I come from a city wellknown for an overabundance of wonderful writers - Mike Royko and Studs Terkel, my favorites amongst them. Terkel wasa dear friend of mine.

From time to time, I wrote for publication stories of my own. One such offering was entitled “Urban homesteading: coming our way?” published in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine on April 21, 1974.

It was from these and one of my own experiments in the field that my multifaceted career as architect, teacher, writer and developer blossomed. 

I’d like to think my writings, among other things, made a difference.

So, pardon me if I’m not a little surprised that my efforts hereabouts have met with little or no success. I bleieve the reasons for such a state of affairs are twofold. 

First and foremost, a lack of foresight and imagination at all levels of governement; and second, a couple of newspapers that shy from confrontation before the powers-that-be.

Their reporters play softball when hardball is definitely called for.

Take a recent edition of the PT Leader, for example regarding the Cherry Street project. The reporter might have registered as publicity agent for Mr. Timmons who, exploiting a newly-resuscitated Homeward Bound, will put us and them well behind the eight ball for years to come.

In a recent meeting of PT’s finance committee, he suggested that the costs of building four lower-level apartments would be “minimal.”

That brought me to my feet - where from I took him down quite nicely.

So what’s ahead?

The eventual completeion of the Cherry Street project, a near-bottomless pit in terms of monies spent and subsidies rendered; and Stateman’s Pleasant Harbor, a “rich man’s Shangri-la.” 

In the meantime, there’ll be a few well-wrought yet fruitless critiques from people like myself, and little or nothing in terms of hard-hitting reportage from our much-too-accomodating local press.