Okay, this is another of those Point of Personal Privilege things.

I’ve written in the past of Elizabeth Fernando the wonderful woman was the caregiver for my folks later in their lives.  Most recently, that was here when she finally received her U.S. citizenship in 2016. 
 
I always have called Elizabeth an angel on earth, and that comes pretty close.  I won’t go into all the reasons, since I did that pretty extensively before.  But she was one of the most honest, honorable, decent, hardworking, loyal, responsible supportive, utterly lovely people it’s been my great fortune to ever know.  I’d periodically mention to her husband Emmanuel (a pretty terrific guy himself…) that “You do know, I’m sure, that you’re the luckiest man on earth?”  And that’s all I would have to say, and he knew what I was referring to.  And always answer, “Yes, I know.”
 
It's not just that having Elizabeth there with my folks meant I never had to worry for a second about it, it’s that she’s just made my own life better, being who she is.  That’s why we’ve all stayed in touch even after my dad passed away six years ago.  Still, though, I’ll give first position by far to my mother because she (who didn’t have any daughters) and Elizabeth (who lost her mother earlier in life) had a relationship that – they both said – had overtones of moather-daughter.
 
I should not that this isn’t just my opinion about how great Elizabeth is.  Before coming to the United States, she left her home in Sri Lanka and got a job working for the Danish Ambassador to Italy – sort of as a homekeeper and cook for the family at the Embassy.  (It’s still a toss-up if she makes better Sri Lankan cuisine or Italian food…)  And when he was recalled from Italy to work back home in Denmark, the Ambassador asked Elizabeth to move back there with them.  But that wasn’t what she wanted to do, and she (and Emmanuel) moved to the United States.  The Ambassador was disappointed, but it’s our gain.  So, the point is, if Elizabeth was good enough for the Danish Ambassador, then my adoration of her is on solid ground.
 
I mention all that because, in addition to working so wonderfully and joyously as a caregiver to my folks, that was only a part-time job.  Her regular job was working at the Jewel Food Stores, a major chain in Chicago, for 27 years, where she anchored the deli counter.  She’d get up bizarrely early in the morning, like 4 AM, though often earlier if it was a day she opened the supermarket.  (That’s how much Jewel Food Stores trusted her.)  It helped, too, that she often received the Employee of the Month Award – enough times that I thought they should have renamed it in her honor.  When Jewel decided to move Elizabeth from the store she had been working at for years in the Plaza del Lago to another several miles away in Wilmette…many of her customers actually gave up the Plaza store and followed her.
 
The point of all this is that Elizabeth finally decided to retire from the Jewel after 27 years, and her last day was on Sunday.  The store threw a pretty big party for her, though that was only after they’d tried to keep her and not retire.   And so, she deserves this note of honor.

Rather than write more myself here (again, as I said before, you can always read the article I link to above to get more stories), I’m going to turn the floor over to Elizabeth and Emmanuel’s children:  Emel, Virginia and Sneaky.  (Sorry, I mean Roshani.)  They wrote a piece for the family party, and with Emmanuel’s permission, I offer it here.
​

Yes, yes, I know it’s spelled “batten.”  Trust me on this.  It’s a bit of a journey, but hopefully interesting and entertaining along the way until we get to the main point.
 
Back in 2013, I wrote an article here about the musical Barnum, and mentioned that the treat for me in the video I embedded from its Tony Awards performance was how the clip included a chorus member named Sophie Schwab.
 
I went to Northwestern when she was there, both of us in the School of Speech (she in theater, me in Radio, TV, & Film), though we never met at the school.  (I did meet her later in Los Angeles, though incredibly briefly, more on that later.) 
 
