And Now For Something Completely Different-

It’s one of the Tabs on Wonkette this AM. I have a soft spot for Chicago for reasons, and was just interested because it’s not topical, and now I’m sharing it here because maybe we could all pool our money and buy this place for us and our allies! Actually, I’m sharing it because it’s different and interesting to look at. Take a look, and dream a little!

1355 N Astor St
Chicago, IL 60610

Description

Once-in-a-life time opportunity to own one of Chicago’s iconic estates, showcasing over 25,000 Sq. Ft. of combined living spaces and situated on nearly a third of an acre on Gold Coast’s most coveted Astor street. This palatial architectural masterpiece designed by Howard Van Doren Shaw for the Goodman Family graces the market for the first time in 40 years, promising to leave you speechless. A true hallmark of Chicago’s rich history, Astor Court has long captivated passersby with its magnificent neo-classical/Georgian Revival architecture spanning an impressive 80′ feet across. This distinguished estate is centered around a one-of-a-kind tremendous courtyard, meticulously landscaped with lush gardens and flowing fountains, transporting you to the tranquil Italian countryside, creating a peaceful sanctuary in the vibrant urban setting. The main residence of the estate features over 10,000 sq. ft. of exquisitely renovated grand spaces blending timeless elegance with modern luxury. No expense was spared in creating this treasure, presenting a rare opportunity to own a coveted piece of Chicago’s history. Every inch of the home exudes sophistication and grandeur offering unparalleled living experience featuring 13′ ceilings, venetian plaster walls, incredible intricate millwork and hardwood oak flooring throughout, fireplaces with magnificent original marble mantles, and gold plated fixtures. As you enter the home, you are immediately captivated by the grand sense of space, elegant design and a sweeping curved staircase that ascends to the expansive main living areas. Every room exudes scale and sophistication offering both beauty and functionality. There are five en-suite bedrooms, each with its own style and personality. The luxurious primary suite features beautiful lake views and a grand primary spa bath adorned with exquisite Italian marble. In addition to the main residence, Astor Court showcases six gorgeous unique rental units, each with its own distinct charm and character, generating significant income. The entire estate encompasses 45 rooms, 16 bedrooms, 17 baths and 18 fireplaces offering endless opportunities to expand the main residence or transform it into a sprawling multi-generational family compound. Currently, there are two parking spaces located directly behind the property with the option to convert the coach house into a garage for additional parking. This extraordinary estate is perfectly situated just steps from Michigan Avenue, the lakefront, parks, premier shops, favorite restaurants, and world-class entertainment.

Request a tour as early as
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Home Highlights

Parking Open Parking Outdoor Patio A/C Heating & Cooling

HOA None Price/Sqft $840 Listed 145 days ago

Many more photos on the page!

2 For Women’s History Month

Today Would Have Been Aretha Franklin’s 82nd Birthday

Rest in power, queen.

By Frances Langum — March 25, 2025

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Snippet:

During the same week as the president’s address to Congress, RepresentWomen held our annual Democracy Solutions Summit (DSS). This solutions-oriented event allowed us to imagine what our democracy could look like with better policies and better representation.

Here, women leaders, elected officials, advocates and experts discussed the problems facing our democracy and uplifted actionable solutions to improve women’s representation and strengthen our democracy overall. This year’s summit addressed the critical need for more women in local, state and federal leadership roles.

The Democracy Solutions Summit clearly contrasts with the uncertainty of Trump’s address to Congress. The DSS is the only democracy summit featuring only women speakers and panelists committed to actionable, data-driven solutions and building coalitions that bolster American democracy at this critical time. Furthermore, our research has found that when multiple structural solutions are combined, we can bolster women’s representation in every level of government.

