Lin-Manuel Miranda. He should

So ‘Hamilton’ will next be a movie — more proof of just how clever is Lin-Manuel Miranda. He should be an MBA class.

In terms of the filming , it ’ s already done .
You don ’ t have to coordinate schedules @ @ @ @ @ and lives .
( Kail , who also directed the Broadway production , currently is @ @ @ @ @ fiancee Michelle Williams ) .
It ’ s all in the can already .
When @ @ @ @ @ the filming , the actors were actually double-dipping , being as they were performing in @ @ @ @ @ .
Brilliant .
For them , their share of the $ 75 million is found @ @ @ @ @ they otherwise would already have done .
All it will require is a few press @ @ @ @ @ artists of more modest wealth will be even more appreciative of their friend Lin puts @ @ @

Lin-Manuel Miranda, center, is the creator, composer and original title character in the hit musical "Hamilton," shown here in the "Yorktown" scene in the original Broadway production. Video of that production will be released as a Disney movie. (Joan Marcus photo)
When you’re pondering “Hamilton,” it’s never clear whether you are talking about something distinct and unique in the realm of live entertainment, or a bellwether of future trends. But one thing’s for sure. Lin-Manuel Miranda knows how to make choices that pay off.
Take this week’s news that Disney has agreed to pay $75 million to license and distribute a filmed version of Miranda’s Broadway hit in the fall of 2021. In essence, the producer Jeffrey Seller decided to film two live performances at the Richard Rogers Theatre just before the exit of the original cast, replete with the show’s composer, writer and creator Miranda in the title role. At that juncture, Seller and Miranda had not decided what to do with the footage, which then was spliced together with some additional close-ups so it could be turned into a film directed by Thomas Kail. They just thought it behooved them to get it while they could.
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Now, $75 million is a stunning amount of money for a home movie like that. Lots of live artistic events get filmed, and there is a loyal market for them, but it exists outside of the realm of big Hollywood deal-making. Not this time. And if you were Disney, you surely would see a colossal upside: “Hamilton,” with the original company, available at your local movie theater, or maybe on your own mobile device, for just a few dollars. There will be a market for that all across the United States and over the world. I’ll wager Disney will net a lot more than $75 million.
Once again, let’s marvel at the shrewdness of Miranda’s decision making (he has the ultimate artistic say on how this property will or will not be developed). He gets a big paycheck personally. He shares new revenue with his producer and with the original cast, who were also his trusted collaborators. He can tweet about his making this show accessible to people who could never afford to buy a Broadway theater ticket, or pay to get there in person, thus fulfilling his social mission while expanding his brand.
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Think about that. Most of us make choices in life either to make the best living we can or, well, put aside the big bucks to make a difference. Miranda has figured out a way to do both simultaneously, by focusing assiduously on expanding his market while tending, person to person, to his fan base on Twitter with the care and shrewdness of Donald J. Trump, even if that it is where the comparison ends. In years to come, they’ll be making cases out of Miranda’s brand management at Harvard Business School.
You never see Miranda go after people on social media or make calls-out or attempt takedowns (maybe with one exception). He learned the skills of inclusivity from Barack Obama.
And wait, there’s more. Nobody here has to do much more work.
In terms of the filming, it’s already done. You don’t have to coordinate schedules of people with busy careers and lives. (Kail, who also directed the Broadway production, currently is expecting a child with his fiancee Michelle Williams). It’s all in the can already. When doing the vast bulk of the filming, the actors were actually double-dipping, being as they were performing in front of a Broadway audience. Brilliant. For them, their share of the $75 million is found money while they do what they otherwise would already have done. All it will require is a few press junkets. To say these artists of more modest wealth will be even more appreciative of their friend Lin puts it mildly.
“Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda participates in a question and answer session at the “Hamilton the Exhibition” space on Northerly Island in 2019. The Chicago exhibit was a rare misstep for team MIranda. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago / Chicago Tribune)
Even better, Miranda has frozen everyone’s ages! While there is (arguably) nothing inherent to “Hamilton" that prevents the show being performed by older actors, Miranda’s original vision was imbued with the idea of youth. The timing offers up another year or so of exclusivity for the live show, which has closed in Chicago after grossing some $400 million, but continues to tour around the country with several different companies, even as demand for the film builds. (Brilliant, again). Miranda has also ensured his own performance in the lead role, which I know he does not want to do as a middle-age man.
I’m not done. This way of proceeding also maintains crucial artistic control for team Miranda: Disney is their customer, not their boss. No new creative players with invasive clout.
And here’s the cleverest thing of all: this film does not preclude an actual feature movie. It just kicks that additional payday down the road. It could well be that Miranda and Seller have found a way to sell their show to Hollywood twice.
Sure, there are caveats. The failure in Chicago of “Hamilton the Exhibition,” as I have noted, seemed to suggest that the show’s fans want the show, not related historical material. And it could be that Disney can’t find an audience. Sure. Could be. Disney might also have negotiated such a long period of exclusivity that the feature is so delayed that interest will so limited as to torpedo the viability of the project. Nothing is forever. People are beginning to move on, even from “Hamilton.”
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But I don’t believe that. Miranda’s No. 1 talent is momentum — political, financial, personal. That’s because he is steeped in the theater, which is an art-form rooted in the idea of humans in motion, either embracing change or being bowled over by cataclysmic developments for which they were not fully prepared.
That course of study, when followed with human kindness, beats any MBA.
In a review of my book about “Hamilton,” someone noted that I consider Miranda the most brilliant performing artist of his generation. Indeed I do.
For the data, see all of the above.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com


chicagotribune--2020-02-05--Ask Amy: Daughter wants distance after wedding nightmare

As her daughter , you will have to find healthy ways to erect strong boundaries .
When/if your mother behaves @ @ @ @ @ a door , but you should be prepared to close it again .
Do not @ @ @ @ @ Continue to be in touch with your stepfather .
Share any and all lifetime announcements @ @ @ @ @ and then take your future with her on a case-by-case basis .