Far more notable to me during my Northwestern years is that she had also been the school's majorette in the marching band and had won many awards as a baton twirler.  Now, saying someone was a majorette might have little meaning to most people, but saying that Sophie Schwab twirled a baton was like saying Picasso drew.  So let me put this in perspective:
 
I began going to Northwestern football games with my dad from the time I was eight, but my dad had season tickets to Northwestern games for 51 years.  And of all the baton twirlers he saw (and he saw A LOT over 51 seasons), Sophie Schwab was his favorite.  No one came close.  Indeed, in his 90s, he not only still talked about her with wistful admiration (she was always "Little Sophie"), but of all the others he saw over half-a-century she was the only majorette he even remembered.  During my years at Northwestern I often would leave the student section to sit with him, and he always looked forward to seeing “Sophie” arrive, we both did.  But he especially adored watching her, she was that good (no, really) and with such personality and charm leading 100 band members down the field.  She wasn't just a twirler, she was absolutely remarkable.  (In an interview I later came across about her in Barnum, she said that she could never remember dropping the baton during a performance – however she didn't mean a performance of Barnum, but any performance she had ever done, whether while marching or in a competition or on stage.  From what little you can see in that Tony clip, her boundless skill is clear.  I remember, too, reading about reviews of Barnum that singled out this small, talented performer tossing the baton -- not a few spins like you’d probably expect from a Broadway actress, but throwing the baton high above the proscenium arch, so far it was out of sight of the audience, doing a somersault or spin and catching it without a miss.  Ever.) 
 
Not shockingly, beyond her skills as an actress, it was her baton twirling that clinched her being hired for the show.  How great was she?  Lyricist Michael Stewart even changed a line in the song “Come Follow the Band” to refer to her -- “See the pretty lady toss that baton high, ain't she cute as a daisy?”
 
As I said, you can see what I’m talking about in that video I’d posted with the Barnum article back in 2013, but I’ll embed the video alone here for easier viewing.  She comes in from the far left of the screen at the 1:28 mark.  And you can hear the new lyric as she sends the baton soaring into the sky.  Keep in mind, she did this every night.  Without a drop --

(Side note: The video continues for a while after the song finishes at 3:30.  Feel free to keep watching Jim Dale's solo number, or stop and come back here.)
​

​​We now bump up the story to two years ago.
 
I’d written an article several years ago about the Harnick and Bock show, She Loves Me, which I titled “The Great Movie Musical That Never Was.”  And in 2020, a fellow named David Rosen came across it, and we began exchanging detailed notes about the show and musicals in general, eventually getting around to Frank Loesser’s show The Most Happy Fella.  He mentioned that his wife was an actress and had done that show, presented by a well-regarded off-Broadway theater.  Her name struck a chord, though I couldn’t place it.  In a subsequent note of our conversation, we returned to She Loves Me, and he offhandedly commented that his wife had done that musical at -- Northwestern.  Wait, hmmm, hold on, Northwestern, actress, musicals, something familiar, Sophie Hayden was her name…wait, I think that’s…that’s…Sophie Schwab!!!
 
And so it was.  As amazed as I was, I said I was about to blow his mind by explaining I’d not only gone to school with her and written about Barnum, and embedded a video of it, but also singled out his wife in the video and wrote about her and her baton twirling, and even briefly crossed paths with her once!  And yes, his mind was blown.
 
And he got to pass along the wonderful story about how she got hired for Barnum – not just in the chorus, but also as understudy for the female lead, who was…Glenn Close.  He was a talent agent at the time, and had become a couple with Sophie.  I’ll let him explain the story – again, keeping in mind that the producers were just looking for the most basic juggling skills for an actress and having NO IDEA what they were in for, auditioning an actress who was also one of the, literally, great majorettes in the country.  David wrote:
 
“I got her an audition for Charity Barnum, which she aced, but Glenn Close had already been hired so they considered Soph for understudy. So they asked if she "had any circus skills" ie juggling, etc. She said, sure, I can juggle three fire batons. She said they laughed, and said to come back. Well the rest is history. And she came back, lit three batons up and kicked butt. Needless to say it was impressive. So she ended up in the chorus and understudied Charity. Also, the line in Come Follow the Band..."See the pretty lady toss that baton high" wasn't in the original score. : ) Being a stage door Johnny, I saw the show like 25 times! I still think its one of the best underrated musicals of all time.”
 
I can only imagine the producers laughing to themselves when this actress said she could juggle three fire batons, and only wish I was there to see their boggled amazement at what she could actually do, sending the fire batons flying all over the place amid somersaults.  (After all, you saw part of her stage performance in the link above.)
 
