CHICAGO — Happy Friday! Here's what we're reading on this sunny spring afternoon.
Leaving on a Jet Plane: When Cassandra Francis, the head of the Friends of the Parks, announced last week she was leaving the Friends of the Parks despite suing the city over the location of the Lucas Museum on the Lakefront, she declined to tell DNAinfo Chicago the reason behind her departure.
Thanks to a story reporter Heather Cherone is reading in the Washington Post, we now know she's headed to the Middle East with her husband, a Northwestern University law professor, who will start a program in Qatar. That leaves the Friends of the Parks in limbo as they fight plans for the Lucas Museum and perhaps prepare for another court battle over the location of the Obama Presidential Library in what is now Washington Park or Jackson Park.
Cassandra Francis, l., president of Friends of the Parks, led the fight against the proposed location for the Lucas Museum. [DNAinfo/Quinn Ford]
Remember that Bernie kid?: Could another guy with University of Chicago ties end up in the White House? It's a long shot, but Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent U.S. Senator and 1964 U of C grad, is trying.
Senior editor Andrew Herrmann recommends a University of Chicago Magazine look at Sanders' time in Hyde Park where he led a sit-in at the president's office over the U of C's racial segregation housing policies. The son of a Brooklyn paint salesman who often felt uncomfortable around his well-heeled classmates, Sanders admits, "I was not exactly a stellar student."
He did, though, hang out at Harper Library reading "Marx, a lot of Freud." He also got a taste of Chicago politics helping longtime independent Ald. Leon DuPres beat City Hall. ("I was very impressed by Richard J. Daley's Chicago Machine" which had "a city worker for every 200 voters," Sanders allows.) Overall, Sanders says of the U of C: "It was a very, very vibrant place. It was just not 'earn a degree.' "
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), then a student at the University of Chicago, speaks at a 1962 sit in on campus. [University of Chicago]
That's What the Bottom of the Lake Looks Like?: As a local kid, news editor Bettina Chang was always proud that Lake Michigan (despite often being too cold/dangerous to swim in) has a beautiful turquoise color. But she's never seen photos like those in Smithsonian magazine's recent post about the current crystal-clear conditions of the lake.
Due to a confluence of different natural factors, the lake is so clear that you can see shipwrecks on the lake's bottom, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, who posted the photos to their Facebook page. But they won't last long, according to Smithsonian writer Marissa Fessenden — warm weather will bring algae blooms that will obscure the views soon.
This 1917 shipwreck is visible from the air while Lake Michigan remains crystal clear before summer algae blooms. [Facebook/U.S. Coast Guard]
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