Dear Amy: My husband "John" and I were married recently. We funded the wedding. At our wedding, my mother behaved erratically. She drank too much, gave an awful speech, yelled at John, hijacked the DJ for multiple "surprise" spotlight dances, groped John's married uncle, and was taken home early. I had nightmares for weeks.
We met with Mom and my stepfather. John and I said we were worried and wanted Mom to visit her doctor and begin therapy, but also that she had hurt us. John then asked her to acknowledge this and apologize. Mom began screaming and physically threatened him. She said she had always disliked him and that she would rather kill herself than apologize. We left.
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My stepfather later told us that he will take care of Mom, and understands if we distance ourselves. Her only communication since then has been to send short, pleasant texts about how to avoid us. I find it confusing, exhausting, and upsetting.
I started therapy, read about "emotional immaturity," and contacted a local family mediation center. For the first time, I'm thinking about all of her terrible behavior.
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I've been thinking about future milestones like moving, pregnancy, and parenthood, and I don't know what role Mom is capable of having or what role I want her to have.
Should I be doing something different? What happens when we have news to share?
— Unresolved
Dear Unresolved: You have responded to your mother's behavior in a straightforward and honest way. Working on a hunch, I suggest you ask your therapist to talk to you about Borderline Personality Disorder. Some of what you describe sounds typical of someone with BPD, who will have an exaggerated reaction to perceived abandonments. If your mother does have these characteristics, don't hold your breath for an apology; it will never come.
As her daughter, you will have to find healthy ways to erect strong boundaries. When/if your mother behaves well, you can open a door, but you should be prepared to close it again. Do not let her control you. Continue to be in touch with your stepfather. Share any and all lifetime announcements with both of them, and then take your future with her on a case-by-case basis.
A book that might help you explore this challenging dynamic is, "Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder," by Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger (New Harbinger Publications; Second edition (January 1, 2010).
Dear Amy: I have been dating my boyfriend for over three years. Things with him are pretty good. My family and friends love him.
We started dating shortly after my ex and I broke up. I thought I was ready, but I have been having feelings toward my ex. Recently, my ex and I began texting, the conversation was something that I missed -- we were good friends. But then he told me that he still thinks of me, so I wished him well and stopped the conversation.
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We broke up for a reason, and getting back together is out of the question, but still, I have lingering feelings.
I know none of this is fair to the current boyfriend. I feel selfish and ashamed.
I'd like the thoughts and feelings toward my ex to stop. I want to feel like I have properly moved on. Am I just selfish?
— Wandering Eyes
Dear Wandering: Your current relationship is pretty good. Your friends and family love him. Do you? Is he your forever guy? At the three-year mark, you should have an idea.
This relationship might be a transitional one for you. But if some element of friendship is missing, you might be able to work on that. Have you been self-protective? Are you being emotionally intimate and available to him?
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Your current guy could be wonderful, loving and kind, but he might not be a match for you. If that is the case, you owe it to him to be honest. There is no need to find fault with him (or you). It's a question of chemistry, and the mysterious intricacy of attraction.
Ask Amy Daily No-nonsense advice for better living delivered to your inbox every morning. By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our Subscriber Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy >
Dear Amy: I'm another reader objecting to you calling squirrels "rodents" and a bunch of scampering squirrels an "infestation." Your reaction to these beautiful and harmless animals is too harsh.
— Squirrel Lover
Dear Lover: I once had two squirrels chew their way into my attic, and then chew their way out of the first floor of my house. The damage was quite impressive.
Yes, squirrels are rodents and yes, they can be very destructive.
Get the latest no-nonsense advice for better living delivered to your inbox every morning with our Ask Amy newsletter. Sign up here.
(You can email Amy Dickinson at askamy@amydickinson.com or send a letter to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. You can also follow her on Twitter @askingamy or Facebook.)
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Copyright 2019 by Amy Dickinson
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency


chicagotribune--2020-02-05--Curie basketball coach Mike Oliver removed from position amid accusation of ‘physical altercation’ w

Curie basketball coach Mike Oliver removed from position amid accusation of ‘physical altercation’ with student

Details were not made available by CPS .
As of 10:30 p.m. , the school ’ s website staff directory @ @ @ @ @ security guard .
Oliver was suspended in 2014 after several players were found to be @ @ @ @ @ 2016 after a forfeit loss in Michigan City , according to Tribune records .

Mike Oliver, coach of the state’s No. 1-ranked high school boy’s basketball team, was ousted from Curie Metropolitan High School following an allegation that he got into a “physical altercation” with a student, according to a Chicago Public Schools official.
The alleged incident was under investigation by the district’s Office of Student Protections and Title IX, according to a CPS spokesman’s Wednesday night statement. The district is also offering support to the student involved in the altercation, CPS said.
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“Mike Oliver was removed from his position following an allegation of a physical altercation with a student,” the full statement read. “The CPS Office of Student Protections and Title IX is investigating the allegation and ensuring supports are available to the student.”
Details were not made available by CPS. As of 10:30 p.m., the school’s website staff directory also lists Oliver as a security guard. Oliver was suspended in 2014 after several players were found to be academically ineligible and again in 2016 after a forfeit loss in Michigan City, according to Tribune records.
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The Condors are ranked first in Illinois’ largest class for boys’ basketball, according to the latest AP poll.
Oliver did not immediately respond to a message left with him Wednesday night.
ayin@chicagotribune.com


chicagotribune--2020-02-05--Kirk Douglas appreciation: ‘I was not a tough guy. I just acted like one.’

One of my favorite Douglas performances is at the oscillating core of “ The Bad and the Beautiful ” ( @ @ @ @ @ Minnelli ’ s swank melodrama about a ruthless , charismatic film producer who manipulates , @ @ @ @ @ his friends and colleagues , with a smile .
Though the film ’ s original @ @ @ @ @ unleashed , unchained Douglas , in its entirety the performance is very sly and , @ @ @ @ @ and undervalued .
Minnelli kept urging him to do less , which for Douglas was @ @ @ @ @ movie , it felt like not enough to the actor .
The results were just @ @ @ @ @ his director for them .