What also became more clear as my exchanges with David Rosen continued was that while I knew Sophie Hayden had continued with acting (which relates to the play I saw her in, in Los Angeles – more on that soon…), I didn’t realize how substantively.  And that the off-Broadway theater behind The Most Happy Fella was actually a Broadway production, which got nominated for Best Revival, had a cast album released – and she wasn’t just in it, but starred as the female lead, ‘Rosabella’…and got a Tony nomination for Best Performance for a Leading Actress in a Musical.
 
And though there’s more to this story coming in a moment, here first is a video of Sophie Hayden with Spiro Malas at the 1992 Tony Awards singing “Happy to Make Your Acquaintance.”

​And as a bonus from the show’s original cast album, here she is singing her big, soaring ballad, “Somebody, Somewhere.”

Oh, and one other thing to bring this full circle -- The Most Happy Fella was one of my father's absolutely favorite musicals.  He would have been utterly overjoyed by this.  That his favorite "Sophie" starred in the revival on Broadway.  And got a Tony nomination.  Even without a baton.

Which finally brings us to what prompted me to write all this.  This is the point.  (Not that all that which came before isn't a joy...)

Around 1983, the Goodman Theater in Chicago had the weird idea to do Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors as a mad sort of circus production with The Flying Karamazov Brothers (a joyously wonderful troupe I’d seen at the periodically-mentioned here Ravinia Musical Festival).  It eventually went to Broadway in 1987 and then toured the country, where it played in Los Angeles.  It was staged at UCLA, as I recall, near where I lived.  And loving the Flying Karamazov Brothers as I did, I anxiously got tickets – not having any idea who this “Sophie Hayden” was in the cast, until I read the actors’ biographies.  And I realized, “It’s Sophie Schwab!!!”  (Which is why the name “Sophie Hayden” was vaguely familiar to me when her husband mentioned it.)

In fact, she’d been in the original Goodman Theater production.  As the New York Times critic Mel Gussow (who had seen the original production) wrote when the show was on Broadway –

“Sets, lights and breakaway costumes are by the same creative hands. But there have been a few minor changes on the road to the Beaumont,” he noted. “Sophie Schwab, still delightful as Adriana (wife to Antipholus), has changed her stage name to Sophie Hayden…” 

And then later added – “Ms. Hayden, Gina Leishman (as her sister) and a few others have a genuine affinity for the Shakespearean language. On the other hand - as I said in my original review from Chicago - as classical actors, the Karamazovs are not about to challenge the Royal Shakespeare Company. But can Ian McKellen juggle?

“The Karamazovs use juggling as a comic instrument and for punctuation. In this production, the juggling is infectious, or, if you will, catching. Everyone does it,” Gussow noted.  “Just as the Karamazovs use tenpins to make a point, Ms. Hayden twirls her baton, which could be regarded as singular form of juggling. For example, when she is angry, she swings her baton as if it were a machete.”

When the show played in Los Angeles, I anxiously went, thought it was an utter joy, was pleased to see that Sophie Schwab – er, sorry, Hayden, was in it and wonderful – and then waited around afterwards as the actors left to finally say hi after all these years.  It wasn’t much, we briefly talked about Northwestern, marching bands, my dad’s joy from her, and that was it.

But the point of all this here was her performance in that show.  The whole evening was wildly entertaining, filled of course with much juggling and every bit of vaudeville shtick you could imagine.  And as it went on, all I could think was -- with all this vaudeville circus clowning, they just have to include her baton twirling.  Have to.  And I kept waiting and waiting.  Surely they would do something.  And then, at last, there came a moment in the show when the character of ‘Adriana’ walks out on stage, and -- and -- and she's holding…a big stick.  And I quickly sat up, because I knew.  Okay, this was it.  The audience was about to be knocked for a loop. They just think she’s holding a stick.  But oh, noooo, that’s not a stick.  That is a baton.  Trust me, folks.  That -- is -- a -- baton.

