Broadway Motown musical features civil rights, love story

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. watched with approval on Thursday as the cast of upcoming Broadway show “Motown: The Musical” tore through the storied record label’s hits at a 42nd Street rehearsal studio.

The show traces Gordy’s rise from a struggling boxer and autoworker to a music mogul who made stars of Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Jackson 5 and others.

“So many other people were telling the story in different ways who were never there and never understood it, just for the sake of exploitation,” Gordy, 83, a producer of the show, told Reuters.

The media preview featured hits ranging from The Contours’ “Do You Love Me” – sung as a segregated audience in Birmingham, Alabama, breaks through a rope to hear the group – to “Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas.

Director Charles Randolph-Wright, who grew up in South Carolina in the 1960s, said Motown was in his DNA.

“Motown opened the emotional door to the civil rights movement,” he told Reuters. “Motown is the thing that brought people together. We started dancing to the same music and listening to the same music.”

Gordy’s relationship with Ross – the couple had a daughter together – is shown beginning in Paris, to the hit “My Girl” by The Temptations.

“That’s the love story in our show,” Randolph-Wright said.

The musical begins previews on March 11 and officially opens on April 14. It features a book by Gordy and music and lyrics from the Motown catalog.

Although the show is from Gordy’s perspective, it doesn’t duck some of the criticism that surrounded him, especially in Motown‘s early days, Randolph-Wright said.

As Gordy explained: “At one time, people were feeling that how could a black kid from Detroit do a Motown without being a crook, without being in the Mafia, without being something bad, because it was such a big endeavor.”

Gordy, the creator of what was once the largest black-owned business in the United States, was an inspiration to him, Randolph-Wright said.

“Berry Gordy was someone who had his own company, who literally changed the world with what he did,” he said. “And to see that, it gave me and so many people like me – black, white, whatever color – that gift of possibility.”

Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays Gordy, said it was “hard to have a greater honor than having Berry Gordy respect you as an artist.”

Valisia LeKae, who appeared in “The Book of Mormon,” plays Ross. “It is the soundtrack of people’s lives,” LeKae said of the music. “I definitely expect people to sing along.”

(Reporting By Noreen O’Donnell, editing by Jill Serjeant and Xavier Briand)

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Well: Old Age and Motorcycles Are a Dangerous Mix

If you’re over 40 and planning to hop on a motorcycle, take care. Compared with younger riders, the odds of being seriously injured are high.

That is the message of a new study, published this week in the journal Injury Prevention, which found that older bikers are three times as likely to be severely injured in a crash as younger riders.

The percentage of older bikers on the road is quickly rising, and their involvement in accidents is a growing concern. Nationwide, from 1990 to 2003, the percentage of motorcyclists over age 50 soared from roughly 1 in 10 to about 1 in 4. At the same time, the average age of riders involved in motorcycle crashes has also been climbing. Injury rates among those 65 and older jumped 145 percent from 2000 to 2006 alone.

Because of the increase in motorcycle ridership among older Americans, the researchers, led by Tracy Jackson, a graduate student in the epidemiology department at Brown University, wanted a closer look at their injury patterns. So she and her colleagues combed through a federal database of motorcycle crashes that were serious enough to require emergency medical care. That yielded about 1.5 million incidents involving motorcyclists 20 or older from 2001 to 2008.

The researchers then split them into groups: those in their 20s and 30s, another group between 40 and 59, and those 60 and older.

Over all, the study showed that injury rates for all three groups were on the rise. But the rise was steepest for the oldest riders. Compared with the youngest motorcyclists, those who were 60 and older were two and a half times as likely to end up with serious injuries, and three times as likely to be admitted to a hospital. The riders who were middle age were twice as likely as their younger counterparts to be hospitalized.

For older riders, the consequences of a collision were also especially alarming. Older and middle-aged bikers were more likely to sustain fractures and dislocations, and they had a far greater chance of ending up with injuries to internal organs, including brain damage.

The researchers speculated that it was very likely that a number of factors played a role in older riders’ higher injury rates. For one, declines in vision and reaction time may make older riders more prone to mistakes that end up in collisions. Another theory is that older riders tend to ride bigger bikes, “which may be more likely to roll or turn over,” Ms. Jackson said.