Complete recordings of the summit are available online, but here is a quick recap of all three days. (snip-More)

Republican Bill Would BAN Gender Non-Conforming Haircuts

My question is who decides if a hair cut conforms to gender stereotypes / norms.  I somehow doubt the 1970s /1980s long shoulder length but parted and swept back blow dried hairstyles for guys would pass the test if religious conservatives get to say what is acceptable?  What about women with cancer who are taking treatments for that cancer and lost their hair or are growing it back?  Can the doctor be sued who prescribed the treatments?  It is like trans people using the bathrooms of gender identity, who decides if that woman is feminine enough for the girl’s bathroom or that man manly enough for the boy’s bathroom?  I have told everyone while the hell spawn could have any hair they wanted including long hair I was required to have a crew cut or nearly bald hairstyle as punishment for even existing in a time when everyone was wearing their hair long.  What about parents rights? You know the reason all media with LGBTQ+ content must be removed from schools and all libraries, because some parents complain their kids might see it?    Do the progressives or the former hippies get to allow their boy children to have long hair or their girls short hair?  See how this can’t work, can’t be allowed.   People lose all autonomy and individual rights to express themselves as they want to.  It is again an attempt to return to the straight cis white Christian male dominated society of the 1950s.  Women were subservient to men and needed their permission for most things outside the home.   Raping your wife, forcing her to have sex against her will was legal as she had to perform her wifely duties.  Non-white people knew their place and stayed there.  The entire LGBTQ+ were hidden in their closets too frighted to be found out to demand their equality and rights.  That is the world they want and are trying to create using the cover of trans people are harming the children.  It is why they attacked drag queens so violently, they violate that 1950s norms.  They are desperate to enforce a nearly religious observance of their preferred way to live based mostly on religion.  Look at the bios of nearly every one of the republicans pushing these things and you see they are from a fundamentalist conservative religious faith that wants to control how other people live.  Not to bring others closer to their godlike Rev Ed Trevors does, but to make themselves feel better about things and the idea that if they make all the people they don’t like, all the acts they don’t like to go away their god will praise them, give them an afterlife life, and their god will be so please with them he will come back right away to get them.  Their god is a god of anger and smiting.    He is not a loving god who loves people as they are or want to be.   Hugs

Republicans in the Arkansas state legislature have introduced legislation that would make it effectively illegal for hairdressers to give gender-based haircuts to people of the opposite gender. The bill would allow the hairdressers to be sued if the haircut given does not conform with the gender assigned to a person at birth. This is reminiscent of the government-approved haircuts in North Korea, and equally as oppressive. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.

Some Belle of the Ranch videos

Trans Rights ARE Important Issues Worth Fighting For

Canadian Woman One Of Many Chained & Held By U.S. Border Security To Meet ‘Quotas’

Really is this what we want to be known to our closes allies as?  Or … Hugs

So seriously this woman was a business person who came back to the US on her visa, but ICE used that to snatcher her.  As the host of the channel says ICE is using anyone on a green card which means is here legally to snatch to drive their numbers up.   Seems ICE is looking for terrorist at the US airports …for valid visa holders or green card holders to then snatch and deport.  Again to say we got this many this weekly terrorists … ??

Canadian Jasmine Mooney was detained by ICE for almost two weeks over simple paperwork, now she’s sharing her story. This while Canadian NDP MP Charlie Angus is advising Canadians to not visit the U.S.

Some same Seder

Sam and Emma in the fun half.  Normally there is only two ways to watch the fun half.  You can be a member which they admit that some people can not afford which they have a way to get free membership if you need it.  Or you can catch the first half while it is playing live and in the description box will be a link to the free fun half.  If you click on that you can watch the entire thing.  If you save it like I do for later you can go back and watch it at any time because if you don’t the link will disappear so you can’t see it.  They make the second half private.  Hugs

10,558 views Premiered 6 hours ago FUN HALF

Livestreamed on March 21, 2025:

00:00 – FUN HALF

00:22 – AOC/Bernie team-up

08:20 – “TAX THE RICH!”

14:17 – Trump’s war on libraries and museums

29:01 – Jesse Watters is Fox’s straw man

42:55 – DOGE lovin’ Republicans getting booed everywhere

Ep 250321

Watch the Majority Report live Monday–Friday at 12 p.m. EST on YouTube OR listen via daily podcast at http://www.Majority.FM …OR become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join

 

What my mornings / days have been like lately.