The phrase “golden age Hollywood” describes different, overlapping phases across 125-odd years of film history, depending on who’s doing the talking, or writing. Few agree on what years and which stars the golden age label signifies.
But death has a way of clarifying the debate.
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Kirk Douglas died Wednesday at the age of 103. He was, pretty clearly, the last great male star of his generation.
But the loss of Douglas is larger than that. Now, only Olivia De Havilland remains as an undeniable link to a distant time and place — a reminder of what the shimmer of golden age stardom really looked like.
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Like De Havilland, Douglas was born in 1916, the year of D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance,” and Charlie Chaplin’s “The Pawnshop.” Douglas’ parents, Russian Jews, hailed from what is now Belarus. The family grew up in harsh poverty in Amsterdam, New York, about 30 miles from Albany. (He wrote about those early years, and later ones, in the 1988 bestseller “The Ragman’s Son,” one of several Douglas memoirs.)
He had six sisters. Born Issur Danielovitch, known in his childhood as Izzy Demsky, Douglas yearned for approval from his alcoholic mess of a father as long as his father lived. Meantime Douglas fought against intolerance, anti-Semitism and his own ego’s demands and demons for the hardy duration of his own life.
“There was an awful lot of rage churning around inside me,” Douglas once wrote, “rage that I was afraid to reveal because there was so much more of it, and so much stronger, in my father."
On screen Douglas was a lot. Impressionists and comedians adored his simmering-kettle-of-rage intensity, his sudden, explosive blasts of anger, and that distinctive, unsettling smile, signifying so many things, depending on the mood of a scene. Creeping menace. A calculating charm. Serious, carnal ardor, as in his scenes with Jean Simmons in “Spartacus” (1960), the second of two films he made with Stanley Kubrick.
Kirk Douglas stars as the laser-focused man of principle, Col. Dax, hung out to dry by his French superiors in the trenches and battlefields in Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 anti-war classic "Paths of Glory." (Baltimore Sun)
The first was “Paths of Glory” in 1957, a great film, and if “1917” is the only World War I picture you can recall seeing, you’re overdue. As the laser-focused man of principle, Col. Dax, hung out to dry by his French superiors in the trenches and battlefields, Douglas barreled through those trenches like a force of nature. Douglas and Kubrick fought frequently on both projects. The battlefields weren’t big enough for both egos, but both films were better, in the end, for their off-screen skirmishes.
The physical equipment Douglas brought to the movies made him handsome, but not standard-issue handsome. The plus-sized dimple in his chin, the expansive, jutting jawline, the clench in the teeth added up to a face to remember. “Champion” (1949), a boxing noir — a fine one — gave Douglas his first Oscar nomination. It didn’t hurt that he looked like a real boxer, a fighter who never knew when to stop fighting.
The actor, a New York friend of Lauren Bacall’s in the salad days of their respective stage careers, needed that inner fire simply to avoid coming off like a sap in his screen debut. In “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” (1946), Douglas plays the impotent, alcoholic, possibly bisexual husband of Barbara Stanwyck, top-billed as the vicious queen bee and de facto ruler of a factory town without pity. He never again played a character quite so wormy.
Even so, fourth-billed, Douglas made his mark. “You’re pretty good," Douglas recalled Stanwyck telling him late in the shoot, after ignoring his efforts for weeks. “Too late, Miss Stanwyck,” he replied. They got along nicely after that.
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A year later, in the achingly evocative noir “Out of the Past” (1947), you can see the Kirk Douglas of destiny beginning to crystallize into a fiercely effective screen actor. Offscreen, the lifelong Democrat found himself playfully at odds with Hollywood friends and co-stars such as Stanwyck and John Wayne. On “Spartacus,” which he developed, Douglas decided to list blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo on the credits. Doing so challenged, successfully, the might and wrong of the Hollywood blacklist.
Douglas covered the waterfront and did a little, or a lot, of everything: Westerns, melodramas, ocean-going adventures either for the Disney audience (“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”) or fans of Douglas at his most outlandishly hammy (“The Vikings”). By the time of the early 1960s, his stardom remained bright. But Hollywood was wondering how much longer the flailing studio system would hold out, and how much juice certain genres had left in them.
The Old West was becoming a New West, less certain and fixed in its landscape of right and wrong. Around the time of “Ride the High Country” with Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott, and the modern-day “Hud,” with Paul Newman as a sexy rascal, Douglas made one of his favorites, a contemporary story titled “Lonely Are the Brave” (1962). Its depiction of a sturdy, hard-living cowboy at odds with his surroundings and the law felt like a personal statement.
A 1996 stroke devastated his spirit but he continued to work, occasionally. “The harder you run after it, the more it eludes you,” Douglas said a few years earlier, in his 1991 AFI Life Achievement acceptance speech. He was talking about success. He caught up with it all the same.
One of my favorite Douglas performances is at the oscillating core of “The Bad and the Beautiful” (1952), director Vincente Minnelli’s swank melodrama about a ruthless, charismatic film producer who manipulates, screws over and uses up his friends and colleagues, with a smile. Though the film’s original theatrical trailer offers plenty of unleashed, unchained Douglas, in its entirety the performance is very sly and, for Douglas, both understated and undervalued. Minnelli kept urging him to do less, which for Douglas was still plenty. Filming the movie, it felt like not enough to the actor. The results were just right, and Douglas thanked his director for them.
In later years, Douglas rediscovered his Judaism. With his wife of 66 years, philanthropist Anne Buydens, the mostly retired movie star spent millions on refurbishing children’s playgrounds all around California, dedicating each one with an honorary trip down the brand-new slide. He joked that he was risking his neck, needlessly, well into his 90s. But maybe that’s why he lived to 103: As he did in the movies, so often and so entertainingly, he needed to show people a good time, just by having one.
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The actor who was Spartacus was nominated for three Academy Awards as an actor but never took home a statue. That puts the upcoming Feb. 9 Oscars ritual in the right perspective, I think. Douglas gave several of his shrewdest performances in tough, astringent, audience-hostile flops, Billy Wilder’s “Ace in the Hole” (1951) and “Paths of Glory” among them.
Money isn’t everything. Talent is.
“I was not a tough guy,” Douglas told the Guardian shortly after he turned 100. “I just acted like one.”
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
mjphillips@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @phillipstribune


chicagotribune--2020-02-05--Lincoln Park High School turmoil continues with new administrator’s departure, prompting 5th investi

Lincoln Park High School turmoil continues with new administrator’s departure, prompting 5th investigation into staff and student conduct

The latest investigation marks the fifth that has been launched since an allegation that misconduct occurred during a boys basketball @ @ @ @ @ area over winter break .
Head coach Pat Gordon , who led the “ unauthorized @ @ @ @ @ in early January , according to CPS .