Then there is the greater fragility that comes with age. Older riders may be involved in the same types of accidents as younger riders, Ms. Jackson said, but in some cases, a collision that a 20-year-old would walk away from might send a 65-year-old to the hospital.

“Your bones become more brittle, and you lose muscle mass as you get older,” she said. “It could just be a matter of aging and the body being less durable.”

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New cars at Chicago Auto Show sip gasoline

The 105th Chicago Auto Show, which opens Saturday at McCormick Place, will feature the latest high-tech innovations, screaming muscle cars and drool-worthy exotics.

But the biggest head-turner may be a small black-and-white number affixed to the windows of the impossibly polished vehicles — the estimated miles per gallon. After years of high gas prices, fuel efficiency is becoming as sexy as horsepower for many car buyers, and a priority for manufacturers.

Driven by increased consumer demand and a federal mandate for automakers to dramatically improve fuel efficiency, new cars are averaging an all-time high of 24.5 mpg, up nearly 20 percent since 2008, according to a recent University of Michigan study. Those increases are most evident in a plethora of new high-mileage small cars, a fast-growing segment for the Big Three and beyond. But they are also reflected in everything from sports cars to pickup trucks, many of which are now sipping fuel with noteworthy restraint.

"Fuel economy is the No. 1 consideration for most consumers," said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst with Edmunds.com. "They still may be buying a pickup truck, but they want the best fuel economy."

The once-beleaguered auto industry was on a roll last year, selling 14.5 million new vehicles in the U.S., a 13.4 percent increase from 2011, according to Autodata Corp. Analysts project sales could top prerecession levels by 2014, on the way back to an all-time high of about 17 million units.

Fuel economy should be breaking records every year from now until 2025, when federal standards will require automakers to average 54.5 mpg for all cars and light trucks. The higher-mileage standards have been in the pipeline since 2009 and were finalized in August. The first major milestone is coming in 2016, when vehicles must average 35.5 mpg.

Automakers are further along the road than it may seem. The federal mileage standards, called Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), use a more lenient methodology that includes laboratory testing, weighted sales and a variety of adjustments and credits to measure a manufacturer's overall fuel efficiency.

Employing a similar methodology, University of Michigan researchers calculated the industry's unadjusted CAFE number for January at 29.8 mpg, meaning the federally adjusted number would be even higher. Getting to 35.5 mpg by 2016 seems well within reach, according to some experts.

Auto analyst Alan Baum said the number of high-mileage vehicles offered by manufacturers has doubled since 2009. The trend goes beyond hybrids and electrics, with diesel and more fuel-efficient gas engines lifting car lines across the board. Baum wasn't afraid to break down the chicken-and-egg question as to what's behind the industry improvement in mileage.

"Without the standards, it wouldn't have occurred," he said. "But they wouldn't be meeting the standards if there wasn't consumer demand."

Those mileage gains were on display at the auto show preview Thursday.

Ford is introducing a 1.0-liter EcoBoost engine to the U.S. this year in its 2014 Fiesta that is projected to top 40 mpg on the highway and will be "the most fuel efficient, nonhybrid vehicle in North America," according to Liz Elser, a Ford spokeswoman.

The current-model Fiesta is priced about $14,000 and has been doing well, Elser said.

"Buyers in this segment, the No. 1 purchase reason is fuel economy, and it's very important to them," she said. "We want to deliver that to our customers in the best way we can. If we're coming in at 40 right now, we want to be able to improve on that."

At the Chrysler display, full-size 300 sedans advertised 31 mpg in large print across the front windshields. But leading the high-mileage roster for the manufacturer is the 2013 Dodge Dart, which began rolling off the assembly line in Belvidere in May. Built on a Fiat platform, it is the first compact offering for Chrysler in nearly a decade, luring new buyers to showrooms with sticker prices less than $20,000 and fuel economy upward of 41 mpg on the highway.

The company sold more than 7,000 Darts in January, its best month to date, and momentum is building, according to Chrysler spokeswoman Kathy Graham.

"We are pleased with the pace of sales," Graham said. "We're not the top seller in the segment — there are others that have been established in the compact car segment that sell more — but we're making progress each month as more and more people become aware that Dodge has an offering in the compact car segment."

