What I wanted most for my daughter
was that she be able to soar confidently in her own sky,
whatever that may be.
— Helen Claes

Tina Valentino is the Editor/Publisher

Cinderella. If only I had the nerve to print the picture of me in my cowgirl  Halloween costume, complete with red hat, red boots, holster and six-shooter at about age 6, you might imagine that I wasn’t much of a Cinderella fan. And you would be right. I probably watched more episodes of Bonanza than anyone in my first grade class. Over the years, I had been Tweety bird, a bunny, a scarecrow, a hobo and a dozen other impersonators at Halloween but never once a princess.

Until I was in high school. Prom was one of the first teenage stress tests, along with getting a driver’s license, my first dent and taking the ACT. In today’s world, however, sexting, bullying, drugs, peer pressure, date rape, unemployment and social networking, to name a few, give the average teen—and their parents—a lot more to worry about than the color of the corsage. While well-off teens will charge their expensive dresses and be chauffeured in Hummer limos, what about the girl whose parents work two jobs just to get by? Or aren’t working at all? True, it’s not the worst thing in the world to miss your Prom. There are poor, lonely, sick people, homeless veterans and numerous other causes that deserve our attention. But “The Cinderella Project” isn’t asking for much. Just a little self-esteem for the average girl.

I had never even heard of it before until the director of the Forest Park Community Center brought it to my attention. After Googling it, I see it’s been accomplished with great success around the country from New Hampshire to Los Angeles. The local idea came from Kiwanis member Jerry Lordan who inspired Mary Win Conner and Karen Dylewski to run with it and do their best to give some area girls a chance to find their inner princess. It’s not a charity. “It’s a way to make it a fabulous experience for proud young teens who simply can’t afford the dress, accessories, beauty salon costs that are all a part of going to Prom,” explained Dylewski, the mother of two girls. “Many of us know what it’s like to be that girl who simply cannot afford to spend a lot of money but every girl should be able to attend her Prom if she wants to.” So, the fairy godmothers have been busy and continue to welcome donations of dresses, shoes, purses, jewelry, hair and makeup services so that any girl, no matter her financial status, can find her inner princess on this special night. “I am just hoping that we can show some girls that they can be anything they want to be,” added Dylewski, who currently has 22 dresses in her office. Wardrobe donations are being accepted by Karen at the Howard Mohr Community Center at Desplaines and Jackson Boulevard in Forest Park and by Rachell Entler at the Park District of Forest Park. If anyone wishes to contribute makeup, hair or nail services, contact Mary Win Connor at winbaldy@aol.com or Karen at kdylewski@forestpark.net.

I was one of the lucky ones. I had an awesome dress. My friend did my hair and makeup. And my date, the only person I wanted to go with, said yes. I remember it like yesterday and I commend these neighbors for trying to make some simple wishes come true.

The North Avenue Business Association (NABA) is sponsoring scholarships to two graduating high school seniors who plan on attending a college or university as a business major or in a business related field.  Each scholarship amount is $1000.00.

Students applying must reside in the Village of Oak Park, River Forest and the Chicago neighborhoods of Galewood and parts of Austin.  Chicago resident boundaries include Armitage (2000 North) to the North, Division (1200 North) to the south, Austin Boulevard (6000 West) to the east and Harlem Avenue (7200 West) to the West.

Eligible students must rank in the upper 20% of their class, have a 3.00 GPA, a combined ACT score of 21 and demonstrate financial need.

Students must complete an application, write an essay, provide a copy of their academic transcript and two letters of recommendation.  The application deadline is March 16, 2012.    For more information, please contact Deborah Fossey at 708/456-8843 or email: info.naba@yahoo.com.

Take your business in a new direction. GO NORTH! Join the North Avenue Business Association. Stay informed, get connected and support the North Avenue Business District.  For more information about NABA contact Wendy Tannenbaum, President
North Avenue Business Association phone: 773/622-4422 fax: 773/622-1443
wendytannenbaum.naba@yahoo.com

Also, please be considerate of your neighbors by shoveling their sidewalks, if you’re able to do so.  You might receive some home-made goodies, or at least a smile from them.  What a wonderful way to show that you’re not such a bad neighbor.