Less than a week after Chicago Public Schools appointed two new administrators to take over Lincoln Park High School amid a leadership shake-up, one of them is already out.
A letter informed Lincoln Park families Wednesday that Judith Gibbs, one of the two administrators-in-charge brought in last week, was leaving.
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Gibbs "has decided to leave LPHS today after determining that she was not a good fit for LPHS,” the letter stated.
In response to Tribune questions about the circumstances surrounding Gibbs’ departure, a CPS spokesman said, “We recently learned of an allegation involving improper contact with a student and have initiated an investigation.”
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[ Lincoln Park High School scandal has sparked 4 investigations and top leaders’ removal. Here is how it unfolded. ]
The spokesman did not elaborate. Gibbs could not immediately be reached for comment.
The latest investigation marks the fifth that has been launched since an allegation that misconduct occurred during a boys basketball team trip to the Detroit area over winter break. Head coach Pat Gordon, who led the “unauthorized” trip, was removed in early January, according to CPS.
CPS had announced the appointments of Gibbs and another administrator-in-charge, Jerryelyn Jones, on Friday when officials informed Lincoln Park High families that Interim Principal John Thuet and Assistant Principal Michelle Brumfield had also been removed following “multiple allegations of serious misconduct involving the athletics program.”
The letter also stated CPS had reassigned Dean John Johnson and basketball coach Donovan Robinson and suspended the boys varsity basketball season until further notice.
Efforts this week by students and community members to reinstate the team and administrators have included a student walkout Monday, emotional statements at a community meeting, social media campaigns, an online petition, and letters to the mayor and CPS officials.
“I know this past week has been challenging, and I am confident that when this is over, the LPHS community will be safer and stronger than ever,” states the Wednesday letter announcing Gibbs’ departure.
Another administrator, Calvin Davis, has been appointed to help oversee the high school.
hleone@chicagotribune.com


chicagotribune--2020-02-05--Blackhawks lose 2-1 in overtime to the Bruins despite Robin Lehner’s 38 saves

The Hawks ’ Zack Smith took a terrible penalty with 2:26 left in the third when he struck Torey Krug @ @ @ @ @ shoulder , giving the Bruins a chance to win the game in regulation .
Drake @ @ @ @ @ , but it came seconds after a delayed penalty on Krug was called , and @ @ @ @ @ was dead before Caggiula ’ s shot went in .

For the second straight game, the Blackhawks had a miserable first period.
But unlike Tuesday against the Wild, this one wasn’t self-inflicted.
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The Bruins came to the United Center with the NHL’s second-best record and played like it, outshooting the Hawks 16-5 in the first en route to a 2-1 overtime loss.
Adam Boqvist left the game in the second period with a right shoulder injury and didn’t return, though Hawks coach Jeremy Colliton said he didn’t think was very serious.
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“They’re a good team and they challenged us,” Colliton said. "It was a challenge for our guys. Especially when we go down to five (defensemen). We played most of the game or you know the last half of the game at five D.
“With the way they forecheck and the type of sharpness you need defensively, especially when their top line is on, I’m happy we found a way to grind it out.”
Here are three takeaways from Wednesday’s OT loss:
1. Drake Caggiula’s disallowed goal should have counted.
The goal horn blew and a celebration commenced after Drake Caggiula put the Hawks ahead 2-1 on a shorthanded goal with 1:05 left in the third period.
But the sounds turned to fury moments later when an official waived off the apparent go-ahead goal, telling the Hawks the play was blown dead because of a hand pass.
The only problem? There was no hand pass and the play should have been allowed to continue. According to Jonathan Toews, the official admitted the whistle should not have been blown.
“He said it was his mistake,” a visibly frustrated Toews said after.
Goal or no goal? pic.twitter.com/dMESFxq2d0 — Blackhawks Talk (@NBCSBlackhawks) February 6, 2020
It was a difficult pill to swallow after the Hawks held the Bruins at bay while being outshot 40-22. If it weren’t for Robin Lehner’s heroics, the official’s mistake never would have been an issue.
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And while Toews was seething, Jeremy Colliton already was attempting to get past the anger over losing out on a much-needed point in the standings.
"It's disappointing," Colliton said. "But there will be another night where we come out on the other end of it. These things have a way of evening out, but it's just disappointing because it would've been a big two points for our team. They outplayed us early on. I thought we got better as the game went on, they're an excellent team and we grinded it out.
"That's the type of home game that we haven't played so much of where it's not necessarily pretty but we find a way. So these points are big."
2. Kirby Dach was the best Hawks player on the ice not named Robin Lehner.
It’s hard to believe there was a time this season that it seemed Kirby Dach was better off playing for Saskatoon than in Chicago.
Nobody would have batted an eye if the Hawks had let the third pick in last June’s draft go back to the Western Hockey League’s Saskatoon Blades for more seasoning. And while it’s possible that it could have been better for him in the long run, it’s clear the Hawks need him now.
Dach had a blue-collar assist on Alex DeBrincat’s second-period goal, fighting through traffic in front of the Bruins net to get off a shot that was stopped but ended up on DeBrincat’s blade.
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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 15 Blackhawks forwards Patrick Kane, left, and Jonathan Toews argue with the officials in the first period against the Bruins. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
He also had a breakaway late in the third period that didn’t go in, but he did draw a penalty on the play to give the Hawks a late power-play chance.
Dach hasn’t just been one of the Hawks’ better rookies of late, he has been one of their best players with points in five straight games. This is after a stretch in which he had only one goal and no assists in 28 consecutive games.
“He’s been great and it’s really helping our team and there’s more there,” Jeremy Colliton said. “He’s close. He creates a lot and just hasn’t quite been able to finish but starting to produce offensively. But for me it’s more his two-way game just adds some depth to our team and I know he’s going to keep getting better.”
Jonathan Toews has been as impressed as anybody.
“He’s using his speed, but he’s stronger and stronger on the puck, winning those battles,” Toews said. “He stripped whoever it was there and walked in on a breakaway and had a great chance. When he’s just staying in that puck area, having that strong stick, he’s making things happen and it’s really good to see. The stronger he gets, the more and more he’s going to create for us.”
3. Alex DeBrincat may be back on track.
The Hawks have been waiting all season for Alex DeBrincat to go on a scoring binge everyone knows he’s capable of.
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Whether it was another tease or the start of something big, DeBrincat scored his 13th goal of the season against the Bruins. It was his first goal in his last six games and also came on the power play, another source of frustration for the Hawks this season.
The Hawks came into the game against the Bruins 3-for-26 on the power play over their last 11 games before DeBrincat's rebound goal in the second period.
“(The power play) was much better,” Jeremy Colliton said. “Mentality was much better, just willingness to shoot the puck and you give yourself a chance. Then all of a sudden, you got some pretty good looks off broken plays. The extra pass is there once you recover a puck.”
Here is coverage from Wednesday’s overtime loss:
Charlie McAvoy scored 1 minute, 19 seconds into overtime as the Blackhawks fell to the Bruins 2-1 on Wednesday night at the United Center.
The Hawks have played three consecutive overtime games since the All-Star break ended, dropping the last two to fall to 25-21-8.
The Bruins outshot the Hawks 40-22.
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The Hawks’ Zack Smith took a terrible penalty with 2:26 left in the third when he struck Torey Krug in the head with his shoulder, giving the Bruins a chance to win the game in regulation. Drake Caggiula appeared to score shorthanded, but it came seconds after a delayed penalty on Krug was called, and the referee ruled the play was dead before Caggiula’s shot went in.
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The Hawks had 55 seconds of power-play time to start overtime but didn’t convert. Krug had a breakaway as soon as he came out of the box, which Robin Lehner stopped. A few seconds later, McAvoy beat Lehner for his first goal of the season.
In earning a point, the Hawks moved within two points of the Flames for the final Western Conference wild-card spot. Each of the other contenders, including the Flames, were off on Wednesday.
The Hawks were dominated in the first period for the second straight night. But unlike on Tuesday against the Wild when the Hawks had trouble putting one foot in front of another, the Bruins simply put their superior talent on display.
Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand each had three shots on goal while the Bruins outshot the Hawks 16-5 in the period, which remained scoreless only because Lehner was brilliant while making his first start since Jan. 21.
ROBIN. LEHNER. 😳
A standing ovation for the @NHLBlackhawks goalie! pic.twitter.com/IYqipdiDAU — NHL on NBC (@NHLonNBCSports) February 6, 2020
The Hawks picked up their first power play midway through the second period when David Krejci was called for boarding Adam Boqvist, who left the game with a right shoulder injury and didn't return.
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The Hawks took advantage when Kirby Dach tried to stuff a shot past Jaroslav Halak, who made the save, but Alex DeBrincat was there for the rebound to give them a 1-0 lead. It was DeBrincat’s 13th goal, his ninth on the power play.
But it was a short-lived lead. A little less than six minutes later, the Bruins tied it on Sean Kuraly’s fifth goal of the season.