A bright red, all-new 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray looked fast even as it spun slowly on a turntable. The next-generation Corvette — the model has been the quintessential American sports car for 60 years — lives up to its legacy, capable of doing 0 to 60 in less than 4 seconds. But it also delivers surprisingly good gas mileage, getting upward of 28 mpg on the highway, according to a General Motors spokesman.

While the Corvette lags behind the Chevrolet Cruze Eco, which gets 42 mpg on the highway, it nonetheless achieves improved fuel efficiency without sacrificing performance through the use of lighter materials and a number of design innovations. Cruising on the highway, for example, the Corvette shuts down half its eight cylinders, waiting to kick back in on command.

"When it's rolling along on the highway, it will go from 6.2-liter V-8 to a 3.1-liter four-cylinder," said James Bell, head of consumer affairs for GM. "But when you ask for a little more power, completely imperceptibly, the other cylinders come back to life."

Bell said that even Corvette buyers care about mileage, especially if they use it as a commuter vehicle. But he said the improvements in fuel efficiency are a direct result of the more stringent federal standards coming down the road.

"We've got CAFE regulations that need to be met," he said. "While we'd love to sell a ton of these, it has to contribute to that CAFE. We can't have a car like this that gets 10 miles per gallon."

rchannick@tribune.com

Twitter @RobertChannick

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Postal unions angry, customers unfazed about Saturday cut

Chicago Tribune reporter Rob Manker gathers some reactions to the recent news that the U.S. Postal Service plans to drop Saturday delivery of first-class mail by August. (Posted on: Feb. 6, 2013.)

The U.S. Postal Service's plan to end Saturday first-class delivery in August angered unions that stand to lose jobs and faces an uncertain fate in Congress.

But the decision, which the Postal Service says will save $2 billion a year, barely fazed a number of people interviewed at Chicago-area post offices.

"No one really sends letters anymore," said David Braunschweig, 63, who was at the Arlington Heights post office to mail a gift. "Putting away mail (both Saturday and Sunday), it won't kill anyone."

Hammered by competition that includes the Internet, the Postal Service lost nearly $16 billion last year and said doing away with first-class mail on Saturdays is essential to its recovery plan.

"It's an important part of our return to profitability and financial stability," Postmaster General and CEO Patrick Donahoe said at a news conference Wednesday in Washington. "Our financial condition is urgent."

The agency will continue delivering packages and filling post office boxes six days a week, and all offices that already were operating on Saturdays will continue to do so. Package volume is one bright spot for the Postal Service. It's up 14 percent since 2010, which officials attribute to the growth of online commerce.

The end of Saturday delivery would be the biggest change to mail service since the end of twice-daily delivery in the 1950s. Overall mail volume dropped by more than 25 percent from 2006 to 2011, which could explain the shrugs from several Chicago-area postal customers.

"I was accustomed to getting mail on Saturdays, but we will get accustomed to not getting it as well," Rich Klimczak, 74, said outside the Tinley Park post office. "The only thing I would not like to see is (postal workers) losing their jobs."

The move, which would take effect Aug. 5, aims to reduce the postal workforce by at least 20,000 more employees through reassignment and attrition. It would also significantly reduce overtime payments.

Local union officials estimated that 10,000 postal workers will have their workweek reduced because of the move. On Wednesday afternoon, the Chicago branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers called for Donahoe's resignation.

"USPS executives cannot save the Postal Service by tearing it apart," Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said in a statement. "These across-the-board cutbacks will weaken the nation's mail system and put it on a path to privatization."

The National Rural Letter Carriers' Association, which has about 1,500 members in the Chicago suburbs, said the elimination of Saturday service puts the Postal Service in a "death spiral."

Although the Postal Service no longer receives taxpayer money, it remains subject to oversight by Congress, which since 1983 has repeatedly passed measures requiring six-day delivery. Donahoe's announcement appeared to be an effort to force action in Congress after comprehensive postal reform legislation stalled last year.

While many members of Congress insist they would have to approve the cutback, Donahoe told reporters that the agency believes it can move forward unilaterally. The current mandate for six-day delivery is part of a government funding measure that expires in late March.