The scene began normally.  Keep in mind, too, that at this point this was an actress who the audience had seen as an actress simply doing Shakespeare for two hours -- doing it with great humor, of course, but there was no reason to expect anything different by now.  And then, at first, there was a nice, fast spin and flip behind her back, and the crowd gave a very-surprised laugh and was politely appreciative.  Whoa, that was unexpected, an actress learned to twirl the baton a bit, how nice.  Well-done.  No, no, I thought, oh, no, you folks haven’t seen anything yet.  And then…yes, it built, and Sophie got to do her stuff.  And built some more.  And more.  And all the while, the audience became almost silent, partly holding their breath, partly not sure what was coming and not wanting to miss the next twirl. Until finally, they at last broke into huge cheers.  It's one thing to see a baton twirler in a musical about the circus.  But in Shakespeare, while doing dialogue and then...during a soliloquy, a baton flying all over the place, and with acrobatics??!!  No, the audience really wasn't expecting it.  Well, okay, I was...

And after all this long tale here with diversions and details, even that tale is just background, because it brings us to the main point and the treat to prove it all, even more so than the wonderful Barnum video.

Because, you see, that Flying Karamazov Brothers production of Comedy of Errors was done for television.  With, of course, Sophie Hayden.  And even better, in one of my treasured finds, the video of the full show is actually online!  I downloaded it, and then fast-forwarded through the show in order to find The Scene -- and have edited it down here.  And you get to see that I wasn't lying. 

This is the main point.  This is Tony-nominee Sophie Schwab Hayden doing Shakespeare, no doubt as intended.  But at the very least, as only she can.  Every night.  Without dropping the baton, ever.

​On Wednesday, I wrote a piece here on Highland Park and, among other things, I mentioned that I knew someone who was elected to the City Council there.  I phrased it that way because I wasn't 100% sure she was still on the council.  So, yesterday afternoon I went to check.  And it turns out that she is currently on the City Council, Kim Stone.  But -- and I'm gobsmacked about this -- so, too, is a guy I'm actually longtime friends with!  Tony Blumberg.  In fact, his family lived down the block from us in Glencoe for a few years, just five houses away, before they moved to Highland Park, and he was also a camper at my summer Camp Nebagamon when I was a counselor.  Moreover, when I once wrote a four-person play for the camp, I cast Tony in one of the roles.  (And two other people who I cast -- Tony's longtime friend Adam Bezark and now-Rabbi Ken Kanter -- were also from Highland Park…)  Tony and I chat regularly on Facebook, but he never mentioned he was on the City Council.  I haven't seen him in person for many years, though I did see his parents a few years ago when they visited my dad at his residence.

Last night, a friend mentioned to me that he sensed instinctively this event would affect me very deeply "for all the obvious reasons."  As he put it, "That place represents your childhood and family.  I know how jarring it would be for me if I saw carnage on streets where I grew up."

The thing is, though, I absolutely knew from the beginning how impactful this mass shooting was to me because of Glencoe and Highland Park overlapping one another, more than most communities.  It didn't sneak up on me.  While there's an affinity between Glencoe and the other towns that also border it -- Deerfield, Northbrook, Winnetka -- it's nothing like the close, almost familial relationship between Glencoe and Highland Park.  A very small circle.  Those other towns are your neighbors that you would visit on occasion, but Highland Park and Glencoe are like crossing your fingers.  
​

(That's my house marked in a red dot, right below the Turnbull Woods, off of Lake Michigan.  If you look directly above the woods you can see a red line -- it's the street dividing Glencoe and Highland Park.  Less than half-a-mile, an easy walk, even easier if you cut through the forest.  Just above it you can also see the Ravinia Festival marked.  That's how close and overlapping it all is.)

I knew well all the connections I have with Highland Park, they're too intimate to my life not to.  I intentionally didn't overplay them initially because, as many close overlaps as I had with it -- my dad working there for 35 years, my folks' country club where we'd go regularly, my mother's favorite grocery store, me working at the Ravinia Festival there,  in fact my first "real" job at Convenient Food Mart that I loved -- before getting let go for being too young to be legally employed, and all the rest, far more (and I've left out a great, great many) -- it still was not my "hometown," and I didn't want to make it seem like it was.  This was tragic to me, and I felt it horribly, sickeningly, but it was their tragedy and I didn't want to feel like I was "claiming it" as mine.  Almost intruding on their grief, their parade, their neighbors.

