|
|
 |
|
Happy St. Patrick's Day Weekend
FROM THE HEART - March 2017
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 17, 2017
Dear Neighbors,
If you live in our neighborhood, you most likely don't need the luck of the Irish. Fortune has probably smiled on you already. After all, we live in one of the most beautiful, most vibrant, and safest neighborhoods in all of Chicago, one of the best neighborhoods in America, in fact. And yet, even our neighborhood experiences crime, sometimes terrible, along with on-going vandalism in places. LCA shares your concerns and has been in frequent communication
with the Alderman's office on this topic.
The relative crime statistics should reassure us. But when crime impacts you, someone you care about or property that is important to you, statistics don't matter. What matters is protecting those we love along with the neighborhood we care so much about. Perhaps our best assurance can come from deepening our connection to our neighbors, keeping a watchful eye, and extending a helping hand-as well as taking the advice of safety experts. We encourage you to attend the Alderman's next public safety meeting scheduled for Tuesday, March 21st at 6:00 PM to share your concerns and learn more about how we can work together to protect our neighborhood.
Borrowing a verse from traditional Irish Blessing we see this time of year: "May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the warm rays of sun fall upon your home. And may the hand of a friend always be near."
From the heart,
Kenneth Dotson, LCA President
P. S. Feel free to email me at any time at or call me 773.531.5515 if you would like to learn more about LCA or have neighborhood concerns.
|
|
|
|
Share Your Concerns on March 21st
43rd Ward Alderman Michele Smith will be holding the third of her
public safety forums this month on the evening of
Tuesday, March 21st from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
at St. James Lutheran Church at
2050 N. Fremont Street
.
These forums are designed for
police and other agencies to hear neighborhood concerns about crime and to highlight the best ways residents can work together to keep our community safe. Chicago Police Commanders, representatives from the State's Attorney's Office and security experts will be on hand.
Please take a moment to complete this
Community Safety Survey
.
|
IT'S OUR SECOND ANNIVERSARY
We are delighted on the 2nd anniversary of From the Heart
to share with our readers t
he communication immediately below received earlier this week from our email provider, Constant Contact.
 From Constant Contact March 15, 2017
"For another year, the LCA newsletter exhibited exemplary engagement with your audience. Once again you set the standard of excellence. We are thrilled to present you with the All Star Award for 2016! Each year, the bar to All Star status gets higher and higher. Only 5.3% of our more than 650,000 customers are multi-year winners."
Based on statistics provided by Constant Constant see how From the Heart compares to their more than 150,000 other non-profit customers:
- According to Constant Contact, LCA's average email open rate percentage is more than 230% higher the average of their other non-profit customers.
- Only 1% of emails sent by LCA bounce back as undeliverable while nearly 10% of those sent by Constant Contact's other non-profit customers do.
-
According to Constant Contact, readers of From the Heart are 29% more likely to click on at least one link than readers of newsletters published by their other non-profit clients.
- Each individual copy of the newsletter that is opened by one of our readers is read, on average, more than 4.3 times according to Constant Contact.
If you are a new reader of From the Heart, you can catch up on past issues by visiting our
newsletter archive
.
|
|
4th ANNUAL SPRING ZING
Save the date of Saturday, June 3
|
If you are ready for family fun in the neighborhood, join us on
Saturday, June 3 for Lincoln Central's 4th Annual
Spring Zing. As always,
Zing will offer an amazing variety of fun and educational activities for all ages.
Additional details will be provided in the next issue of From the Heart. In the mean time, read about last year's Spring Zing.
|
Tuesday, March 21st
LCA Monthly Board Meeting
Board meetings are held the fourth
Thursday of each month at
6:30 PM
in the back room of the Marquee Lounge (Halsted & Armitage). Board meetings are open to the public.
Park West Community Association Annual Cocktail Party
Tuesday
and
Wednesday, April 4th
, 5th
Business Safety Seminars
Business and commercial property owners please join Alderman Smith, representatives of the 18
th
and 19
th
Districts of the Chicago Police Department and other speakers on either Tuesday, April 4 or Wednesday, April 5 from 8:00 to 9:30 AM for a business safety seminar sponsored by the Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce. The April 4th seminar will be held at Gaslight (2450 N. Clark) and the April 5thseminar will be held at Tobacco Road Tap Room (2249 N. Lincoln Avenue). (Learn about the new safety rebate programs available to business and property owners along Lincoln Avenue between Webster and Diversey.)
Tuesday, April 11th
LCA Zoning Committee Mtg.
Zoning Committee meetings are held the second
Tuesday of each month at
6:00 PM
in the back room of the Marquee Lounge (Halsted & Armitage). Zoning Committee meetings are open to the public.