What a day.   I have been training my self to get up at 5 am.  My body and bowels now wake me at anytime between 4:15 am to 4:30 am.  Ok I can live with the waking up, but not with how the bowels like to do it.  Warning for poop talk ahead.   See since my primary care doctor figured out why I was having diarrhea and worked with my other doctors to change my medications, my poop went from diarrhea to being rocks that could be used as paving blocks.  When they move through the lower system they let themselves be known.  

 Ron had been letting himself sleep in later and later until he got to after 9 am before he would wake up.  I told him we couldn’t have that.  So I asked him to pick a reasonable time to get up, he picked 6:30 am.  But after a few weeks of that and coming to bed earlier, he now wakes up when I get up to start my day.  He also now gets up with me.  Sometimes he goes back to bed after he has his three cups of coffee and sometimes not.   Today he stayed up and went out shopping for a bit of stuff at a bit past 9 am.  But … big but.  

Our getting things taken care of around here has been a bit haphazard.  Sundays are a news day for me.  This morning Ron wanted me to make a scrambled eggs and ham breakfast as he likes the way I do eggs the best.  I normally add to the meal either fried the potatoes we did not eat from the night before or shredded hash browns along with a few sausages, separate from the eggs but as sides.  But today we did not have anything but 6 bread slices, eggs, and the thick ham slices from what we sliced yesterday.   So why does Ron want me to cook the eggs.  Two reasons, eggs can turn very quickly when cooking no matter how you are cooking them other than boiling them.  Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, it doesn’t matter.   Ron is incapable of paying the eggs that much attention so they come out bad for him.  So how do I make my scrambled eggs different.  

First I have a system for breaking the eggshell that makes sure no shell bits get into the eggs.  You have to do it when the eggs are very cold.  Then take the sharp side of a knife and carefully hit the lower side of the egg at about midline.  That causes the egg to makes its own clean break.  Next in the bowl add water.  Here is the normal thing.  Milk adds something I forget since I don’t use it, water adds fluffy.  So most cooking shows say add a teaspoon or such … screw that.  I add about a huge dash.  I never measure it, like I never measure anything I add to stuff I cook (except bread.  That needs to be exact to make sure the bread forms correctly), I put the bowl under the faucet and give it a “shot”  or today I put the water into a cup measuring cup and between the two bowls I added about a 1/4 cup of water.  

Why don’t I worry about the amount of water?   Because after stirring it up in the bowls, I put the sauce pot on the stove with a large tab of real butter.  Ron used to ask why a sauce pot as he uses a flat pan.  Because the smaller pot can let me get the temperature up to a point there the water comes out on top and boils off and lets you fold and refold the eggs until the moisture boils away, then you can fold / chop the scrambled eggs up into ever smaller bits of good dry but not desiccated plate of scrambled eggs.   They still have enough moisture to let you mix ketchup or hot sauce into them. 

Thinking I was done, I started making posts.  But Ron had to go out and get stuff.  Crap.  But that was where all the other stuff of the last few days came to bite me in the butt.  On Sunday I don’t do much but watch news, and I guess on Saturday we had not done dishes, so we had two and a half days of dishes this morning … to be washed.  Ron wanted me to do that before he got home.  Damn it … OK Ron I will.  It took me until well after noon to wash / dry the dishes.   Again I thought I had blogging time.  But no.

I had barely sat down when Ron came home with the groceries.  Actually there were few groceries but He had spent most of that three or four hours he had been gone in Home Depot getting parts for the plumbing project he needed.  Ok now I could return to blogging right … Nope.  Ron decided that it was time to have the roast he put in the crock pot this morning at about 6 AM.  OK, help Ron make supper.  Yes we eat early.  About between 2 and 3 PM.  Why because after 4 pm I can’t eat, or have no interest to eat.  Help him with the corn, and potatoes which we decided to bake.  45 minutes later was lunch.  The meal was great. 