chicagotribune--2020-02-05--Groups protest Trump’s acquittal at Chicago’s Federal Plaza

“ This is not just about a trial that never happened , ” Yohnka said .
“ This is not @ @ @ @ @ This is about our country and who we are .
And it means that at @ @ @ @ @ together to protect the civil rights and civil liberties , not just that protect us @ @ @ @ @ ”

A crowd of protesters gathered Wednesday night in Federal Plaza just hours after the Senate acquitted President Donald Trump on impeachment articles of abuse of power and obstruction of justice.
Following the end of the third presidential impeachment trial in American history, a coalition of Chicago groups rallied to “reject the cover-up” as part of a nationwide organizing effort.
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Shouts of “cover up!” emerged from the crowd as signs bobbed with messages such as “Dump Trump!!” and “Sad Day U.S.A.” A small Trump baby balloon was again on display. One member of the crowd held a homemade sign saying “HE IS THE SWAMP,” adorned with what appeared to be an illustration of a swamp creature.
Representatives of groups including Common Cause, Arab American Family Services and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights shared their dismay at the acquittal and the administration’s policies, and urged the crowd to focus on next steps.
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Among the speakers at the rally organized by Indivisible Chicago was ACLU of Illinois communications director Ed Yohnka.
“This is not just about a trial that never happened,” Yohnka said. “This is not just about our courts. This is about our country and who we are. And it means that at every turn we must stand together to protect the civil rights and civil liberties, not just that protect us, that protect everyone.”
Cathy Shanley, a retired Chicago Public Schools teacher, said she came to the protest “because Trump should be impeached.”
“We have a completely dishonest government,” Shanley said.
Shanley’s friend, Laura Amend, “as in amend the constitution,” said she was also disappointed in the day’s news.
“When you go through a situation like this it can be very isolating and very discouraging, and that’s why it’s good to come out and see like-minded people and know that there are folks who are planning for the future,” Amend said.
The women said they were putting their efforts toward registering people to vote.
“Who will protect our democracy?" the crowd asked. "We will!”
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U.S. senators Wednesday largely voted along party lines to acquit Trump in the two articles of impeachment that resulted from Trump’s pressuring Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden ahead of the election.
Trump denied all wrongdoing for months and his political campaign tweeted videos, statements and a cartoon dance Wednesday celebrating that he was “vindicated." Trump tweeted that he would speak from the White House on Thursday about “our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax.”
Stephen Meyer, of Lincoln Park, said he had expected the acquittal. As the crowd cheered “Vote them out!” Meyer stood in the crowd with a light-up sign and his 6-year-old daughter on his shoulders.
“I thought what the Senate did was wrong — not having a real trial with witnesses, with evidence. And rather than feel powerless about it tonight, when it happened I decided to come out here,” Meyer said. “And also show my daughter, we’re doing something.”
Meyer said he plans to put his energy toward campaigning now, for candidates such as Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood.
“Maybe canvassing there, maybe going up to Wisconsin to register voters, sending postcards — a lot of postcards,” Meyer said.
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After the protest at Federal Plaza wrapped up, a smaller crowd headed east on West Adams Street and turned on to North State Street as snow flurries coated the sidewalks. The crowd chanted: “Trump, Pence, out now.”
The remaining protesters kept on toward Trump Tower, the same route organizers followed ahead of the historic impeachment vote in December.
The Associated Press contributed.
mgreene@chicagotribune.com


chicagotribune--2020-02-05--‘Birds of Prey’ review: Harley Quinn and her girl gang are lovable psychopaths

Christina Hodson ’ s script is a madcap , irreverent roller coaster ride , the story relayed in a loopy @ @ @ @ @ through Harley ’ s hyperactive storytelling style .
She bounces back and forth through time @ @ @ @ @ to wax poetic about the beauty of a bodega bacon , egg and cheese sandwich @ @ @ @ @ each of her enemies and their grievances with her and relish in the memories of @ @ @ @ @ .
She clearly sees herself as Gotham ’ s own “ Atomic Blonde , ” @ @ @ @ @ proves she is .
The action sequences are breathtakingly balletic and bruising .
If it @ @ @ @ @ John Wick in a fight , that ’ s because she can : “ John @ @ @ @ @ consulted on some of the fight sequences .
Shot by Matthew Libatique , the action @ @ @ @ @ the sparkles , smoke and decaying carnival rides .

