Dan over at Infospigot posted this piece about Illinois Governor John Altgeld. (I prefer the volleyball analogy over billiards, hope that’s okay.) His entry reported not being able to find a decent photo of the installation dedicated to Altgeld at Sheffield, Lincoln and Wrightwood. So I felt compelled to post one. On Cubs opening day no less.
And here’s the volley back – my story that connects to that installation has to do with the manhole cover right in front of it.
A few years ago when I was a nursing supervisor at the nearby level-one trauma center, a woman was brought in with multiple dog bites to her arm. Apparently she was walking her dog near the Altgeld memorial and her dog stepped on the manhole cover. Normally a quiet lab, he began squealing, yelping and seizing. When she reached down to help him, he bit her. It turned out somehow the manhole cover was conducting electricity. The dog did not survive the accident. The amount of media calls that night was astounding – which was an aspect of that job that amazed me – what the media chooses to cover and what they do not. I don’t mean to minimize the seriousness of this story, and certainly an electrically live manhole cover is a major threat to the public. But it always caught me off guard when events that came through our ER that seemed much more tragic and newsworthy to me, such as the more common that one might want to believe fatal accidents involving the CTA, never made the news.
Nice photo, MK. You really worked with the gloom and used it to your artistic advantage.
That is a beautiful monument. Great picture. Thank you for taking the photo and posting. I used to live very near here on Southport and I walked all over this neighborhood and I don’t remember this monument. It was a long time ago, though.
P.S. I came here from Dan’s blog. I like both billiards and volleyball.
Check out Dan’s well researched reply back at Infospigot!