"There's plenty of time in there so if there is some disagreement" with lawmakers, "we can get that resolved," he said.

The divide among lawmakers on the issue does not break cleanly along party lines. Lawmakers who represent rural areas, who tend to be Republicans, generally have opposed service cutbacks. So have those with strong backing from postal labor unions, mostly Democrats.

Last year, the Senate approved a bill that would have allowed the Postal Service to end Saturday delivery after a two-year period to evaluate the potential effects. Similar legislation in the House never came up for a vote.

The Obama administration had included a proposal for five-day mail delivery in its 2013 budget plan. White House officials, however, had said they supported that change only in concert with other reforms. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that officials had not yet studied the latest plan.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., the new chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, expressed concern that the Postal Service's unilateral announcement could complicate his plans for overall reform.

However, he added, "It's hard to condemn the postmaster general for moving aggressively to do what he believes he can and must do to keep the lights on."

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Well: Think Like a Doctor: A Confused and Terrified Patient

The Challenge: Can you solve the mystery of a middle-aged man recovering from a serious illness who suddenly becomes frightened and confused?

Every month the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to sift through a difficult case and solve a diagnostic riddle. Below you will find a summary of a case involving a 55-year-old man well on his way to recovering from a series of illnesses when he suddenly becomes confused and paranoid. I will provide you with the main medical notes, labs and imaging results available to the doctor who made the diagnosis.

The first reader to figure out this case will get a signed copy of my book, “Every Patient Tells a Story,” along with the satisfaction of knowing you solved a case of Sherlockian complexity. Good luck.

The Presenting Problem:

A 55-year-old man who is recovering from a devastating injury in a rehabilitation facility suddenly becomes confused, frightened and paranoid.

The Patient’s Story:

The patient, who was recovering from a terrible injury and was too weak to walk, had been found on the floor of his room at the extended care facility, raving that there were people out to get him. He was taken to the emergency room at the Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut, where he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and admitted to the hospital for treatment. Doctors thought his delirium was caused by the infection, but after 24 hours, despite receiving the appropriate antibiotics, the patient remained disoriented and frightened.

A Sister’s Visit:

The man’s sister came to visit him on his second day in the hospital. As she walked into the room she was immediately struck by her brother’s distress.

“Get me out of here!” the man shouted from his hospital bed. “They are coming to get me. I gotta get out of here!”

His blue eyes darted from side to side as if searching for his would-be attackers. His arms and legs shook with fear. He looked terrified.

For the past few months, the man had been in and out of the hospital, but he had been getting better — at least he had been improving the last time his sister saw him, the week before. She hurried into the bustling hallway and found a nurse. “What the hell is going on with my brother?” she demanded.

A Long Series of Illnesses:

Three months earlier, the patient had been admitted to that same hospital with delirium tremens. After years of alcohol abuse, he had suddenly stopped drinking a couple of days before, and his body was wracked by the sudden loss of the chemical he had become addicted to. He’d spent an entire week in the hospital but finally recovered. He was sent home, but he didn’t stay there for long.

The following week, when his sister hadn’t heard from him for a couple of days, she forced her way into his home. There she found him, unconscious, in the basement, at the bottom of his staircase. He had fallen, and it looked as if he may have been there for two, possibly three, days. He was close to death. Indeed, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, his heart had stopped. Rapid action by the E.M.T.’s brought his heart back to life, and he made it to the hospital.

There the extent of the damage became clear. The man’s kidneys had stopped working, and his body chemistry was completely out of whack. He had a severe concussion. And he’d had a heart attack.

He remained in the intensive care unit for nearly three weeks, and in the hospital another two weeks. Even after these weeks of care and recovery, the toll of his injury was terrible. His kidneys were not working, so he required dialysis three times a week. He had needed a machine to help him breathe for so long that he now had to get oxygen through a hole that had been cut into his throat. His arms and legs were so weak that he could not even lift them, and because he was unable even to swallow, he had to be fed through a tube that went directly into his stomach.

Finally, after five weeks in the hospital, he was well enough to be moved to a short-term rehabilitation hospital to complete the long road to recovery. But he was still far from healthy. The laughing, swaggering, Harley-riding man his sister had known until that terrible fall seemed a distant memory, though she saw that he was slowly getting better. He had even started to smile and make jokes. He was confident, he had told her, that with a lot of hard work he could get back to normal. So was she; she knew he was tough.

