Celebrating good deeds and ‘mad science’ in Chicago on Thanksgiving

In these polarizing times, when anger on social media is ramped up to 100 and culture wars are all the rage, look to your neighbors — and sometimes strangers — and you will see acts of kindness. We are thankful for those folks this Thanksgiving.

This thought came to mind when we read an article this week by Sun-Times features reporter Stefano Esposito about a North Center man, Robert Miller, a retiree who in March found some books spread on the sidewalk while out walking.

They weren’t just any books. They were “luxuriously bound in a material the color of antique ivory,” Esposito wrote. “The pages were thick and rough to the touch. He could tell that the books were old — very old.”

Miller had found a treasure trove of books. He could have sold them, given them away or tossed them in the garbage. Instead, he searched for an expert in rare books and found one in Suzanne Karr Schmidt, of the Newberry Library on the Near North Side.

Karr Schmidt determined the books were published between 1525 and 1725. They were written in Latin, French and German. Her search went global when she reached out to rare book dealers overseas. She cracked the case by connecting a shop in Vienna, Austria, with a buyer: Marvin Rawski, 88, a rare-book collector who lives in North Center, the same neighborhood as Miller, the retiree who had bent down to pick up the lost books.

Rawski has so many books that he hadn’t realized he had dropped some outside until his goddaughter, whom the Newberry curator had contacted (Rawski didn’t have an email account), told him about the find. Eight months after Miller found the books, they were back in Rawski’s hands. Rawski decided to donate two books to the library.

“It was a very nice thing they did for me,” Rawski told the Sun-Times’ Esposito. “They could have kept” all the books.

Acts of kindness by Miller, Karr Schmidt and Rawski brought about this happy ending. A heartening story indeed.

A human-made urban oasis

Another story that caught our eye this week was about an island right here in Chicago. “Wild Mile” is a floating eco-park near Goose Island in the Chicago River. It was described as “a string of small, human-made islands” by freelance journalist Zachary Nauth in a report for the Sun-Times and WBEZ.

This fall the park attracted migrating white-throated sparrows, fall warblers and dark-eyed juncos “to feast on the seeds of sedge, prairie clover and Joe-Pye weed,” Nauth wrote. “Tropical white and pink hibiscus blooms stood out among the fading greens and rusty browns of summer’s bounty, 60 native species in all.”

Wild Mile was brainstormed by Nick Wesley, a La Grange native, and others from the Urban Rivers organization. It took 10 years of experimentation, patience for permits from the city and some “mad science” to put it all together, Nauth noted.

This project won the Field Museum’s Parker/Gentry global award for environmental conservation. Urban Rivers is the first Chicago-based group to win the honor, according to the Field Museum.

Here’s what you might see at Wild Mile: People doing yoga, teens drawing or launching kayaks and people quietly reading or observing the scenery.

This group initially practicing so-called “mad science” came up with a thing of beauty. We’re thankful for it.

Good deeds come in many forms. We have been recipients of many acts of kindness, and we’re sure many of you have too. Maybe it’s a neighbor who mowed your lawn, raked your leaves or found one of your lost items; someone who dropped off food or a care package when you were sick or feeling down; or a stranger who paid for your coffee at Starbucks or Dunkin’.

All these folks help build communities, one good deed at a time.

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