Officials at the Regional Transportation Authority were warning in recent days that Chicago area mass transit systems were at risk of grinding to a halt early next year.

But that scenario was sent to the back of the bus Wednesday morning when the RTA board unanimously ended a standoff over the allocation of the RTA's so-called discretionary funds.

RTA Executive Director Joseph Costello said be believes the agreement will give the "service boards" - the CTA, Metra and Pace - sufficient time to draw up their own budgets so the the RTA can sign off by the deadline of Dec. 31.

"This puts us on a reasonable track to get our budgets resolved," Costello said.

When translator Sam Allen Salter met Iraqi author Mahmoud Saeed, Saeed was driving a delivery truck for a living.

Saeed, who has written more than 20 novels and story collections dating back to 1963 when he lived in Iraq, is author of the well-regarded novel The World Through the Eyes of Angels, which Salter helped to translate from Arabic into English. (Saeed came to the United States in 1999.)

Addressing a meeting of the Society of Midland Authors Tuesday evening at the Cliff Dwellers club in Chicago, Saeed said he drove a truck and washed dishes in America "to get some money to live and write."

In Iraq, Saeed was sent to prison six times and his books were banned for years. But that wasn't the only reason he left Iraq, going first to Dubai and then to the United States, he said. (He now lives in Chicago and teaches at DePaul University.)

The Regional Transportation Authority thinks it will get many more riders if it simply tells people how to get from Point A to Point B in real time.

Right now, the CTA, Metra and Pace each keep riders posted on their own transit systems. The RTA has a similar service called Goroo. But no one offers a real-time information service that tells riders how to get around the metropolitan area using all of the available services.

Veteran boaters on the Des Plaines River lately have been reporting seeing something they've never seen in decades of paddling up and down the river.

The bottom.

On the northern stretch of the river the water has been clear. You can see fish swimming along, sunken logs, rocks and, of course, the requisite number of old tires.

Why? Stream specialist Steve Pescitelli of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources gives a few reasons:

The Cook County Forest Preserve District filed its 2012 land acquisition plan with the Board of Commissioners today.

The district raised $25 million through bonds earlier this summer so it could go shopping for land to fill the gaps in its greenway and trail system, protect high-quality natural areas and habitats and expand opportunities for outdoor education and recreation.

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Northwestern University released new details today about its plans for a biomedical research facility on the site of the former Prentice Women's Hospital, which preservationists are trying to save.

In its report, titled Finding Tomorrow's Cures, Northwestern says the facility cannot be built on other nearby sites suggested by the Save Prentice Coalition.

The report calls the Prentice site "the linchpin for the combined plans of Northwestern University, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago."

James L. Merriner, one of Chicago's reigning experts on political corruption, told a Sept. 28 gathering at the city's Union League Club that it might be might be time to rethink campaign finance reform.

The first federal election campaign act was passed in 1971, and it was followed by many, many iterations at the state and local level.

"So we have a 40-year record of testing the effects of limits on campaign funding, and they have failed," Merriner says.

It appears that the old Prentice Women's Hospital will not be on the Commission on Chicago Landmarks Oct. 4 agenda.

Preservationists hoping to save the building had hoped to see it on the draft agenda posted online Friday afternoon. But it wasn't there.

If there is any discussion about the building, Chris Morris, senior field officer for the National Trust for Historic Places, said members of the Save Prentice Coalition aren't part of it

"No members of the coalition have been approached by the city for any meetings or discussion," she said Friday.

"We are hopeful it will show up on the agenda Nov 1," she added.

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The Rev. Daniel Mallette, now 80, was in the news this week for resisting the Catholic archdiocese's effort to nudge him into a nursing home from St. Margaret of Scotland parish on the Southwest Side. He also was in the news in 2002 for fighting off two men who broke into his rectory bedroom and last December when burglars blackened his eyes and broke his ribs.

And the parish council chairman now says, "he has friction with everyone ... that's one of the reasons we all love him."

But in an interview back in 1975, two years before he was appointed to St. Margaret, the Rev. Mallette emphasized that he was "not militant."

The Rev. Mallette became a civil-rights activist at St. Agatha's in Lawndale, where he spent 11 years early in his career. During that time, he went to Selma, Ala., to march with Dr. Martin Luther King for civil rights. He was registering voters in Mississippi when three civil rights workers were killed. He was jailed in Chicago when some of his parishioners were arrested while demonstrating for better public education. One of his companions in jail was the comedian Dick Gregory.

Preservationists trying to save the old Prentice Women's Hospital in Streeterville released a report today saying Northwestern-related entities own 44 percent of the Near North Side neighborhood.

Their tally shows the "Northwestern family" owns 23 buildings on 25 acres of land in the area bounded by Pearson Street, Grand Avenue, Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive. 

The Save Prentice Coalition, which includes includes AIA Chicago, DoCoMoMo, Landmarks Illinois, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Preservation Chicago, wants to save the building designed in the early 1970s by Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg.

The coalition defines the "Northwestern family" as Northwestern University, Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation and Northwestern Medicine.