But the truth is, too, that as time passes and you get over the initial horror, and the stories pile up, you can be affected by it even more.  The sadness becomes pervasive.  Also, I assumed I would find more connections to what was going on. 

One of those new connections was especially eerie, making the small circle even smaller.  I checked a map and opened up street view to get a photo look at the area -- and confirmed that Convenient Food Mart, my first "real" job, is the exact same location as today Bob's Pantry and Deli, owned by the father of the killer. 

(Furthermore, I had discovered its address when finding out it was on St. Johns Ave., a mile south of my dad's medical office, on St. Johns.)

But there were so many more connections.  And some were sort of ethereal.  So, to discover that a guy I know well -- who grew up literally just a few houses away -- is actually on the City Council was sort of stunning.  And to personally know two people on the City Council -- when there are only six!! -- is amazing.  It just drives home the connection even more.

​ 

​
​Tony and I have been trading notes since I discovered this.  He's a successful attorney with his own firm and had a funny comment, boggled that he could have avoided mentioning he'd been elected to the Highland Park City Council.  He also noted, "I want to add that the entire Council and our Mayor have been a privilege to work with. Especially in this difficult time."

While I was very pleased to find out that Tony was there in an official position, it is so tinged with sadness for what Highland Park is going through. It's a great place -- but they're also lucky to have Tony and Kim Stone helping everyone get through.

It's just a shame that Tony pretty much hates most musicals.  Other than that, he's a terrific guy.

And as the City Council and all of Highland Park make their way along, one overriding thought has finally broken through.  It's ruminated in my mind for the past few years, but now it's made it into the light.  I've come to the realization that the gun "debate" is over for me.  There is no argument for protecting "gun rights" that has merit.  Gun owners are not members of a militia.  Arguing against reform laws is the very opposite of "well-regulated."  Every country in the world has mental illness.  And video games.  And schools with more than one door.  And if you're going back to what the Founding Fathers wanted when they wrote the 2nd Amendment, then understand that a flint-lock rifle took 2-3 minutes to reload for a second shot.  Putting an argument up against all that and 1-1/2 mass shootings every single week is no legitimate argument, but just empty, selfish words.

I mentioned yesterday some of the closeness I have with Highland Park where at least seven people now were killed and over 30 hospitalized on Independence Day.  My dad’s medical office of 35 years was about a mile away from where the shootings occurred.  He was associated with and taught at the hospital where most of the victims were brought.  Many other people took refuge 2-3 blocks away at Sunset Foods, perhaps the greatest grocery store I’ve been in, and my mother’s favorite place to shop, where they knew and loved her (“Oh, you’re Mrs. Elisberg’s son?!”)  I’ve written often about working at the Ravinia Music Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony, which is based in Highland Park.  Glencoe, where I grew up, bordered Highland Park at Lake-Cook Road, which divided Cook County and Lake County.  Some nights when I worked at the Ravinia Festival, I lived close enough to just take a shortcut and walk through the Turnbull Woods to get there.  My dad played golf in Highland Park twice a week for decades at the country club my folks belonged to.  We ate in Highland Park – one of my favorite restaurants, Walker Bros. Original Pancake House – is about a block from the shooting site.  Saw movies there.  We had to drive through Highland Park to get to my favorite Italian restaurant anywhere, Del Rio, in Highwood, bordering Highland Park on the other side – where Luciano Pavarotti would go when in town.  I have a Monet reproduction on my wall right now that my parents got for me from the Bank of Highland Park as a premium (when banks used to do that), in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago, for opening an account or making a big-enough deposit, because my mother knew I loved that particular painting, “Sandvicken, Norway” at the Art Institute.  I have a great many friends who are from or still live in Highland Park.  I know two people on the Highland Park city council (and long-time friends with one of them, he grew up down the block).  One of my cousins lives close enough to where the “person of interest” was arrested that helicopters were flying over her house during the manhunt.
 
Fortunately, I’m not aware of knowing anyone who was killed or shot, though only a couple names have been released as I write this.  I do have a good friend whose cousin was at the parade, and is safe.  And know others who live in Highland Park who I assume were likely at the parade, and are fine. 
 
