In essence, Chicago and its schools hate their librarians.

The city that hates librarians!

The city of Chicago has many troubling issues on its plate these days. Whether it's a soaring murder rate, budget troubles, corruption accusations being flung with abandon, or trying to survive another Midwestern winter, the city is having a rough time. Now, problems have affected the school system as well.

Budget woes and contract negotiations with the teacher's union has led to one major area of the local school to lose an important staff member: the school librarian.

According to Southside Weekly and DNA Info, things look dire for the 2016/2017 school year:


2016:  157 librarian positions budgeted for the school year, serving 652 elementary and high schools.
2015:  217 librarian positions / 652 schools
2014:  252 librarian positions / 652 schools
2013:  313 librarian positions / 652 schools
2012:  454 librarian positions / 652 schools


Even my keen lack of knowledge in mathematics and statistics suggests we have an ongoing trend.

The dwindling number of librarians isn't a simple issue. Multiple problems are at play. One is that the state of Illinois requires all school librarians to be a certified teacher as well. Likewise, as a way to handle growing class sizes with budget shortfalls, librarians are often being moved to the classroom instead. This leaves libraries closed to the students because no one left is certified to teach and be a librarian, per that Illinois law. Thus, elementary and high school students are denied access to a wealth of information at the very place they're supposed to be educated.

Further compounding the issue is that some schools, like the Pritzker Elementary School, have parents volunteering to staff the library so it can be opened. That pesky Illinois law is one hurdle in the way for the parents, but the teachers union is yet another.

The teachers union fears allowing an all-volunteer library staff means fewer potential jobs for their employees, as well as a bargaining chip for the city and state looking to slash budgets even more than they already have.

Another head-shaking angle to this situation is that the teachers union argues that 75% of schools with an African-American student body majority were lacking a school librarian, and therefore no school library access was available--yet only 16% of schools with a minority of African-American students faced such a crisis.

Last month, Pritzker Elelmentary--found in Chicago's tony Wicker Park area--found itself over budget, and made the decision to cut their school librarian, too.

This hasn't gone over well with parents, who have taken to writing op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, of all places, demanding Pritzker's school library be opened and staffed with such volunteer parents. (Of course, the parent penning the op-ed was a lawyer. "Chicago issue? Probably best to publish that in a New York newspaper!"--said no one ever, except a lawyer.)

What's Chicago's plan to rectify the situation? Sadly, absolutely nothing. When people are being gunned down every day in your streets, or mentally challenged people are being beat on Facebook Live, strangely enough, there are priorities at play for the people of Chicago.

And, right now, that priority isn't whether school libraries should be open.

Someone will sing any Christmas song you request, 24/7, if you call this phone number.

No, really. It's entirely less creepy than it sounds.

Started in 1960 by the students from Snyder Hall at the University of Illinois, residents from the building man phones around the clock while rockin' around the Christmas tree, taking calls and requests all day, all night, to sing any holiday song you ask. They don't promise you'll get someone on the other end of the line with the pipes of Aretha Franklin or Nat King Cole--but that's sort of the charm, isn't it?

In terms of popularity, it's fairly clear which song wins. A few years ago, the singing students started a Mariah Meter in order to count how many times Mariah Carey's famed, perky, holiday earworm "All I Want for Christmas Is You" was requested. Last year it was asked for 339 times, almost as often as it can be heard during drunken holiday karaoke at Chinese food restaurants.

So if you're feeling a Christmas groove coming on at 3am during a moment of insomnia, you have until December 16th at 11:59pm to call in a request, when phones close for another year.

The number?

(217) 332-1882

Request "Good King Wenceslas" if you know what's good for you.

Report: 65% of cities and towns with a 'good' school are unaffordable to average American.

RealtyTrac took a look at zip codes and their median house prices, and then compared to see if a "good" school existed within that zip codes confines.

Of course, "good" is a vague term. RealtyTrac only required that the given zip code's school performed better than average on tests compared to the rest of their given state. In essence, if the bar is pretty low in your state, you stand a better chance at hopping over said bar.

Then they ranked the zip codes for affordability for home prices. The result? 65% of "good" schools fall into expensive neighborhoods.

California wins out for being least affordable, with a seemingly endless array of zip codes in the unaffordability range. Atherton, CA, 94027, in San Mateo county has the least affordable houses with a "good" school. You only need to pay roughly $6 million per house to live there. Buy two or three while you're at it!

The most affordable? Some place called Harvey, IL, which sounds cozy and quaint until you find out it apparently has high levels of crime. But it has a "good" school! The median price for a house there is only $21,000. Hell, dinner costs more at Applebee's.

So strap a bullet-proof vest onto little Johnny and realize he's at least going to get a "good" education. Dodging bullets will teach him some nimble, cat-like reflexes.

88 college tag lines in the form of a poem.

The Chronicle of Higher Education took the tag lines of 88 colleges and universities and made it into a haphazard poem. It shows the repetition of pretty much a dozen words, rearranged in different ways, yet all saying the same thing.

Go to the site, as you can click on each line of the "poem" and see what college used such bloviating words.