Finally, we’ve said it before and we’ll say in again… if you experience an emergency, please dial 9-1-1;  and be sure that you’re not overexerting yourself moving the snow.  Many a heart attack comes from “just one shovel more!”

• Please pay close attention to the cold temperature and how tired you become. Don’t work to the point of exhaustion. Take breaks indoors to warm up.
• Stay hydrated – and that doesn’t mean beer or hard liquor!  You sweat more than you think while shoveling snow. Be sure to drink plenty of fluids before and after shoveling to replenish fluids lost in the process.
• Bend legs slightly at the knee, letting thigh muscles do most of the pushing and lifting work. Better yet, push the snow, do not pick it up!
• Your clothing should be well-fitting and worn in layers, and you should shed clothing as the body becomes warm. Remember, overheating puts strain on the heart. Wearing a scarf over the nose and mouth helps reduce breathing cold air, which also makes the heart work harder.

And remember… Snow shoveling is not the exercise to use to start getting in shape!  Use common sense and reach out to your neighbors both to assist and for assistance!

The life  we save may be our own or that of a loved one.  Please read on………..

Mayo Clinic  – Aspirin

Dr. Virend  Somers, is a Cardiologist from the Mayo Clinic,  who is lead author of the report in the July 29,  2008 issue of the Journal of the American  College of Cardiology.

Most heart  attacks occur in the day, generally between 6  A.M. and noon, Somers said. Having one during  the night, when the heart should be most at  rest, means that something unusual happened.  Somers and his colleagues have been working for  a decade to show that sleep apnea is to blame.

1. If you take an aspirin or a baby  aspirin once a day, take it at night. The  reason: Aspirin has a 24-hour “half-life”;  therefore, if most heart attacks happen in the  wee hours of the morning, the Aspirin would be  strongest in your system.
2. FYI,  Aspirin lasts a really long time in your  medicine chest for years, (when it gets old, it  smells like vinegar). Please read on.

Something that we can do to help  ourselves – nice to know. Bayer is making  crystal aspirin to dissolve instantly on the  tongue. They work much faster than the  tablets.

Why keep Aspirin by your bedside? It’s about Heart Attacks – There are other symptoms of a heart  attack, besides the pain on the left arm. One  must also be aware of an intense pain on the  chin, as well as nausea and lots of sweating;  however, these symptoms may also occur less  frequently. Note: There may be NO pain in the  chest during a heart attack.

The  majority of people (about 60%) who had a heart  attack during their sleep, did not wake up.  However, if it occurs, the chest pain may wake  you up from your deep sleep.

If that  happens, immediately dissolve two aspirins in your mouth and swallow them with a bit of water.

Afterwards:
- Call 911.
- Phone a  friend, neighbor or a family member who lives very close  by.
- Tell them “Heart Attack!”
- Then tell them that you  have taken 2 Aspirins.
- Take a seat on a  chair or sofa near the front door, and wait for  their arrival and … DO NOT  LIE DOWN!

Oak Park’s decades-old unconstitutional handgun ban was ended by the US Supreme Court in 2010.  District Of Columbia et al. v. Heller and Chicago v. McDonald are now the law of the land.  But that hasn’t stopped either Chicago or her little sister the Village of Oak Park from consipring to limit the civil rights of their residents.

Our fear is that the Oak Park Board of Health will create and get passed laws that will be litigated in court – at great expense to Oak Park Taxpayers, for no result other than massive legal bills – does anybody really care that Oak Park taxpayers shelled out more than $650,000 for legal fees over the DTOP TIFF?

UPDATE:

From the Village of Oak Park…

Firearm regulation forum set

A community forum to gather public input for consideration in regulating the sale and possession of firearms is scheduled for 7 p.m., Tues., Jan. 24, at Village Hall, 123 Madison St. Hosted by the Board of Health as a public safety issue, the forum is part of a process that ultimately will lead to recommendations to the Village Board for possible action. Prohibiting businesses from selling firearms is considered unlikely, officials say, given recent U.S. Supreme and Appellate Court rulings. However, laws that regulate where, how and to whom firearms are sold and kept are among those considered legally defensible. For more information on the meeting, e-mail health@oak-park.us.