Back to the Hospital:

The patient had been at the rehab facility for just over two weeks when the staff noticed a sudden change in him. He had stopped smiling and was no longer making jokes. Instead, he talked about people that no one else could see. And he was worried that they wanted to harm him. When he remained confused for a second day, they sent him to the emergency room.

You can see the records from that E.R. visit here.

The man told the E.R. doctor that he knew he was having hallucinations. He thought they had started when he had begun taking a pill to help him sleep a couple of days earlier. It seemed a reasonable explanation, since the medication was known to cause delirium in some people. The hospital psychiatrist took him off that medication and sent him back to rehab that evening with a different sleeping pill.

Back to the Hospital, Again:

Two days later, the patient was back in the emergency room. He was still seeing things that weren’t there, but now he was quite confused as well. He knew his name but couldn’t remember what day or month it was, or even what year. And he had no idea where he was, or where he had just come from.

When the medical team saw the patient after he had been admitted, he was unable to provide any useful medical history. His medical records outlined his earlier hospitalizations, and records from the nursing home filled in additional details. The patient had a history of high blood pressure, depression and alcoholism. He was on a long list of medications. And he had been confused for the past several days.

On examination, he had no fever, although a couple of hours earlier his temperature had been 100.0 degrees. His heart was racing, and his blood pressure was sky high. His arms and legs were weak and swollen. His legs were shaking, and his reflexes were very brisk. Indeed, when his ankle was flexed suddenly, it continued to jerk back and forth on its own three or four times before stopping, a phenomenon known as clonus.

His labs were unchanged from the previous visit except for his urine, which showed signs of a serious infection. A CT scan of the brain was unremarkable, as was a chest X-ray. He was started on an intravenous antibiotic to treat the infection. The thinking was that perhaps the infection was causing the patient’s confusion.

You can see the notes from that second hospital visit here.

His sister had come to visit him the next day, when he was as confused as he had ever been. He was now trembling all over and looked scared to death, terrified. He was certain he was being pursued.

That is when she confronted the nurse, demanding to know what was going on with her brother. The nurse didn’t know. No one did. His urinary tract infection was being treated with antibiotics, but he continued to have a rapid heart rate and elevated blood pressure, along with terrifying hallucinations.

Solving the Mystery:

Can you figure out why this man was so confused and tremulous? I have provided you with all the data available to the doctor who made the diagnosis. The case is not easy — that is why it is here. I’ll post the answer on Friday.

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Rules and Regulations: Post your questions and diagnosis in the comments section below.. The correct answer will appear Friday on Well. The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.

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Penny Pritzker a candidate for Commerce secretary

Chicago businesswoman Penny Pritzker has been a prominent Barack Obama friend and supporter since his early days in politics and ran his 2008 campaign fundraising operation. (Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune / April 8, 2011)

By Katherine Skiba and Christi Parsons




Washington bureau

7:30 p.m. CST, February 6, 2013

Chicago businesswoman Penny Pritzker has emerged as a leading candidate to serve in the administration of President Obama, for whom she has long been a campaign supporter and top fundraiser.

A senior administration official cautioned that no announcement is imminent and that Obama has made no decision. But Pritzker is under consideration to serve as Commerce secretary or perhaps in another senior position involving relations between Obama and business leaders, according to officials close to the process who spoke anonymously to comment on internal deliberations.

Pritzker is a member of the Chicago family behind the Hyatt Hotels Corp. She has been a prominent Obama friend and supporter since his early days in politics and ran his 2008 campaign fundraising operation.

 She is founder and CEO of PSP Capital Partners and the Pritzker Realty Group, as well as chair of the Artemis Real Estate Partners. She is also a member of the Chicago Board of Education and has had two White House appointments, serving on the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Forbes’ annual list of the world’s billionaires last March put Pritzker at No. 719 and said her hotels and investments were worth $1.8 billion.

