“Most people in the Chicago area have no idea where their river is located,” writes Laurene von Klan, executive director of Friends of the Chicago River, in the group’s newsletter, “River Reporter” (Spring). “They don’t know that the little ‘ditch’ next to highway 94 up north near Deerfield is a branch of the river. Who would? Or that the lagoons that are at the Botanic Garden are, in a hydrological sense, part of the river. They don’t know that hiding low behind the trees and along McCormick Blvd. is the North Shore Channel, a canal that is part of the river.”
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Driving east? Be very polite or don’t stop until you get to Ohio. According to Mark Nichols and John O’Neill, writing in the Indianapolis Star (July 11), 6.7 percent of Indiana residents have a gun permit (302,000 permits total), a higher proportion than in any state except New York.
Sorry, the Catholic hierarchy discriminates only in ways that favor men. In his newsletter “Context” (August), Martin Marty quotes a letter written by Michael Perillo of Grayslake to the Living Church (May 9): “Recently I read two Associated Press reports that the Roman Catholic archbishops of Atlanta and Boston had banned women from having their feet washed in Maundy Thursday ceremonies. The archbishops were reportedly following a mandate based on the fact that the 12 whose feet Christ washed were all men. I have been looking in vain for the follow-up news reports indicating those same bishops banned men from attending Good Friday services, especially Stations of the Cross. After all, with one exception, our Lord’s male disciples abandoned him at, and before, the foot of the cross. Only the women remained steadfast in the face of evil and danger.”