The poem, as they constructed it:

Change Your Life. Start Here.
Life's Calling
It's Your Life
Your Extraordinary Life
The Life of the Mind
Change Your Mind. Change Your Life.
Minds. Motivated.
Inspiring Minds
Inspiring Innovation
Innovation Is Our Tradition
Innovation. Education.
Education for Service
Education for Individual and Social Responsibility
Education for a World Stage
Education for an Inspired Life
Education Redefined
Education on Your Terms
Your Education. Your Way.
Personal Education. Lifetime Success.
Personal Education, Extraordinary Success
Where Success Begins
Where Success Is a Tradition
Your Success. Our Tradition.
Experience Tradition. Expect Success.
Real Tradition, Real Success
Real Education. Above All.
Real Education. Real Results.
Real Life. Real Knowledge. Real People.
Real People Start Here
A Great Place to Start
It All Begins Here
Higher Education Begins Here
Your Career Path Begins Here
Great Stories Begin Here
Start Here. Go Anywhere.
Going Anywhere Starts Here!
Go Farther Than You Ever Dreamed!
From Here, It’s Possible
Possible Is Everything
Realize What’s Possible
Redefine the Possible
New Beginnings. Endless Possibilities.
Believe in the Possibilities
Seek Your Dream
Be Your Dream
Dream Big
Big Dreams Come True Here
Dream Bigger. Do Greater.
Do Something Great
Imagine What You Can Do
You Can Do That Here
Think. Do.
Think Big. We Do.
Dreamers. Thinkers. Doers.
Learn by Doing
Learn. Do. Live.
Let's Do This
Are You In?
What Will You Do?
Who Will You Be?
It’s All About You
Your Dreams. Our Mission.
One Purpose. One Mission. One Dream.
Start With a Dream, Finish With a Future
Imagine Your Future
Walk Into Your Future
Your Future Starts Here
Your Future Is Our Future
Your Future. Our Mission.
Your Future, Our Focus
The Focus Is You
You First
The Education You Want. The Attention You Deserve.
The Perfect Fit for You
As Distinctive as You
Like No Place Else on Earth
Exceptional Education. Exceptional Value.
Become Exceptional
Set Yourself Apart
Invent Yourself
Declare Yourself
Transform Yourself. Transform the World.
It's Your World
Your Place. Your Purpose.
Your Life. Your College. Your Way.
Why Go Anywhere Else?
When You Get Here You Understand
You're One of a Kind. So Are We.


A few thoughts:

1.) Colleges love tag lines using one word, maybe a few, and then a period, as if that makes it sound more powerful. It doesn't, but, hey, why be unique?

2.) "Like No Place Else on Earth"?

I thought that was Disney World or Dorothy from 'The Wizard of Oz,' but apparently it's the University of Hawaii.

I'd also like to point out that no place else on Earth is technically like anywhere else on Earth. Really.

And an educational bastion is running with this tag line.

3.) "Why Go Anywhere Else?"

Because you're the Iowa Lakes Community College, that's why.

I didn't even know Iowa had lakes. I thought Minnesota had a monopoly on those in the Midwest.

4.) "Real Education. Above all."

That's apparently the tag from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (which really rolls off the tongue) in Arizona.

Thank god it's real. I've been tired of all this fake learning I do.

5.) "Real Life. Real Knowledge. Real People."

Moberly Area Community College in Missouri is responsible for that gem.

Real people? If androids and robots are running other local colleges, I think we have a right to know.

6.) "Real People Start Here."

Kankakee Community College in Illinois offers us this.

What the hell is going on in the Midwest with fake humans strolling the hay fields? I, for one, welcome our robot overlords manning our crops.

7.) "Going Anywhere Starts Here!"

...says Cloud County Communty College, in Kansas.

I want to go to Mongolia, but does that mean I need to take a flight out of Kansas?

8.) "Believe in the Possibilities."

So says Gannon University in Pennsylvania.

Well, I believe I've possibly gotten poison ivy three times this summer, so thanks for the heads-up, Gannon.

9.) "You Can Do That Here."

A gem from Alderson-Broaddus College in West Virginia.

They clearly have a very liberal policy of what you can do. Because there are things I want to do that are illegal in at least 47 states, but I guess Alderson-Broaddus College lets me do it. (((high five!!)))

10.) "You're One of a Kind. So Are We."

University of Rio Grande, Ohio.

I think the only thing we need to wonder is...there's a Rio Grande in freaking Ohio?

1930s high school basketball looks like it's from another planet.

The Illinois High School Association released a video from the 1930s documenting how high school basketball looked and felt back then, and it looked little like today's game.

Most notably, there's no center court line, no 3-point line, and no shot clock. Indeed, as the video narrator points out, it wasn't odd for 30-35 passes between teammates before someone decided to take a shot. Slow and steady wins the race (and makes for a snoozier game).

And when they did take a shot sometimes--as you can see around the 4:00 mark--they're heaving that ball, as Marv Albert would say, from waaay downtown. Half court shots for no apparent reason? Sure, why not? Live a little.

The video also explains a few key phrases from our everyday basketball vocabulary, such as the phrase, "the top of the key." Apparently this evolves from the much more different looking free-throw lane from early basketball (which was only 6ft wide then) which resembled a key, hence why we still use the phrase today.

There's no explanation for the short shorts that predate everything great about Larry Bird's look, circa 1986.




Video: IHSA Archives on YouTube