So, I’m profoundly happy and fortunate to not be personally affected by knowing anyone killed or injured -- as far as I know, so far.  But though I didn't live there, just next door, Highland Park and Glencoe were always “rivals” and it was a very friendly, loving and close-knit rivalry, and I feel a deep closeness to it as an integral part of my life growing up.  (Highland Park with 30,000 people having bragging rights as the bigger and far more substantial place, Glencoe at only 10,000 residents the better…) 

By the way, just to give some added perspective about Highland Park for people who don't know the town.  You may have heard of the renowned Steppenwolf Theatre where Gary Sinese, John Malkovich, and Laurie Metcalf got their start in 1974 -- later joined by Joan Allen, John Mahoney (who played the father on Frasier) and Tracy Letts, among many others.  When Steppenwolf incorporated, their first theater was in the basement of a church in Highland Park.  (Sinise went to Highland Park High School.)

Yesterday, Breitbart News criticized the attempts to ban assault weapons.  And no, this wasn’t a case of bad timing, writing it before the massacre in Highland Park, Illinois, where at least seven people have died and over 30 hospitalized.  It was written after the fact, when they actually knew the results of the latest mass gun tragedy.
 
By the way, while this is just Breitbart News, and not official Republican Party policy, it is a leading voice of the far-right, who are the base of the GOP.  Indeed, it’s the former home of Steve Bannon, for whom he was executive chairman.  So, what Breitbart thinks and says using its outdoors voice give insight into what the Republican Party thinks.
 
One of its oddest efforts in defending assault weapons was to point out that not only are assault weapons and magazines with more than ten rounds of ammunition banned in Highland Park, but the law was challenged and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2015.  (How their law is written in a way such that it wasn’t thrown out by the court, I’m not sure.)  Bizarrely, Breitbart seems to use this as a way to point out that even such a strict law didn’t stop the mass murders.  But that, of course, mind-numbingly misses the point.  Yes, Highland Park has a ban on assault weapons. So, there shouldn’t have been an assault weapon there.  And if that had been the case, there would have been no massacre.  But an assault weapon was purchased elsewhere, where it was legal – and brought in.  And so, there was a mass killing of at least seven people with over 30  hospitalized.  Otherwise, if assault weapons were illegal everywhere, it would have been impossible to purchase one legally, and there likely would have been no massacre.
 
Breitbart also oddly – in fairness, “oddly” is a word that is appropriate for far too many arguments by Breitbart and anyone defending the legality of individuals buying an assault weapon – slammed Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker’s angry comments in Highland Park after the tragedy.  As they wrote, “Pritzker concluded his statement with a call to end the “terror of rampant gun violence in our country” while stopping short of any gun control policy prescriptions.”
 
I believe this may be the first time in recorded history when assault weapon advocates criticized someone for not offering “any gun control policy prescriptions.”  Apparently, if the governor had said he wanted to ban the sale of all assault weapons to individuals (which I suspect he would love, and for all I know has said this elsewhere), they would be fine with that.  Okay, no, they wouldn’t have been, so then the point here is that they didn’t actually care what Gov. Pritzker said about assault weapons, unless it had been in support of them.
 
And as long as Breitbart is fine discussing the politics of gun reform now – which we all should be – I will say that especially after Uvalde, it’s become clear that that was a big enough breaking point (albeit a small one) with the public that Republicans realized they had to join Democrats finally and pass the first gun reform law in 40 years.  Yet it was clear that the measure was pretty weak compared to what was needed, most especially because there would obviously be many more gun massacres.  After all, the country is averaging 1-1/2 gun massacres a week.  And then the far-right Justices on the Supreme Court stripped away gun reform protections.  And only a couple weeks later, we now have Highland Park.  And there will be more.  And more.  And I think, as politics nears the mid-terms, the Republican Party unrelenting support of assault weapons will move up as yet another campaign issue for Democrats against the GOP putting Americans at risk.
 
There are two things, to their great credit, that I will say in defense of Breitbart’s loving-support of assault weapons after a massacre.
 