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3 dead in West Side crash

Officials examine a Jeep Cherokee that crashed and left three critically injured near 31st Street and Western Avenue. (Nuccio DiNuzzo, Chicago Tribune / February 5, 2013)

By Ellen Jean Hirst and Liam Ford




Tribune reporters

12:58 a.m. CST, February 6, 2013

A man and two women died in a crash on the city's West Side, authorities said.

Firefighters were called to the accident near 31st Street and Western Avenue about 8:30 p.m., according to the department's media office.

Fire officials cut three people out of a red Jeep after the car lost control and somehow ended up on it's top just west of Western Avenue on 31st Street, police  said.

Three people had been riding in the SUV and all were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and pronounced dead there, police said. They were the only occupants in the SUV.

Just before 10 p.m., the radio in the SUV -- which was flipped on its top -- could still be heard faintly from a distance.

The SUV was eastbound on 31st Street when it hit a curb, then a light pole, and ended up on its roof, Chicago Police News Affairs Officer Hector Alfaro said.

"Some of the damage is from the fire department," police said of the doors, which had been cut to free the car's occupants. "But they flipped the car themselves.

Investigators from the department's Major Accidents Investigations Unit arrived at the scene Thursday night to investigate what had happened.

Three people were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, one in "extremely critical" condition, two in critical condtion, according to the fire department. A spokesman at the Cook County medical examiner's office confirmed the deaths.

Video from the scene showed a red Jeep flipped over, with its roof crushed, and a person wrapped in black on a stretcher being taken into an ambulance.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

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Hollywood to the FAA: Let Us Use Drones

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Look, up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s …

If the Motion Picture Association of America has its way, it soon could be a camera-equipped pilotless drone shooting the overhead chase scenes for Hollywood’s action thrillers.

The MPAA is pushing the Federal Aviation Administration to allow the use of what have been called “drones” – but in the movie business are far more likely the size of model planes and model helicopters than anything like what the U.S. is using to target terrorists.

Studios see the airborne vehicles as a way to get better long shots with fewer safety risks and at reduced cost. Currently, such drone use is legal in some foreign countries, but not in the U.S.

In fact, some of the opening scenes in “Skyfall” were shot in Turkey using a helicopter drone system. France has also approved use of the drones, and one was used last year for scenes in “The Smurfs 2.”

“What we are looking for is line-of-sight things that can be utilized in innovative ways,” MPAA spokesman Howard Gantman told TheWrap. “These could be used much more safely than going up a tree and much more cheaply than renting a helicopter,” he said.

Under language in the FAA’s reauthorization by congress, the agency must in the next 18 months develop rules for commercial use of what it calls “unmanned aircraft systems” of 55 pounds or less.

The language is intended to resolve a quirk in current FAA rules: Recreational use of model planes and model helicopters – including those carrying cameras – are currently allowed, but commercial use is banned.

Model airplanes can only be flown below 400 feet above ground level and away from airports and air traffic – but not by individuals or companies flying them for business purposes.

This means, for example, that student videos and films can use drone camera shots, but not commercial films; commercial use is limited to experimental research and development and flight trainings.

“A private company can obtain a special airworthiness certificate in the experimental category, but experimental certificate regulations preclude carrying people or property for compensation or hire,” FAA spokesman Les Dorr told TheWrap.

While the MPAA acknowledges its interest and the MPAA’s lobbying form filed with the U.S. Senate says specifically the organization is pushing on the issue of “unmanned aerial aircraft,” so far such lobbying has been informal, and the MPAA has not had actual written communications with the FAA.

Dorr said the agency will seek written comments from potential users only after it announces a formal ruling.

Another reason for the MPAA’s interest now is that the price for the drones has begun to drop.

Rental of a real helicopter runs about $ 1,700 an hour, for example, with a pilot another $ 1,900 a day – and crew is additional. One Indiegogo ad seeking development money for the company’s “Alpha Dragonfly,” says a drone that can be used for camera work will retail for from $ 119 to $ 249, depending on accessories.

The ad, which offered a Dragonfly for development supporters for $ 99, sought $ 110,000 in development money and raised more than $ 1.1 million.

The website of Flying-cam.com whose helicopter drone system was used in “Skyfall” and “The Smurfs 2″ in Paris and movies in China and South Korea, also features pictures taken of its use in America for Disneyland’s 50th anniversary, Alaska’s Tourism Board and commercials or videos by Bridgestone and others.