Saturday & Sunday, May 20th & 21st
Lincoln Park Wine Fest
Tuesday, April 18th
Stete Rep. Ann Williams Town Hall
Please join State Representative Ann Williams on Tuesday, April 18th from 6:30 pm to 8 pm at the Lincoln-Belmont Chicago Public Library for her Spring town hall meeting. She'll provide a legislative update from Springfield, take questions and hear from you as to your priorities and concerns. Please RSVP via Facebook
or by emailing carter@repannwilliams.com.
Thursday, April 27th
Bridgeview Bank's Art in the Park
The 9th annual Art in the Park will be held on Thursday,
April 27th from 5:30 to 7:30 PM at Bridgeview Bank's
Lincoln Park branch
(1970 N. Halsted Street.) One of the featured artists at this years Art in the Park will be LCA Board member Bob Segal.
Thursday, April 27th
LCA Monthly Board Meeting
Board meetings are held the fourth
Thursday of each month at
6:30 PM
in the back room of the Marquee Lounge (Halsted & Armitage). Board meetings are open to the public. Time for this specific meeting TDB.
Thursday, June 14th
4th Annual Cravings on Clark
Sample the best of Lincoln Park cuisine at the Lincoln Park Chamber ofCommerce's 4th Annual Cravings on Clark from 6:00-9:00 pm. Stay tuned for additional details!
|
| A MORE SECURE HEART
Lincoln Ave. SSA Funds Safety Program
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
IN THE HEART OF ANTARCTICA
Awesomely empty. Amazingly full of life. Beautifully barren. Bountifully populated. Antarctica is all of this and so much more.
Just getting there is a trip in
itself. Chicago to Atlanta to Buenos Aires to Ushuaia (oo-SWI-a), the southernmost city in the world at the tip of Argentina. This is where we board the Corinthian, a ship that will take us to Antarctica via a two-day crossing of the Drake Passage where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet, notorious as the roughest water in the world.
For us the passage is smooth, so smooth that we are able to
make an unexpected landing on one of the
Aitcho Islands
in the South Shetland group. Here, in a barren wasteland, we are surrounded by literally thousands of
Gentoo penguins
, pecking at our walking sticks and the bottoms of our waterproof pants, which are necessary for stepping from a Zodiac raft into 10 inches of cold sea water.
So began the journey of a lifetime, hard to describe in its wonder but so accessible if you immerse yourself in the experience. Other early landings included Lion Island; and Port Lockroy Island, site of a former British research center. Our southernmost point was Vernadsky Station, a former British Base built in 1947 and transferred to Ukraine in 1996 for one British pound. The original bar installed by the British remains, as do the bras of adventurous female visitors who left them instead of payment for drinks.
Continued....
|
AN UNCONDITIONAL FRIEND
By Sally Drucker
|
|
 |
|
Sally tends the 2016 crop
|
|
It is said that a garden is your friend, one you can visit anytime. We all need a friend like that, don't we? No need to call, just drop by when you need someone to talk to; someone to listen without saying a word; someone to give you comfort when you're feeling low or reflect your excitement of good things to come. LCA's Fire Station Park Garden is such a friend! (Read a news article about the gardens.)
Fire Station Park is always quietly waiting for us to come by; it
|
|
|
Our magnificent herb garden |
is always full of surprises to share and delight our senses. We can wander around the herb garden and, if one gets close and personal (pick a leaf), its aroma will fill your senses with the memory of meals shared with loved ones. Pick some lettuce for a salad, a pepper for the pot or a tomato to make that favorite sauce and you will be heading home to invite friends to share an evening with you.
|
|
|
| Neighbors gathered in the Park. |
|
Fire Station Park is a friend that teaches us about life: reaping what we sow (we use only organic), so plant good seeds; patience to wait for good things to come (spring blooms, summer squash; sometimes having to let things go (that poor Forget-Me-Not that didn't make it through the winter); dealing with things totally out of our control (weather and critters); and that a friendship needs constant nurturing. Our garden must be tended! If we all join hands to take care of and nurture our garden, it will be our friend for life....
Come get down and dirty with us!
Contact
Sally Drucker
to become involved.
|
SUPPORT LINCOLN PARK HIGH SCHOOL
Fund Raising Auction Now Underway
 The annual Spring
fund raising auction
at Lincoln Park High School is now underway and continues through March 26. Proceeds go
to Friends of Lincoln Park High School and directly fund the school and many, much needed, student programs.
Their fabulous auction items come from local businesses and school families. Your bid not only improves programs at LPHS but involves our whole community!
