I should add that the Chicago Sun-Times, now part of Chicago Public Media (alongside NPR affiliate WBEZ), has no paywall.

You’ll have to register but then you can read the best Chicago news to your heart’s content 🥰

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

(8/8)

Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!

(7/8)

Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,

(6/8)

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,

(5/8)

⭐️⭐️⭐️And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.⭐️⭐️⭐️

(4/8)

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

(3/8)

Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

(2/8)

Munchak says she left the scene but was followed and blocked in by agents in SUVs. She says they "rushed my car … and then an agent was in front of my car aiming a gun at my head."

They’ve also used photos by my @chicago.suntimes.com colleagues without permission; the Sun-Times has sent a demand letter insisting the images be removed.

Wow! Great shots!