All that said, the movie industry is only one among many looking at the technology.

“Many industries are realizing how unmanned aircraft could help their bottom lines,” Melanie Hinton, senior communications manager for the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a group pushing robotic devices, told TheWrap.

Indeed, it’s expected that the TV and movie industry will be small players in the drones use. Companies that originally developed smaller drones for the military and wanting to now expand the drones use for civilian purposes have been pushing hardest for the FAA to act.

They hope FAA action will make it easier both for law-enforcement agencies and private companies to use the devices.

Steven Gitlin, VP-marketing for AeroVironment Inc., a company that makes several military drones it wants to market to civilian market. The company’s 5-pound Qube drone is among those that come with video capability.

He notes that the high cost of helicopters means relatively few police departments can afford them. Those same departments might be candidates for drone purchases.

Then there is the civilian market.

“We have been pushing to use airborne vehicles for mapping and surveying,” Gitlin said, adding the company also hopes to market the products both for search-and-rescue and policing missions and for uses in agriculture; monitoring of bridges and microwave transmitters; and security for public events including marathons and concerts.

In addition, oil and gas companies want unmanned aircraft to efficiently monitor oil rigs, pipelines and other infrastructure, said Hinton, and farmers “want to use unmanned aircraft to monitor the health of their crops, detect for drought conditions, or more efficiently distribute pesticides.

“And in addition to helping the private sector, unmanned aircraft have helped firefighters battle wildfires, police search for missing persons and researchers study everything from hurricanes to wildlife. The potential for unmanned aircraft to help save time, save money and even save lives is virtually limitless,” she said.

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Ipswich Journal: Paul Mason Is One-Third the Man He Used to Be

Paul Nixon Photography

Paul Mason in 2012, two years after gastric bypass surgery stripped him of the unofficial title of “the world’s fattest man.”

IPSWICH, England — Who knows what the worst moment was for Paul Mason — there were so many awful milestones, as he grew fatter and fatter — but a good bet might be when he became too vast to leave his room. To get him to the hospital for a hernia operation, the local fire department had to knock down a wall and extricate him with a forklift.

That was nearly a decade ago, when Mr. Mason weighed about 980 pounds, and the spectacle made him the object of fascinated horror, a freak-show exhibit. The British news media, which likes a superlative, appointed him “the world’s fattest man.”

Now the narrative has shifted to one of redemption and second chances. Since a gastric bypass operation in 2010, Mr. Mason, 52 years old and 6-foot-4, has lost nearly two-thirds of his body weight, putting him at about 336 pounds — still obese, but within the realm of plausibility. He is talking about starting a jewelry business.

“My meals are a lot different now than they used to be,” Mr. Mason said during a recent interview in his one-story apartment in a cheerful public housing complex here. For one thing, he no longer eats around the clock. “Food is a necessity, but now I don’t let it control my life anymore,” he said.

But the road to a new life is uphill and paved with sharp objects. When he answered the door, Mr. Mason did not walk; he glided in an electric wheelchair.

And though Mr. Mason looks perfectly normal from the chest up, horrible vestiges of his past stick to him, literally, in the form of a huge mass of loose skin choking him like a straitjacket. Folds and folds of it encircle his torso and sit on his lap, like an unwanted package someone has set there; more folds encase his legs. All told, he reckons, the excess weighs more than 100 pounds.

As he waits to see if anyone will agree to perform the complex operation to remove the skin, Mr. Mason has plenty of time to ponder how he got to where he is. He was born in Ipswich and had a childhood marked by two things, he says: the verbal and physical abuse of his father, a military policeman turned security guard; and three years of sexual abuse, starting when he was 6, by a relative in her 20s who lived in the house and shared his bed. He told no one until decades later.

After he left school, Mr. Mason took a job as a postal worker and became engaged to a woman more than 20 years older than him. “I thought it would be for life, but she just turned around one day and said, ‘No, I don’t want to see you anymore — goodbye,’ ” he said.

His father died, and he returned home to care for his arthritic mother, who was in a wheelchair. “I still had all these things going around in my head from my childhood,” he said. “Food replaced the love I didn’t get from my parents.” When he left the Royal Mail in 1986, he said, he weighed 364 pounds.