Then came clean up and putting away the food.  It is now well after 3 pm, nearly 4 pm.  So Ron decided he needed a nap.  Would I like to nap with him?  Yes of course.  We never even got to the cuddle part as he went out right a way after putting on his C-Pap mask.  I laid there trying to rest.  At 5 pm my phone alarm for me to take my evening pills and set up my morning ones went off.  Ron decided he had to get up as he was too sore to cuddle, I got up and made my pills.  Now at 5:30 pm I am in my office finishing this post up.  This is why it is hard for me to post and much harder to make a video.  I did a load of laundry and still have one in the dryer that Ron forgot.  I don’t have the energy to fold them or putting them away today.   I am done.  Just now one of our cats demanded wet food.   I have not even managed a shower today, how can I find time to set up everything in my system, record, and then edit a video.  Sadly most days I would go with Ron when he goes out shopping, today he fooled me which is why I kept texting him asking if he was OK.  He had a small list of 10 items, and yet was gone over three hours.  If he had told me he was going to go prowl Home Depot I would have insisted on going along.  Not that he doesn’t know what he wants but he gets confused over if he got enough part a or enough part b, and maybe instead he needs part d or f and so he ends up getting far more parts than he needs. Then he says it is OK because they come in handy … some time.  When I am with him he can bounce it off me and I can say well you got 5 of this and 6 of that, what is the goal. 

Anyway I am going to proofread this.  I want to stress that I do not regret spending my time doing housework or helping Ron.  I do regret not getting to much of what I want to do with the blog.  But I am reassured that even if I do not post some day or days, Ali and Randy will.  Sadly that day may be coming sooner than I would like.   I always figured that it would be my health that made it hard for me to keep up with the blog, now it is both my health and Ron’s.  I have to tell you all, some days I only want to turn my 55-inch 4K TV to viewing position and just watch movies.  But I can’t retreat like that.  I hope you won’t either.   Hugs.  

Peace & Justice History for 3/24

March 24, 1616
William Leddra was executed by the Charter government of Massachusetts for being a Quaker. He was the fourth and last of his religion to be hanged with the approval of Governor John Endicott. Though the court did not find him “evil,” he had sympathized with the Quakers who were executed before him; he had refused to remove his hat, and he used the words “thee” and “thou,” which, to Quakers, implied the equality of all people.
(Check out the way the link works for this. Much better than the terrible transcription I read the other day.
-Newsletter author)
Contemporaneous letter describing Leddra’s and other Quakers’ persecution  (starts p.58)
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March 24, 1918
Native-born Canadian women over 21 (except native, or First Nations, women) won the right to vote in federal elections, but not to run for office for yet another year. Suffrage was not granted to women in Quebec provincial elections until 1940.
Read about Thérèse Casgrain 
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March 24, 1964

In a sit-down against nuclear weapons at Parliament Square in London, England, 1,172 were arrested.
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March 24, 1965

The first Teach-In on the Vietnam War was held at the University of Michigan a month after President Lyndon Johnson ordered bombing of North Vietnam. The U-M teach-in was among the first of a new form of campus protest that was to spread nationwide, as a means of mobilizing students to examine policies of their government that they previously had taken for granted.

About the 1st Teach-In 
view original leaflets 
Very few Americans had ever heard of the country in southeast Asia, and the event was intended to educate the participants in the history of Vietnam and foreign aggression there.

Young protester in Chicago march, photo Jo Freeman
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March 24, 1967
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. led an anti-war march for the first time in Chicago, opposing the Vietnam War by saying:
“Our arrogance can be our doom. It can bring the curtains down on our national drama . . . Ultimately, a great nation is a compassionate nation The bombs in Vietnam explode at
home—they destroy the dream and possibility for a decent America . . . .”

Reverend King addresses rally at the end of the Chicago march, photo: Jo Freeman
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March 24, 1980


The Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) was founded, electing as their first president Olga Madar, a vice president of the United Auto Workers.
The convention adopted four goals: organize the unorganized; promote affirmative action; increase women’s participation in their unions; and increase women’s participation in political and legislative activities.