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The best thing to come out of 2016’s much-derided DC antihero team-up “Suicide Squad” was Margot Robbie’s inspired take on Harley Quinn, the self-proclaimed “Joker’s girl” and quirky chaos clown. Robbie’s Quinn, with her colorful pigtails and baseball bat, instantly became an icon, a perennial Halloween costume, eclipsing even her lesser half, Jared Leto’s heavily tattooed Joker. But enough about him; the Joker is so 2019. 2020 is Harley Quinn’s year. And in the wake of her breakup, she’s back and better than ever with a brand-new girl gang in the brilliant, breakneck “Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.”
Director Cathy Yan soars with her stylish sophomore feature, which is colorful, campy and cheerfully brutal, a perfect reflection of Harley herself. Robbie, as usual, tears into the role with a wide-eyed gusto that is equally childlike and unhinged. With her Betty Boop accent, wacky wardrobe and gymnastic facility with a bat, Harley is one lovable psychopath. It’s impossible not to root for her, even as she’s reducing chemical factories to clouds of rainbow-colored smoke, gleefully dropping hordes of police officers with shotgun blasts of glitter and demolishing bad guys with roller skate high kicks to the face. Robbie makes Harley a bedeviling, beguiling antiheroine, not just any old crazy ex-girlfriend.
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“Birds of Prey” is also the cinematic introduction to the other birds in the flock, the beloved comic characters Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), styled as a butt-kicking blaxploitation queen, and Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a mysterious yet neurotic assassin out for vengeance. Along with renegade cop Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) and precocious pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), this is Harley’s new girl gang, who band together against the sinister Roman Sionis, aka Black Mask (Ewan McGregor). Although Harley typically prefers to commit crime than fight it, for these girls (and that guy), she’ll make an exception.
Christina Hodson’s script is a madcap, irreverent roller coaster ride, the story relayed in a loopy, looping, nonlinear fashion through Harley’s hyperactive storytelling style. She bounces back and forth through time, taking a few tangents to wax poetic about the beauty of a bodega bacon, egg and cheese sandwich (relatable), list each of her enemies and their grievances with her and relish in the memories of some of her best butt-kickings. She clearly sees herself as Gotham’s own “Atomic Blonde,” and the eye-popping fight choreography proves she is. The action sequences are breathtakingly balletic and bruising. If it seems like Harley could take John Wick in a fight, that’s because she can: “John Wick” director Chad Stahelski consulted on some of the fight sequences. Shot by Matthew Libatique, the action is crispy clean among all the sparkles, smoke and decaying carnival rides.
“Birds of Prey” is a circus for the senses, but the performances give the film its heart and humor. Every performer knows what movie they’re in, with Robbie’s winking, wild performance creating a safe space for experimentation. The wonderfully powerful Smollett-Bell is a breakout, but Ewan McGregor’s outlandishly campy turn as the sniveling Sionis is a hoot and a half, easily stealing the show. Yan has delivered a riotous rodeo that is “Kill Bill” meets “Coffy.” It’s a tribute to cutest, kookiest clown in the comics, and a perfect distillation of her character: sweet, sour and sassy in all the right ways.
“Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)" — 3 stars
MPAA rating: R (for strong violence and language throughout, and some sexual and drug material)
Running time: 1:44
Opens: Thursday evening


chicagotribune--2020-02-05--The Income Store owner arrested on fraud charges for allegedly operating $75 million Ponzi-like sche

The Income Store owner arrested on fraud charges for allegedly operating $75 million Ponzi-like scheme

Courtright obtained $ 8 million in loans to help finance the business until it became unsustainable , according to the @ @ @ @ @ , Courtright notified investors via email that it would put a temporary “ moratorium ” @ @ @ @ @ due to unspecified “ challenges and headwinds , ” the complaint alleges .

The Twitter profile of Ken Courtright, owner of The Income Store and Today's Growth Consultants. (Twitter)
Already facing allegations of securities fraud, the southwest suburban owner of The Income Store was arrested on criminal fraud charges Wednesday for the alleged Ponzi scheme that raised at least $75 million from more than 500 investors.
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Kenneth Courtright, 49, who operated the business out of his Minooka home, falsely promised investors annual returns of up to 20% in return for a six-figure “upfront fee” used to build and operate websites, investigators said in a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in Chicago federal court.
In reality, returns were primarily funded by paying early investors with money raised from later investors until the Ponzi scheme became “unsustainable” in December, the complaint alleges.
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Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced it had frozen Courtright’s assets and filed a civil complaint against Courtright and Today’s Growth Consultants, better known as The Income Store, for alleged securities fraud.
The alleged scheme began in January 2017, with The Income Store marketing its website investment offering through radio and online ads, according to the criminal complaint. Investors generally paid $100,000 or more in upfront fees for purchasing or building, hosting, maintaining and marketing websites, with guaranteed annual returns of 13% to 20% in a revenue-sharing agreement.
As website revenues ramped up, Courtright promised to increase returns by splitting the proceeds with investors, but revenues were insufficient to make guaranteed investor payouts, federal investigators said in the complaint.
While the websites generated about $9 million in advertising and product sales revenue through October 2019, The Income Store paid investors at least $31 million in guaranteed returns to investors, according to the complaint.
“The gap of more than $20 million between the website revenues and payments of returns to investors was primarily funded, in classic Ponzi scheme fashion, through the offer and sale of (agreements) to new or repeat investors,” the complaint said.
Courtright also spent some of the investor funds to pay his mortgage and school tuition for a family member, the complaint alleges.
Courtright obtained $8 million in loans to help finance the business until it became unsustainable, according to the complaint. On Dec. 13, Courtright notified investors via email that it would put a temporary “moratorium” on the payment of returns due to unspecified “challenges and headwinds,” the complaint alleges.
The SEC stepped in on Dec. 27 and filed a civil complaint against Courtright, freezing his assets.
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The FBI launched an investigation into Courtright and The Income Store in May, based on a referral from the SEC.
The criminal complaint charges Courtright with one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Courtright was released on $100,000 bond Wednesday pending a formal grand jury indictment.
Attorneys representing Courtright could not immediately be reached for comment.
rchannick@chicagotribune.com


chicagotribune--2020-02-05--National signing day recap: NIU and Illinois finish off their classes, plus area and national news a

