* At the Chicago News Cooperative, Dan Mihalopolous and Hunter Clauss have an excellent piece on CPD coverage in high-crime areas versus low-crime areas. Worth reading for background: Ben Joravsky on the vanishing beat cop from 2010. As Mihalopolous and Clauss point out, it's an exceedingly difficult situation: the city is trying to cut back across the board, but the single biggest expense is public safety, the ranks of which have declined in recent years.

* Also from the CNC: "Now add this curiosity: the possibility that thousands of retired Chicago teachers are benefiting from erroneously high pensions." It's complicated and impossible to summarize; read it.

* The always-excellent Achy Obejas on Cuba's shame.

* Interesting dispatch from the Chicago Fed: as real-estate values are getting killed, farmland values are skyrocketing. The Chicago Fed is on Twitter, by the way.

* You can Occupy Naperville on Saturday.

* At Capitol Fax, Rich Miller has an excellent roundup on Quinn appointee Arlene Juracek, a former ComEd exec who runs the Illinois Power Agency (and who still holds Exelon stock).

* Illinois has apparently been getting greener, at least in terms of its energy policies.

* WBEZ's excellent "Out of the Shadows" continues.

* Chicago Classical Review explains why the CSO is facing a deficit: the weather has a lot to do with it, actually. Related: Fast Company looks at how to attract audiences to classical music, and the answer is… parking?

Photograph: Robert S. Donovan (CC by 2.0)