CLUW history 
CLUW today
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March 24, 1980

The archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was assassinated while consecrating the Eucharist during mass.
Monseñor Romero had become a well-known critic of violence and injustice and, as such, was perceived in the right-wing civilian and military circles of El Salvador as an enemy, and criticized by the Roman Catholic church. Romero had exhorted the police and soldiers to disobey orders to kill innocent people, refusing to be silenced. Worshippers had interrupted, with ovations, his homilies condemning the terrorism of the state.

The ongoing legacy of Monsignor Romero (The Fransiscans have scrubbed him away. Here’s another place to read about him)
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March 24, 1989
The most environmentally damaging oil spill to date began when the supertanker Exxon Valdez, owned and operated by the Exxon Corporation, ran aground on Bligh Reef in southern Alaska’s Prince William Sound. An estimated 11 million gallons of oil (257,000 barrels or 38,800 metric tons) eventually leaked into the water.Attempts to contain the massive spill were unsuccessful, and wind and currents spread the oil nearly 500 miles from its source, eventually polluting more than 1300 miles of coastline. Hundreds of thousands of birds and thousands of sea mammals were lost in the disaster.

A dead murrelet, one of the hardest-hit sea birds in the Valdez spill.
25 years after the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, read more

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymarch.htm#march24

Sad, Indeed.

Gay MAGA Complain About Getting Banned From Gay Bars by God

Sad! Read on Substack

Dear Humans,

BEHOLD! Gay Republicans are finding out they cannot wear the red hat of hatred in LGBTQ+ nightclubs.

1. Gay Bar Bans Bigots

Last week, Badlands, a beloved LGBTQ+ nightclub in Sacramento, posted this heavenly announcement:

“Moving forward, MAGA-related attire will not be allowed in the venue. This decision is not about banning political beliefs — it is about ensuring that Badlands remains a space where our community feels comfortable and supported.”

That’s not censorship. That’s community care. And this is not the first bar to make the news for banning MAGA, either. Last week a bar in Indianapolis went viral for kicking out one of these bigots.

2. “What the Heck? Let’s See What Happens”

Steven Bourassa, the idiotic Trump supporter whose actions inspired the bar to make the change, told local news station KCRA:

“I’ve never worn a red [Make America Great Again] hat to the gay bars before. I said, ‘What the heck? Let’s see what happens.’ We were having drinks and hanging out, and it was a pleasant time. So I was really impressed. And I complimented security on the good job they did.”

What didst this imbecile think wouldst happen?!?

This is not a prank show. This is real life. And you’re not the main character.

Steven Bourassa.

3. “It’s About Bullying”

“This decision is not based upon protecting our community,” said Preston Romero, president of the Log Cabin Republicans of Sacramento.
“It’s about bullying and singling out one particular political ideology. And we believe that that’s unfair.”

WHAT HEINOUS HYPOCRISY!!! Because when trans kids are banned from sports, queer teachers are forced back into the closet, and drag queens are treated like criminals—they don’t say ONE DAMN WORD.

But when a gay bar sets a boundary to protect its patrons from symbols of literal hatred? Suddenly it’s bullying? Give God a damn break!

Preston Romero, president of the Log Cabin Republicans of Sacramento.

4. God’s Final Word

And after all the hypocritical outrage, Bourassa says he’ll still go to Badlands but he’ll just leave the hat at home.

“I didn’t have any problems,” he said. “I’ll still go back… but I’ll leave the hat at home now.”

This man got banned, agreed with the ban, and is going right back.

REJOICE, everyone! We finally found the thing that can break the MAGA cult…and apparently it’s gay sex.

5. We’re Fighting Back And It’s Working

This isn’t just a moment, it’s momentum.

And it’s building everywhere you look.

People are fighting back everywhere.

Here’s how we fight:

  • Keep people engaged & informed with truth, hope and laughter.
  • Rally thousands of voices to push back against fascism.
  • Build an independent platform where truth can’t be silenced.

And it’s working.

📈 LOOK AT THIS: (snip-go look. The clicks help God [the Substack.])