Killer boats. State Department of Conservation figures show that boating accidents increased more than 50 percent in 1990 over 1989–and boating deaths were up almost 100 percent.
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Political prophets struck out, according to political scientist David Everson’s review of the claims and counterclaims made during the 1980 debate over Patrick Quinn’s “Cutback Amendment,” which reduced the size of the Illinois House of Representatives by one-third (Illinois Issues, July): “None of the proponents’ claims were realized. The Cutback did not save money, reduce the number of bills introduced in the House or increase the competition for House seats. Nevertheless, in combination with the 1981 reapportionment, it did trigger some changes. The most significant of these has been the strengthening of the majority party’s leadership in the House….The predictive record of the opponents of the Cutback is nearly as dismal. Their primary argument was that minority representation would be reduced.” In fact, the percentages of women and blacks stayed about the same. The only minorities who lost out were dissenters within each party. “The Cutback virtually eliminated these moderate-to-liberal Chicago Republicans and independent suburban Democrats. And it probably helped create a House more dominated by its leadership.” Mike Madigan, call Pat Quinn. You owe him.
Birds are coming back to the Des Plaines River Wetlands Demonstration Project at the north end of Lake County, just three years after the wetlands were restored. “The number of wetland-dependent birds censused during the breeding season increased from 8 [before restoration] to 17 species [after],” reports Wetlands Research, Inc., in a May technical paper. Migrating waterfowl, many of them in decline nationwide, showed up in greater numbers. And “two state-designated endangered species that were absent in the prerestoration census–Least Bittern and Yellow-Headed Blackbird–nested on the postrestoration site.”
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. “Our big cities are coming to resemble the London of Dickens’ day,” writes James Krohe Jr. in Illinois Times (July 3-10). “The life-styles of our professional, managerial, and ownership classes are sustained by what is politely known as the service sector but what a franker nation would call the servant class. Chicago used to make millionaires. Now it waits on them.”