Then things spun out of control. Mr. Mason tried to eat himself into oblivion. He spent every available penny of his and his mother’s social security checks on food. He stopped paying the mortgage. The bank repossessed their house, and the council found them a smaller place to live. All the while, he ate the way a locust eats — indiscriminately, voraciously, ingesting perhaps 20,000 calories a day. First he could no longer manage the stairs; then he could no longer get out of his room. He stayed in bed, on and off, for most of the last decade.

Social service workers did everything for him, including changing his incontinence pads. A network of local convenience stores and fast-food restaurants kept the food coming nonstop — burgers, french fries, fish and chips, even about $22 worth of chocolate bars a day.

“They didn’t deliver bags of crisps,” he said of potato chips. “They delivered cartons.”

His life became a cycle: eat, doze, eat, eat, eat. “You didn’t sleep a normal sleep,” he said. “You’d be awake most of the night eating and snacking. You totally forgot about everything else. You lose all your dignity, all your self-respect. It all goes, and all you focus on is getting your next fix.”

He added, “It was quite a lonely time, really.”

He got infections a lot and was transported to the hospital — first in a laundry van, then on the back of a truck and finally on the forklift. For 18 months after a hernia operation in 2003, he lived in the hospital and in an old people’s home — where he was not allowed to leave his room — while the local government found him a house that could accommodate all the special equipment he needed.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 6, 2013

The headline on an earlier version of this article misstated Paul Mason’s current weight relative to what he weighed nearly a decade ago. He is now about one-third, not two-thirds, the weight he was then.

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Chicago sees surge in foreclosure auctions

More than 35,000 homes and small multifamily buildings in the Chicago area completed the foreclosure process last year, the highest number since the housing crisis began, and the vast majority of them became bank-owned.

An increase in foreclosure auctions was expected since lenders shelved many foreclosure cases while state and federal authorities investigated allegations of faulty foreclosure processes. Still, the heightened level of auctions — 35,244 in 2012, compared with 20,281 in 2011 — along with an increase in initial foreclosure filings, shows the local housing market has a long road to recovery, according to the Woodstock Institute.

"There's going to be pain in the housing market in the short term," said Katie Buitrago, senior policy and communications associate at Woodstock. "There's still high levels of filings. Five years into it, there is still work to be done to help people save their homes."

The Chicago-based public policy and research group is expected to release its report on 2012 foreclosure activity Wednesday.

The year-end numbers show that, with few exceptions, all Chicago neighborhoods and suburban communities saw high double-digit percentage gains in auctions last year. Across the six-county area, 91.3 percent of the foreclosed properties were repossessed by lenders. At the same time, notices of initial default sent to homeowners, the first step in the foreclosure process, increased by 2.9 percent last year, to 66,783.

Real estate agents have worried for more than two years about a glut of foreclosed properties — a shadow inventory — that banks would list for sale en masse and cause home values to plunge. That largely has not happened, but the vast number of distressed properties in the market has kept a lid on local home values.

On Tuesday, for instance, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's websites listed 2,415 Cook County homes for sale that the two agencies had repossessed.

Chicago-area home prices, including distressed sales, fell 2.3 percent in December from a year ago, housing analytics firm CoreLogic said Tuesday. Illinois was one of only four states to see home-price depreciation.

The increase in auctions "is a mixed blessing," Buitrago said. "We've been having a lot of trouble in the region with vacant properties that have been languishing for years. The longer they're vacant, the more likely they are to be a destabilizing force in their communities."

Woodstock found that within the city of Chicago, there were 20 communities where more than 1 in 10 owner-occupied one- to four-unit residential buildings and condos went through foreclosure from 2008 to 2012. Five of those neighborhoods are included in the city's 18-month-old Micro-Market Recovery Program, a coordinated effort to stabilize neighborhoods and property values hit hard by foreclosures and vacant buildings.

Also designed to benefit hard-hit areas are the recent establishment of a Cook County Land Bank and legislation waiting for Gov. Pat Quinn's signature that will fast-track the foreclosure process for vacant, abandoned homes while providing financial resources to foreclosure prevention efforts.

mepodmolik@tribune.com

Twitter @mepodmolik

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