Chicago Daily Observer

As the weather forecast last week kept getting hotter and more humid every day, my fears for Sunday’s Chicago Marathon grew and grew. At age 53, I was hoping I could finish in 4:15. It would be my sixth marathon, and I was feeling nearly as good as I did when I ran my first one in 1990.

I had trained hard over the summer and averaged about 9:40 in a 22-mile training run on a record cold morning three weeks earlier. I was hoping for cold conditions because I knew I would do well in the cold and I suffer miserably in the heat.

As we approached the starting line Sunday morning, Mary Jo, a friend from the Elmhurst Running Club asked me why I was so quiet. “I am thinking about the second half of the race,” I responded. By that time I knew the sun baking on ... Read More...

Could a 20,000-seat Olympic field hockey arena really leave Jackson Park unspoiled?

A couple weeks ago Mayor Daley took his Olympics dog-and-pony show to the Walt Disney Magnet School on the north side, far from the south-side neighborhood parks that will be overtaken if his plans for the 2016 games go through.

As PR spectacles go, it was pretty impressive. The stage was filled with Olympic stars. The auditorium was packed with kids hopped-up to be out of class and eager to cheer on cue for the TV cameras.

I was in Chicago this week, speaking on Thursday to the Illinois Catholic Health Association on “Trends in Ministry.” While in town I arranged an interview with Cardinal Francis George, who marks his 10th anniversary this year at the helm of the one of the largest and wealthiest dioceses in the world. If things hold to form, George will also take over as the new president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at their fall meeting in Baltimore Nov. 12–15, becoming, in effect, the public face of the church just as America plunges into an election cycle.

That combination makes George an important figure indeed in the Catholic firmament.