Drinking, competition Just think: apple martinis at Apple River Fort;
Jack-and-Cokes at Cahokia Mounds — delicious, educational, and an additional source
of revenue for Illinois. Senate Bill 2454, which allows booze to be sold at
private soirees at facilities under the purview of the Illinois Historic
Preservation Agency, is awaiting the signature of Gov. Rod BlagojevicH. Previously, only
nonprofits could hawk spirits at such hobnobbing functions. Pasfield House owner Tony
Leone won’t drink to that idea. He
believes that the bill creates an uneven playing field between smaller,
more intimate private venues such as his and the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library and Museum. But Dave Blanchette, a spokesman for
Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, says that the IHPA, which lobbied
for the bill, doesn’t consider itself a competitor with
small-business owners such as Leone — especially when you consider
that renting the ALPLM runs between $500 and $4,000 per event. “We hope there will be a net increase in
business,” Blanchette says.
Wiki whack What blogging did for journalism, Wikipedia is doing
for scholarship — and that ain’t necessarily a good thing.
Archdiocese of Chicago volunteer John Powers is in the midst of a Web war of words over the Wikipedia
entry for U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-8th. Last August, when Schakowsky’s husband,
Evanston businessman Robert Creamer, pleaded guilty to a charge of writing bogus checks,
Powers added the Creamer information to the congresswoman’s Wikipedia
article. Several days later, another user removed the
information. Power adds information on Creamer when news breaks; shortly
thereafter, someone takes it off, he says. Since August, more than 30
Creamer-related edits to Schakowsky’s entry have been made. Powers
says that he’s tried to create separate Creamer entries, but they,
too, keep getting deleted. “I’m tired of it; I don’t care
about Jan Schakowsky,” he says. “I’ll wear out before
them because I have better things to do.”
Equal marriages Rick Garcia,
public-policy director for the Equality Illinois, the state’s largest
gay-rights advocacy group, called for immigration reform on Monday at a
rally in Chicago. According to a press release, the organization is
concerned about undocumented partners of gay and lesbian American citizens.
Because neither the federal government nor most states, including Illinois,
recognize same-sex marriages, illegal-immigrant partners of gay citizens
may be deported, they fear. So throughout May, Equality Illinois, the Illinois
ACLU, Equal Marriage Illinois, and Lambda Legal will hold training sessions
on “Making the Case for Full Marriage Equality in Our
Lifetimes” in Naperville, Aurora, Joliet, Rockford, DeKalb, the Quad
Cities, and Carbondale.
This article appears in May 4-10, 2006.
