There seems to be a great deal of concern about the safety of cyclists, but how about the pedestrians when a cyclist is on a sidewalk?
Several years ago in the Loop, I was hit by a bike while walking home from work within 50 feet of City Hall. I was on the sidewalk. The cyclist rode off, and the officers in front of City Hall did nothing. My upper abdomen was still black and blue a month later.
Several years after that, while having surgery for an unrelated issue, the surgeons had to take time to remove scar tissue and repair two tears in my upper abdomen from that collision.
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People, especially in the Streeterville area during the summer around Grand Avenue and Ohio Street where I live, are constantly on the sidewalks — not just on bikes but electric scooters as well.
I once asked a police officer who was on a bike on the sidewalk why there was no enforcement and got no reply. If City Hall leaders wants to fill their coffers and help protect citizens, they may want to consider trying to enforce the city laws and protect both cyclists and pedestrians.
Annette M. Peterson, Streeterville
Honoring the dead
Kudos to Mitch Dudek, outstanding Sun-Times obituary writer, for his extraordinary summary of the obituaries he wrote on inspiring Chicagoans who passed away in 2023. Dudek succeeded another excellent obituary writer, Maureen O’Donnell.
I cannot help but be grateful for such rigorous obituary writers, and other reporters elsewhere, for their irreplaceable service to the cumulative understanding of how we have come to be who we are as a community and society (not just this year but through the years), particularly through their robust coverage of what fellow human beings were able to accomplish, in spite of human imperfection, while they were still with us.
It’s time for obituary writing, a genre of writing in itself, and obituary writers, to be appropriately recognized nationally as much more than just an obscure section of newspapers. In fact, it’s time to add many of our obituary writers to our poets, novelists, essayists, playwrights, journalists, etc., as major contributors not only to our region’s indispensable historical archive, but also, and even more importantly, to the nation’s sense and understanding of community formation and transformation.
After all, there is so much to learn in the obituary pages about what to do and even what not to do — not just as a society but also as individual members of our own communities, regionally, nationally and even globally.
Alejandro Lugo, Park Forest
Former professor of anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Children should be valued over guns
I wish that politicians could explain to me why fetuses are to be protected from decisions made by the woman who is carrying them and her doctor, but once those fetuses grow and become children, they can be slaughtered. Gun rights supersede the life of actual physical children. In this upcoming election, everyone must vote for the candidates who will protect children from gun slaughter.
Elizabeth, Butler Marren, Beverly
