Olympic hopeful?

Former top cop Cline may head up security if Chicago gets 2016 Games

For those of us somewhat sorry to see plain-speaking, up-from-the-streets Chicago Police Supt. Phil Cline get the bum's rush for departmental screw-ups that were completely out of his control -- including his own mouth, sadly -- there is reason to take heart.

He might be back.

I hear -- murmured by a starched, in-the-know political pal whose identity, alas, must remain hidden behind the red velvet drapes -- that friends of Cline's are lobbying for him to be thrown the plum job of heading up security for the 2016 Olympics, should Chicago get it.

I'm all for that. Cline is only 57, with plenty of good years left in him. Why bring in some perfumed security analyst from France who'll have us all prisoners in our own city, squatting in the sun, our fingers laced behind our necks? A Chicago Olympics should be protected by a Chicago cop, and Phil Cline, for good and ill, is exactly that.

Readers' hearts were touched by the case of Nora Yoshimura, the 76-year-old Albany Park widow we met last week whose Social Security checks were abruptly stopped.

An Elmhurst couple even sent her a check for $1,188.90 to cover the first payment she'd be missing.

The good news is that after the column ran, the Social Security Administration abruptly reconsidered the matter and, showing a nimbleness not usually associated with federal government, announced that, whoops, they didn't pay her too much after all, and her checks would continue uninterrupted.

I phoned Mrs. Yoshimura. She told me -- mirabile dictu -- she's sending back the generous couple's check, with her sincere thanks. Though grateful, rather than sighing "all's well that end's well," she is not yet satisfied with the outcome.

"I'm raising a ruckus," she said. "How can something like this happen to someone? How can you just seize some old lady's Social Security check and never tell them or explain anything? If it happened once, it can happen again. Why? I would like an explanation and assurance there are safeguards in place that this can't happen to me or anybody else again.''

That seemed like an admirable -- if quixotic -- goal, as well as a good place to draw the curtain, for the time being. Mrs. Yoshimura has promised she will keep us posted on whatever procedural changes the government makes at her prodding. If anyone can do it, she can.

Few iron-clad rules are set down in our household, but "Never argue about hair" is one of them.

The result has been two of the shaggiest boys in the fourth and fifth grades. And while I can live with that -- they look good, when combed -- summer is coming, and I scanned the sky for solutions. My brother, struggling with his own pre-teen, found one that worked: Pay 'em.

Now I know this will offend those who adhere to the Great Santini school of parenting -- who claim their children always leap to behave, like the Trapp Family Singers. But I chose the carrot approach -- an offer of $35 to let me shear them, cold cash -- and after dangling it for a few weeks, the younger one snapped the bait.

I had never given a haircut in my life. But I had an electric razor, left over from an ill-advised beard, a comb and a scissors.

I quickly discovered the hair was too long to shear off with the clippers. Kept jamming. So I took the scissors and did the first pass, until I was ankle deep in light brown hair -- practical hint: First set down newspapers. Then I went over the whole thing with the electric trimmer.

For a boy who wept and struggled for his first half dozen haircuts, he was amazingly placid, and he complimented me on my handiwork. It did look good, though my wife was aghast at the money. But I pointed out that a haircut at a barber will cost you $15, and any parent who won't slip their kid a $20 sometimes -- such as to ease the transition from shaggy junior rock star to near-Marine -- just isn't doing his job.

"He'll end up with it all anyway," I said.

Lots of response to my item about Russians in Chicago -- my favorite was a simple "Who knew?"

There were cries of alarm, however, that my list of Russian periodicals was incomplete, ignoring the weekly "Reklama" -- Russian for "advertisement" but denoting a newspaper, the way an American paper might be "The Commercial Appeal."

"The community is so big and so wealthy and so powerful, yet not a lot of people talk about it," said Igor Golubchik, vice president of the company publishing the Reklama.

He scoffed at the idea -- stated by the publisher of a rival Russian newspaper -- that there are 550,000 Russian speakers in the Chicago area.

"There are no legitimate statistics or data," he said, only willing to estimate that there are "more than 300,000."

"We know there are a lot of Russians, but any precise numbers they get by sitting around, making them up," Golubchik said.

There are also Reklamas published in Detroit, Miami and Milwaukee, as well as a Polish version.

"It's a brand," he said.

Anyway, the Sun-Times regrets the omission, and notes that there are other Slavic publications out there as well, so they won't feel overlooked and complain, too.

Sometimes you really have to hold the leash tight to keep a joke from escaping. I had lunch Thursday at the Palmer House's glittering, gold-leafed Empire Room (as opposed to its dull, cinderblock Empire Room, which hardly ever gets booked).

But that isn't the joke. The luncheon was to benefit the Chicago Academy for the Arts. A woman of a certain age was introduced to me as an actress.

"She did Shakespeare," her friend said, admiringly.

"Really? I wouldn't think you were old enough to do Shakespeare," I thought, and almost said. "What's he like?"