LCA is eased to be a Platinum Sponsor of the LPHS fundraiser.
|
|
|
|
Pursuant to the revised LCA bylaws adopted on June 4, 2016, LCA's officers are now elected by the Board of Directors at the first Board meeting following LCA's annual meeting. At the February 27, 2017 meeting, LCA's Board of Directors re-elected the following officers:
Kenneth Dotson, President;
Kathy Jordan, Vice President;
James Borkman, Secretary;
David Free, Treasurer.
|
|
IMPORTANT NOTE
I
f you are reading this newsletter in Gmail, Yahoo mail and certain other
email programs, the right hand side of the newsletter will be cut off before it concludes. If that happens, go to the very bottom of the ema
il and on left hand side and
you will see a message that says "[Message clipped]
View entire message
"
Simply click that link and you will be able to read the entire newsletter.
|
Heart of Antartica cont'd.
Next came Petermann and
Bay, fellow travelers more adventurous than I took a Polar Plunge in water that was 33 degrees
just short of freezing.
|
|
|
|
Kathy at Neko Harbor
|
|
A highlight of all of the landings was one on the continent
of Antarctica at
Neko Harbour
, where we all were encouraged to hold the banner that read "Our 7th Continent," whether true or not. (It was not for me.)
Animals were everywhere on landings and off the deck
. In addition to the Gentoos, which we saw on every landing, there were Adelie and Chinstrap penguins. Whale sightings included Humpbacks, Seis,
|
|
|
A Crabeater Seal at leisure.
|
and Minkes. Then there were seals--Fur, Weddell, Elephant, Leopard, and Crabeaters. Bird sightings were plentiful--several species of petrels, cormorants, gulls, and skuas among them.
knowledgeable staff--experts on birds, marine mammals, climate change, ecology, photography, history--enlightened us and prepared us for what we were to see and had seen. This same staff was available night and day to point out sightings as well as to crow with excitement when we pointed out an animal to them.
My memories began with a tango dance performed on a rainy street in Buenos Aires and ended with a large block of ice hauled back to the ship in a Zodiac and used as ice for cocktails that evening. They include wonderful views of glaciers and myriad shapes of icebergs, seals basking on ice floes, whales breaking the surface with mighty blows, penguins as far as the eye could see.
|
|
|
|
Lunchtime!
|
|
The weather? Except for the two days of rain in Buenos Aires, the temperature was in the 30s and 40s, with sunshine on several days. In fact, the captain and crew said it was the best weather they'd had in years. It was so good that the crew of the ship, which travels the Mediterranean after its three-month Antarctic journey, set up tables on an outside deck so we could have lunch one day in the
beautiful sunshine.
The ship's crew was astonishingly helpful, the trip staff was so knowledgeable and available, the tour leaders were equally wonderful. The food was gourmet and plentiful, the cabins comfortable and well-appointed--what else do you need to know?
For me, this was all I had imagined and much, much more. Truly the trip of a lifetime. See
more amazing photographs of Kathy's Antarctic adventure!
|
FACADE REBATE PROGRAM
Available to Businesses On Lincoln Avenue
Is your facade in need of a face lift? Looking to replace that sun bleached sign?
Learn more about how the Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce's
Facade Improvement Rebate Program,
funded by the Lincoln Avenue SSA, can assist you! This program can help refund up to 50% of the cost of facade improvements or 25% of the cost of signage or awning-only projects to your building or business.
Eligible businesses and property owners along Lincoln Avenue between Webster and Diversey that apply for the rebate before they begin construction can receive up to $10,000 in rebate dollars! This program supports various front-of-property improvements, including windows, signage, awnings, and, most importantly, improvements to the front of the building itself. The goal of the program is to help enhance the aesthetics of the Lincoln Avenue corridor in Lincoln Park. Most properties within the
Lincoln Avenue SSA's boundaries are eligible for this rebate.
Please note: You must apply for this program before beginning any improvements or construction. Applicants that have begun or completed construction prior to project approval from the Facade Rebate Committee are ineligible to receive facade rebate funds. Please read the
Facade Rebate Program packet and application
for complete information and eligibility requirements.
|
|
|
|
From the Heart
is an award winning newsletter published monthly by Lincoln Central Association. Please email story ideas to c
o-editors,
Kenneth Dotson
and
Kathy Jordan.
From the Heart
r
eceived a 2016
Additionally, From the Heart was named a
Constant Contact All-Star in both 2016 and 2017
based on the open
rates and other metrics associated with this
newsletter in comparison to other Constant Contact clients. Learn more. Visit our archive to catch up on past issues.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