National signing day recap: NIU and Illinois finish off their classes, plus area and national news and final class rankings

The Irish actually signed 18 during the early period , but coach Brian Kelly released a statement Jan. 25 that @ @ @ @ @ Harrodsburg , Ky. , no longer is welcome to join the program after he was @ @ @ @ @ charged with breaking into a store and stealing guns .
Notre Dame was among the @ @ @ @ @ defensive back/wide receiver Cameron Martinez of Muskegon , Mich. , who committed to Ohio State @ @ @ @ @ t sign during the early period .
But Martinez reaffirmed his commitment last week and @ @ @ @ @ the Buckeyes on Wednesday .
With the January addition of graduate transfer wide receiver Ben @ @ @ @ @ Irish reportedly have 86 scholarship players for 2020 — one above the NCAA limit they @ @ @ @ @ the season opener — so it appears they may be done with the 2020 class @ @ @ @ @ 2021 group that ’ s ranked third in the country .
Another graduate transfer this @ @ @ @ @ especially in the secondary to offset the loss of Bartleson .

College football’s national signing period is underway. Check back here for updates on Illinois, Northern Illinois, Chicago-area recruits and national developments. (Northwestern and Notre Dame did not announce any additions Wednesday after signing 17 players apiece during the early period in December.)
Northern Illinois
After signing 26 players in December in his first full recruiting cycle as Huskies coach, Thomas Hammock on Wednesday announced the addition of three transfers who are already enrolled — including one with an unconventional backstory.
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Greg DeLuca, a 28-year-old safety originally from New Jersey, spent the last six years in the U.S. Navy as a member of SEAL Team 10 and Special Reconnaissance Team 2. Before that he played four years on the lacrosse team at Duke, where he was a member of two national championship teams, while also playing two years of football as a walk-on. DeLuca joined the Huskies as a walk-on.
The other two transfers — junior college safety Woodly Appolon, a Montreal native, and graduate transfer quarterback Andrew Haidet from Houston Baptist — are on scholarship.
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🐾 WELCOME TO THE PACK 🐾
The NIU Huskies are proud to announce a new addition to our marksmen quarterbacks!!💪🏈🎯@andrewhaidet8
Transfering from Houston Baptist Univ. (TX)!!#NSD20 #TheHardWay #PlayLikeAHuskie pic.twitter.com/vBvDmgHSQU — NIU Football (@NIU_Football) February 5, 2020
In addition to DeLuca, the Huskies announced 11 other preferred walk-ons, including seven from Illinois high schools: Downers Grove North quarterback Drew Cassens, Lincoln-Way West wide receiver Billy Dozier, DeKalb linebacker Jalon Redmond, Maine West safety Jaden Dolphin, Sycamore safety Manny Dominguez, Neuqua Valley safety Patrick Hoffmann and Lake Park kicker Anthony Beacom.
Illinois
The Illini added the 13th member of their 2020 recruiting class Wednesday morning — and their first defensive back — when cornerback Tahveon Nicholson signed a national letter of intent.
The 5-foot-11, 170-pound Nicholson is a two-star prospect who played this past season at Palmetto Prep in Columbia, S.C., while working to become an NCAA academic qualifier, according to Illini Inquirer. Nicholson is originally from Jacksonville, Fla., and also had an offer from Florida Atlantic, where Illinois defensive backs coach Keynodo Hudson previously coached. He’s one of seven Florida natives in the class.
He fits coach Lovie Smith’s preference for defensive players who can create turnovers. Nicholson had four interceptions and forced a fumble last season. He also played on offense, totaling 721 receiving yards and 355 rushing yards, and is a candidate to return kicks and punts at Illinois, Illini Inquirer said.
Nicholson was the only high school recruit Illinois signed Wednesday. The Illini lost their highest-rated commitment and only in-state recruit Tuesday when Naperville Central wide receiver Jadon Thompson flipped his commitment to Cincinnati. Thompson signed with the Bearcats on Wednesday morning.
In large part because of its size, Illinois’ class has a national ranking of No. 88 in the 247Sports.com composite and 14th in the Big Ten.
“We’re excited to add another talented piece to our secondary,” Smith said in a university news release. “As I said in December, we knew this class would be small in numbers but feel like we’ve added talent and depth in several areas with this group of recruits. Like last season, we intend to add to this class with transfers during spring or summer if we find the right fit.”
Five-star offensive tackle Broderick Jones, who took an official visit to Illinois two weeks ago, signed as expected with Georgia, where he had been committed since April 2018.
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Area/state
In addition to Naperville Central wide receiver Jadon Thompson signing with Cincinnati, a handful of other top-40 prospects in Illinois signed Wednesday.
Morgan Park defensive tackle Shontrail Key — a former basketball player at Leo and Kenwood who didn’t play high school football until his senior season — picked Arizona.
Nazareth defensive tackle CJ West and Simeon cornerback Chau Smith, who committed over the weekend to Kent State and Washington State, respectively, also signed letters of intent.
National
Georgia held off Alabama in the race for the No. 1 class in the country. It’s the second time in three years coach Kirby Smart has signed the top class — the only two times in the last 10 years that Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide haven’t finished at the top of the 247Sports.com composite team rankings.
The Bulldogs, who entered the day with a slim lead, signed a pair of longtime commitments on the offensive line, five-star tackle Broderick Jones and four-star center Sedrick Van Pran, who didn’t sign during the early period, and they flipped three-star cornerback Daran Branch from Mississippi.
But the key to Alabama not overtaking them was four-star defensive tackle McKinnley Jackson — at No. 61 in the composite rankings, one of the top uncommitted prospects entering the day — signing with Texas A&M over SEC West rivals Alabama and LSU. The Tide also lost a head-to-head battle to Missouri for three-star cornerback Ennis Rakestraw, and four-star defensive tackle Jayson Jones flipped to Oregon.
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Only nine of the nation’s top 100 recruits entered the day unsigned, and by the end of the day that number was down to two — both of them five-star prospects.