The first is they didn’t offer “thoughts and prayers” (tm) to the victims and their families, pretending to care all that much.
 
The second is that they didn’t cry out that “Now is not the time to talk about gun reform!”  And instead, jumped right in with Gov. Pritzer and all other officials in Highland Park to talk about the politics of it all, just from the other side of being okay if there are more massacres.
Of course, “thoughts and prayers” (tm) had any effect on gun massacres, there wouldn’t be any more of them, but unfortunately the United States averages 1-1/2 gun massacres a week. 
 
And of course, since there are 1-1/2 gun massacres a week, and if it wasn’t time to talk about gun reform until enough mourning time had passed since the last gun massacre, then there would never be a time to talk about gun reform.  But then, of course, the time to talk about gun reform is before the next mass killing, not after.
 
Yes, that’s just Breitbart News, but it’s the voice of the foundation of the Republican Party.
 
The only other good thing yesterday is that Ted Cruz didn’t sicken most of the public by blaming the massacre on too many doors and call for fewer doors to protect people.  And call for arming schoolteachers. 

The only thing that surprises me is that we haven’t heard assault weapon advocates crying out for communities having too many rooftops.
 
The most proper comment about yesterday came from Alexander Sandoval who was attending the parade in quiet, low-key Highland Park.  “This doesn’t happen here,” he said. “It shouldn’t happen anywhere.”
 
It shouldn’t happen anywhere.  And for all the understandable and deserved attention on Highland Park, there were over three dozen other shooting deaths around the country over the Fourth of July weekend.  There were a dozen mass shootings -- with four or more people shot.
 
The far-right shout here is usually along the foolish lines of, “See!  Chicago has among the strictest gun laws in the country, and they still have all these gun deaths.”  But such people totally miss the obvious point.  First, Indiana is only about a 20-minute drive from Chicago.  Wisconsin, just 90 minutes away.  Both states have far-more lax gun laws than Chicago.  And investigations show that many, if not most of the guns in Chicago shootings come from those two states – with lax gun laws.  For that matter, you don’t even have to go out of state to figure out reality:  gun laws around the rest of Illinois are not as strict as Chicago. Believe it or not, no, there isn’t some magic shield that blocks guns from DuPage County just west of Chicago from crossing the city border.  And second, it shows that as strict as the Chicago gun laws may be, perhaps they’re not strict enough.
 
Because it shouldn’t happen anywhere.

Awful news from Highland Park, where there was a mass shooting at the Fourth of July parade. Current unconfirmed reports are six tragically dead, at least 24 in the hospital. I know there are a lot of people from Highland Park who read these pages, and it bordered Glencoe where I grew up. My dad's office was in Highland Park for 35 years, and he was associated with the hospital there. (He may have been the chief of medicine for a couple years, but I was young at the time I don't recall.) Readers of these pages know my many stories about the Ravinia Music Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony, where I worked for a couple of summers -- that's in Highland Park.  It's a quiet, upscale, but low-key community.

Highland Park has a significant Jewish community (it's where our synagogue was), though so far there's no indication that this had anything to do with the shooting.

The best reports about the shooting right now are from the Chicago Sun-Times, because of their top reporters, Lynn Sweet, was there at the time. I assume she lives in Highland Park.

"Thoughts & prayers" won't help. Gun reform will.

Gee, thanks, Supreme Court! 

To be clear, this shooting probably has nothing specifically to do with the recent Court ruling.  But it most certainly has a great deal to do with the huge problem with mass shootings throughout the country and the devastating gun problem in general across the country, and their ruling stripped away at gun reform overall.

Gun advocates will start pointing out that Chicago has among the most-strict gun laws in the country.  (Not only "will," but have, because someone graciously noted that to one of my social media posts...)  What they all ignore is how very close Chicago is to Indiana and Wisconsin, both easy driving distance, and both without the same strict gun laws as Chicago.  And guns are known to be brought in to Chicago from there.

The best comment in one of Sweet's article was someone saying, "This shouldn't happen here.  But it shouldn't happen anywhere."

Note to Ted Cruz:  fewer doors wouldn't have helped.  Maybe fewer rooftops.