UPDATE 01/26/2012:

There appears to be a bit of difference in the coverage of the Forum.  From the Oak Leaves:

Headline: Gun owners rip Oak Park regulation plans

” The largely civil 90-minute event, technically a meeting of the Oak Park Health Board, saw handgun proponents outnumber pro-regulation speakers 15-7. ”

“David Schweig… challenged Barwin to openly discuss what he said was a $1.6 million legal bill the City of Chicago and Oak Park still owed to the NRA lawyers who argued the case before the Supreme Court.”

From the Wednesday Journal:

Headline: Big crowd for Oak Park gun forum

“”It’s quite clear that firearm violence, accidents and crimes are very costly to our society in myriad ways,” Barwin said. “Medical responses, rehabilitation from debilitating injury, loss of life, police and court costs, incarceration all add up to monumental costs. From the board’s perspective, firearm safety is clearly an important public health issue.”"

“Reshma Desai thinks Oak Park should require owners to store guns separately from ammunition and to keep them locked up. Local police could do “spot checks” at homes and issue fines to make sure people are complying, she said…”

There are two sides to every story…

Oak Park's Fly Bird

Noted and fashionable retailer Fly Bird is in danger of closing, long time owner – Julia Nash, to depart.  What a shame that one of the retailer of some of the most inventive and stylish gifts and functional art is having trouble staying in business. Oak Park’s Fly Bird goes up for sale.

Zoraida Sambolin, the former WMAQ-Ch. 5 news anchor

Zoraida Sambolin, the former WMAQ-Ch. 5 news anchor has listed her six-bedroom, architecturally significant house in Oak Park for $1.8 million.  Known as the Erwin House, the 5,288-square-foot house, which was designed by architect George W. Maher (1864-1926) and sits in Oak Park’s Estate District.  The house has five baths, a grand foyer with a fireplace, a three-tier staircase with art glass windows, a wraparound porch and a kitchen with a granite island and pizza oven.  The property sits on a 0.40-acre lot.  We wish Ms Sambolin and her husband luck and a quick sale.  Zoraida Sambolin lists Oak Park house for $1.8 million.

After the Holiday Parties, are your furnishings looking a little… pekid?  No worries!  Macy’s Inc. says it will close their Bloomingdale’s home and furnishings store in Oak Brook.  Clearance sales will begin at the stores Sunday and run for 10 weeks.  Macy’s to close Oak Brook Bloomingdale’s.

Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news.
The good news is that you don’t know how great
you can be! How much you can love! What you can
accomplish! And what your potential is!
— Anne Frank

Tina Valentino is the Editor/Publisher

What’s in a domain name? That which we call local by any other name would smell as sweet…

Actually, I think it stinks. My Oak Park friend Matt Baron, who contributes great local stories to Neighbors magazine, gave me my first whiff of the landfill-like odor in his blog “Chicago Tribune’s Hyper-Hyper-Local Push” at www.insideedgepr.com a few weeks before Christmas. Despite decades of raking in obscene amounts of revenue from sections upon sections of display advertising, classified and the lottery of legal notices, the Tribune still filed for bankruptcy in 2008. A few years later, they launched TribLocal to gain a better foothold in the suburbs, which they have essentially ignored, with the exception of obituaries. Where do tyrants and dictators go when their coffers dry up? Into the little villages to pillage and plunder, to take and to charge and to expand their kingdoms.