The mystery of the day involved defensive lineman Jordan Burch (No. 8) of Columbia, S.C., who committed to the hometown Gamecocks on the first day of the early period but didn’t sign. While Burch took an official visit to LSU two weeks ago, it appeared South Carolina had hung on when he put on a Gamecocks cap during a news conference Wednesday with other recruits from his high school. But as of 6 p.m. South Carolina hadn’t announced his signing, as he apparently had yet to submit a letter of intent.
(UPDATE: South Carolina announced Thursday night that Burch has signed with the Gamecocks.)
To sum up today so far: Jordan Burch donned garnet Carolina cap, said a few words about his HS teammates, declined interviews, mother declined to confirm if he'd signed LOI, HS coach says no LOI to his knowledge yet, Burch has left building in Carolina cap — Josh Kendall (@JoshTheAthletic) February 5, 2020
The other unsigned five-star, running back Zachary Evans (No. 16) of Houston, is expected to take his recruitment into the spring, with Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas A&M the current top contenders.
Here are the top 10 national classes in the composite rankings, plus where Notre Dame, Northern Illinois and the rest of the Big Ten ended up (number of signees and commitments in parentheses):
1. Georgia (25)
2. Alabama (25)
3. Clemson (23)
4. LSU (24)
5. Ohio State (25)
6. Texas A&M (26)
7. Auburn (26)
8. Florida (25)
9. Texas (19)
10. Tennessee (23)
14. Michigan (23)
15. Penn State (27)
17. Notre Dame (17)
20. Nebraska (24)
25. Wisconsin (20)
31. Maryland (27)
33. Purdue (21)
34. Iowa (21)
36. Minnesota (24)
43. Michigan State (22)
47. Northwestern (17)
58. Indiana (19)
63. Rutgers (20)
88. Illinois (13)
91. Northern Illinois (28)
Here’s our preview of national signing day:
The national signing period for Class of 2020 football recruits begins Wednesday, although with more than 75% of Division I prospects now signing during the early period in December, the “traditional” national signing day has lost a lot of its pomp and drama.
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Only nine of the nation’s top 100 players in 247Sports.com’s composite rankings didn’t sign early, and that trend also played out locally. Notre Dame (17 signees), Northwestern (17), Illinois (12) and Northern Illinois (26) signed the bulk of their classes in December, and 20 of the state’s top 25 prospects have already signed.
Nonetheless, teams will be putting finishing touches on their classes Wednesday. Here’s a summary of what to expect from the four local FBS programs.
Illinois
Early signees: 12.
Class ranking: 90th nationally, 14th in Big Ten.
The Illini’s highest-rated — and only in-state — commitment, four-star Naperville Central wide receiver Jadon Thompson, switched his commitment to Cincinnati on Tuesday. Thompson, who transferred from Marist to Naperville Central before his senior season, had been committed to Illinois since April but didn’t sign during the early period. He’s the fifth-ranked senior prospect in the state and No. 352 nationally.
BREAKING: 4 star 2020 WR Jadon Thompson has committed to Cincinnati #Bearcats — Chad Brendel (@ChadBrendel) February 4, 2020
Before Thompson’s flip, the most surprising development since the early signing period was the Illini getting five-star offensive tackle and longtime Georgia commitment Broderick Jones on campus for an official visit two weeks ago. However, Jones — the No. 11 prospect in the country in the composite rankings and the No. 2 tackle — is expected to sign with the Bulldogs after canceling his official visit to Auburn last weekend. Tahveon Nicholson, a two-star cornerback from Jacksonville, Fla., might be the only addition to the class Wednesday, according to Illini Inquirer’s Jeremy Werner. Illinois had hoped to bring in junior college safety Art Green, a former Tennessee commitment, for an official visit last weekend, but academic issues apparently squashed that. Coach Lovie Smith likely will look to the graduate transfer market again to address needs at wide receiver and on both lines; Werner says to watch Stanford defensive tackle Jovan Swann. Meanwhile, Illinois has been busy in the preferred walk-on arena, adding Yorkville quarterback Josh Beetham, St. Viator wide receiver Owen Hickey, Batavia offensive lineman Ryan Ingold, South Dakota tight end Tip Reiman and Texas wide receiver Hayden Metcalf.
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Notre Dame
Early signees: 17.
Class ranking: 16th nationally.
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The Irish actually signed 18 during the early period, but coach Brian Kelly released a statement Jan. 25 that three-star cornerback Landen Bartleson of Harrodsburg, Ky., no longer is welcome to join the program after he was arrested the day before and charged with breaking into a store and stealing guns. Notre Dame was among the schools in play for four-star defensive back/wide receiver Cameron Martinez of Muskegon, Mich., who committed to Ohio State in July but didn’t sign during the early period. But Martinez reaffirmed his commitment last week and said he will sign with the Buckeyes on Wednesday. With the January addition of graduate transfer wide receiver Ben Skowronek from Northwestern, the Irish reportedly have 86 scholarship players for 2020 — one above the NCAA limit they must be down to by the season opener — so it appears they may be done with the 2020 class and already focused on a 2021 group that’s ranked third in the country. Another graduate transfer this spring remains a possibility, especially in the secondary to offset the loss of Bartleson.
Northwestern
Early signees: 17.
Class ranking: 44th nationally, 11th in Big Ten.
Cameron Martinez said the Wildcats were in his final three with Ohio State and Notre Dame before the four-star Michigan athlete reaffirmed his commitment to the Buckeyes last week. Northwestern was eyeing Martinez at wide receiver, where the Wildcats got stung on early signing day when Abdur-Rahmaan Yaseen flipped to Purdue. With Martinez seemingly off the table, Pat Fitzgerald might look at the transfer market to find a playmaker or two for new offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian.
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Northern Illinois
Early signees: 26.
Class ranking: 89th nationally, 5th in MAC.
Can’t wait to start school on Monday 👨🏾🎓
It’s a new journey but the goal is still the same #StriveToSeeABetterDay 🙏🏾 pic.twitter.com/7RmLcJXFjp — The Wood🇨🇦🇭🇹 (@WoodlyAppolon) January 12, 2020
Coach Thomas Hammock already landed a large class in his first full recruiting cycle in DeKalb. The Huskies on Wednesday are expected to announce the addition of a couple of transfers — including junior college safety Woodly Appolon, who committed last month — and several preferred walk-ons.