I try not to watch the spin-off of Entertainment Tonight that poses these days as network television news.  I don’t watch Entertainment Tonight, either.

        I do watch the local news, mostly to follow developments in whichever of our elected officials is currently on trial; and I have been repeatedly impressed by how much more frequently I see reports in Chicago of children being shot to death than in any other city in which I have lived.          

        That’s anecdotal, so I sought statistics and found them

        The city of Chicago has 2.8 million people, approximately ⅓ that of the city of New York, and a million less than Los Angeles.  Yet in 2009 Chicago had almost as many murders as New York, 458 to 471, and 145 more than Los Angeles.   Boston, where we used to live, had 50.

        These numbers are for only the cities, not the entire metropolitan areas.

        In Chicago murders are not uniformly distributed.  The majority occur in predominately black neighborhoods on what is known as the South Side.

        Many are the result of stray bullets and some, such as the recent execution by a gang of a thirteen year old boy, cases of mistaken identity.

        I recalled writing about this before, and finally found the entry  for June 27, 2007, Evanston:  THE ILIAD and the evening news:  a second modest proposal. 

        Nothing has changed.

        Chicago is no longer the capital of crime, except among politicians.  No longer the city of Al Capone and John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson. 

        But to be a black child in certain neighborhoods is to live in a war zone, to face daily the possibility of sudden death, of being killed on your way to school or playing in a park or going out to buy an ice cream cone, as much as if you were living in Iraq or Afghanistan.

        And that is outrageous.  But doesn’t seem to elicit much rage.

…

        Around midnight last Thursday, a 21 year old man/boy took his grandfather’s 31’ sloop from one of Chicago’s many municipal marinas out onto Lake Michigan.  He is described as “an excellent sailor” and had permission to use the boat.  He was accompanied by a male friend and two young women.

        An hour later and two miles offshore, the young man and his girl friend decided it would be a good idea to go for a swim.  They jumped over the side and called to the other couple to join them.  Impulsively they did.

        At that moment no one was on the boat.  The boat was not anchored.  Carried by currents, the boat began to drift away faster than any of them could swim.  The water temperature was 65ºF/18ºC.

        Five hours later a sport fishing boat heading out at dawn chanced to see arms waving above the water.  The crew picked up a young woman, who said there were others.  They found the second girl three hundred yards away.

        The body of one boy/man has been recovered.  The other has not.

        To no one’s, or at least not my, surprise, reportedly alcohol may have been consumed.

        Officials have commented with bureaucratic irrelevance that none of the young people was wearing a life jacket. 

        These kids have consistently been described in the media as ‘boaters.’

        I am possibly the only person still alive who knows that a ‘boater’ is a straight-brimmed straw summer hat not someone operating a boat, who might be a boatsman or woman.  Or even a sailor.

        These children did no evil.  They were just having fun.

        And I think that the difference between their deaths and that of a child shot on Chicago’s South Side is that one is unfortunate and the other a tragedy.