The “Honey, I shrunk the newspaper” Chicago Sun-Times and its 39 suburban tag-alongs gave readers a swell Christmas gift by charging newbies and current subscribers to read all Sun-Times Media websites. And, with AOL’s Patch.com webpages of local news steadily encroaching what TribLocal imagined would be its own dynasty, a new year is as good a time as any to test fire an internet missile. On November 28, the Tribune Company bought up over 300 (334 to be exact) domain names such as RiverGroveTribune.com, BellwoodTribune.com, MelroseParkTribune.com, HillsideTribune.com. Somehow they missed Westchester, Northlake and North Riverside as this issue goes to press. For a company not even close to emerging from bankruptcy protection, this is quite a zealous, expensive—and pathetically predictable—venture. The Chicago well has run dry so let’s pretend 1) that we really care about what’s happening in the suburbs while 2) we start tapping into suburban businesses while promising them a phenomenal internet “circulation.” Smells like the perfume of a rotten egg, alright. Armed with a pen and paper in one hand and my camera in the other, I have covered people and progress in the suburbs since 1982. So many times I’ve said to myself, “This is such an extraordinary event”—to listen to astronaut Lee Archambault in Bellwood, to meet Dr. Percy Julian’s daughter in Maywood, to tour the Borsato Museum in Northlake, to celebrate the centennial in Forest Park, to participate in Veterans Day in Franklin Park, to experience the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Melrose Park—and, yet, where were the Trib and Sun-Times? Nowhere to be found.

“We cannot make good news out of bad practice.” Edward R. Murrow should know. In 2012, Neighbors Magazine will continue its proven practice of delivering good, local news—in print for free, online for free and networking through Facebook. Because I believe, like Anne Frank, that everyone has inside of him or her a piece of good news, a story to tell, a goal to accomplish and I try to help it along even though we have only one lackluster local domain name. Happy New Year, neighbors. How great can we be, how much can we love and accomplish in 2012?

Tina Valentino is the Editor and Publisher of Neighbors, a FREE publication that spotlights the western suburbs and partners advertisers with award-winning stories.  Neighbors Magazine – “Everyone has one” is distributed each month via high-traffic retail and/or commercial outlets throughout Bellwood, Berkeley, Elmwood Park, Forest Park, Franklin Park, Hillside, Maywood, Melrose Park, Northlake, North Riverside, Oak Park, River Forest, River Grove, Schiller Park, Stone Park and Westchester.  www.neighborsmagazine.com

Here’s Hoping for a better 2012!

From our gal friend, Wendy Tannenbaum, President of the North Avenue Business Association:

Oak Park Business License Renewal Information
A message from Village Clerk Teresa Powell

This is a reminder to all Oak Park Businesses that your 2012 Business License should be displayed when you open for business in 2012.

The Village will be open until noon on Friday, December 23rd, and from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on December 27th-30th (the Village will be closed December 26th).  If you haven’t already sent in your payment, you may want to stop by our office to renew your license sometime in the next few days.

And a very happy holidays from the Village of Oak Park.

Teresa Powell
Village Clerk
Village of Oak Park
123 Main Street, Oak Park, Illinois  60302
708/358-5672 tpowell@oak-park.us www.oak-park.us

---

Chicago Business License Renewal Information
Big Changes in 2012

In 2012, all business license renewals must be done online.  The online license renewal process will be fast, easy and secure.  You will need an Account Number and a Personal Identification Number (PIN) in order to access the On-line Business License Renewal System.

This information is provided to Chicago businesses via the business renewal notice mailed out to you prior to your business deadline.  “Online Business Renewal Tutorial” workshops will be held in early 2012.

The next online business license renewal tutorial will be January 11, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection office, City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle Street, Room 805.  Please reserve your attendance by calling 312/744-2086.  Space is limited.  For more info, go to www.cityofchicago.org/bacp.

Trapp, of the 300 block of North Hamlin Avenue in Chicago, was on parole after serving one year of a three-year sentence for robbery, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Based on the sketch on the clerk’s description of her assailant distributed to both the public and other law enforcement agencies, an alert officer from Chicago’s 25^th Police District recognized the suspect from an earlier traffic stop.  At almost the same time, a Park District of Oak Park employee at Ridgeland Common, 415 Lake St., contacted police with information that allowed them to place Trapp in Oak Park the day of the robbery.

In addition to Oak Park Police officers and investigators, members of the West Suburban Directed Gang Enforcement (WEDGE) task force also provided assistance in tracking down and arresting Trapp.