To the Editor:
Dana Woldow again applies clear prose and well explained logic to what it takes to make healthy school food possible. There are a number of approaches, but it all boils down to having adequate funding to reconcile our ideals with our practice. Let’s hope we have the means to do our best.
Laura Brainin‑Rodriguez
San Francisco
To the Editor:
There is good news and bad news still in Chicago. But like Rip Van Winkle waking up after a 20 year snooze, almost everywhere you go there has been change, much of it for the good, yet there is much room for improvement.
When I was in my teens growing up on Chicago’s northwest side, the only blacks were those who worked in small shops or cleaning ladies coming early in the day and returning to the South side at evening. I remember when a black family moved into Oak Park in the 1950s, a suburb just west of Chicago. They had rented a 3rd floor apartment and gangs of whites threw their belongings into the streets.
Today, Oak Park is a model city and well integrated. I myself left Chicago in 1960, because being gay was considered taboo, at home, in schools and the workplace. I returned home in the late 1980s, and Chicago had changed for the better, however, it like almost every big city in America still has a long way to go for all segments of Chicago’s population.
Sadly, many of Chicago’s black politicians and cops are as corrupted as the white politicians and policemen. But Chicago has been a City of Progress. There are just a few pockets of all white neighborhoods. However in too many black neighborhoods, school age kids are dying almost daily by gangs with guns, and many of those neighborhoods are in need of new housing and places to shop.
Yes, in the 1940s, Chicago was not the place to be for blacks with hope. Today, we have a new mayor, and he was elected my almost 80% of the black vote. He has shown an interest for better schools, and to take cops off their desk jobs and back into the neighborhoods. This is a start for a better tomorrow, and I am proud to call Chicago my home town.
Jerry Pritikin
Chicago
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