Sorted by date Results 192 - 216 of 245
“I’ve been enjoying your crossword puzzle,” a friend mentioned to me at a party a couple of weeks ago. We tend to get a little insulted when people talk about what they love most in the paper and it’s something — like horoscopes or police beat — that we did not write. But this is a friend I know to be an avid reader of the paper. So I wasn’t offended when he told me he has been enjoying our crossword puzzles. I recognize he is not alone due to the uptick in our phone call vo...
I haven't laughed out loud while reading a book for a long time. I opened Dave Barry's "Lessons from Lucy" a few weeks ago and was reminded what it's like to read something so hilarious I just can't hold it in. But like Mike Royko - the only other writer to make me laugh that hard out loud - Barry has something more than humor to offer. He writes about being treated like an "exceptionally dull-witted" 6-year-old during diversity training, makes a joke and then offers this...
I have a stack of travel journals in which I have documented the early days of many wonderful trips. Unfortunately, I’ve lacked the discipline to finish most of them. So when I saw Christine Dannhausen-Brun posting her coronavirus updates on Facebook week after week, month after month, I was impressed. And I knew I wanted to talk with her. After a hiatus of several days, during which time she was visiting her family in Door County, she caught up Monday with a post for days 1...
I'm often late to the party. I started listening to Steve and Garry on the Loop in August 1993, just about a month before the two ended their 15-year run. I became a fan of The Rolling Stones in the late 1980s, a good two decades after they had their first No. 1 hit. I currently own an iPhone 7, when the iPhone 11 has been out for almost nine months. I blame this deficiency on my parents, who did an even poorer job keeping up with the times than I do. I'm convinced they...
"Why do you print names in police beat?" a resident asked us recently, being of the opinion - as you might guess - that we should not. My initial reaction was to blurt out something like, "Because we've always done it that way." But that's not a very good defense. I've also been trying to follow the advice of a Facebook friend's post in June: "Can we consider the possibility that possibly we don't know what we don't know?" So I asked myself if indeed we should stop publishing...
Holidays always trigger a lot of memories, and Independence Day is no exception. One of my favorite Fourth of July holidays is quite possibly one of yours as well. In 2013 the Hinsdale parade featured none other than Coach Q and the Stanley Cup. When the fire engine he was riding on made the turn from Garfield Avenue onto First Street, you could hear the roar of the crowd from more than a block away. The first Hinsdale parade I ever attended is etched in my mind as well, for...
o her teen years, I fear she will increasingly fall victim to the opinions of others. Younger kids do a pretty good job of allowing each other to express their own individuality. But many kids, as they get older, feel a need to follow the prescription of how they should look and act. Right now, it’s trendy to be a VSCO girl, clad in an oversized T-shirt with Nike shorts, Crocs and a shell necklace, carrying a Hydro Flask and wearing a scrunchie around your wrist. We all had po...
The construction paper hearts on the barricades outside First Street restaurants flutter in the breeze. They carry messages of activism - "No justice, no peace" - and list the names of black individuals who have died at the hands of white police officers, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Others offer affirmations, such as "Compassion has no color," and "We are here. You are heard." "Personally I like the simple ones that said, 'Black lives matter' (and) the hearts...
He was a fixture in Chicago journalism. His death was the second story on the 10 o’clock NBC news Tuesday night. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted about his loss. But to many of us here in Hinsdale, Dick Johnson was first and foremost a neighbor and a friend. To those of us in the Community Revue, he was our castmate. And what a castmate he was. Dick was the guy who would miss a million rehearsals (hard to argue with his excuse — he had to be on TV) and then come in and...
Writing is a strange profession - especially when what you write is likely to be tossed in the recycling bin within 24-72 hours of its publication. And yet, writing is something I've always loved, from the time one of the poems I wrote in elementary school was published in "King Arthur's Court" in the Homewood-Flossmoor Star. The rest, as they say, is history. Most writers agree the craft isn't something you choose to do - it's something you have to do. "The impulse to write...
I’m not very skilled at saying no. I have such a hard time, in fact, that one of my friends/co-workers suggested a simple remedy if I find myself unable to respond in the negative when asked to do something I don’t want to do. I should write “No” on an index card and hold it up. I know I’m not the only person who struggles with this. And the reasons why I do are many. First of all, I’m a people pleaser. This is a role many of us — especially women — have been raised to fill....
I don't remember much about my high school or college graduation - and neither does former President Barack Obama. He said as much in his Saturday night speech during the "Graduate Together: America Honors the High School Class of 2020" program, which aired on many networks. There are some advantages to not attending a ceremony, he noted. First, there are no speakers who drone on too long - as he said he can do at times. "Also, not that many people look great in those caps,...
Schools have been closed since March 13. Quarantine has been in effect since March 21. We've adjusted our celebrations of birthdays, anniversaries, Passover, Easter and Mother's Day and graduations. And now it's the middle of May - a month that has both taken forever to get here and has shown up without any of the usual markers that prepare us for its arrival. May is also Mental Health Month, which seems oh-so-appropriate this year. So many have ongoing struggles with mental h...
The list of canceled events at times overwhelms me with sadness. When the state lockdown began on my birthday, it wasn't too difficult to shrug it off. "We'll celebrate later," we said. Then there was my father-in-law's 91st birthday in April. "How lucky we had that great party for his 90th last year," we observed. Then came Easter. "Thank God for Zoom church services," we prayed in thanksgiving. Then the scheduled Indian Princess campout - the one that would have been...
First responders. Docs. Nurses. Grocery store workers. Food delivery drivers. They've all been thanked - in press conferences, TV commercials and Facebook posts. They all deserve our gratitude, to be sure. A talk I had with a good friend of mine who's nurse at a Chicago hospital really brought that home for me. I also was touched by videos of nurses that aired during the April 18 "One World: Together at Home" coronavirus special. Their faces were bruised from so many hours of...
Do you have a running list of COVID-19 questions? About things you can’t remember, like when the first case was reported? Or things you don’t know at all, like what the criteria for “herd immunity” are? I do. So I did a little research for a DIY Q and A, mostly looking at the New York Times online (unless otherwise specified). I’m recording all my answers here, so I’ll know where to find them — and in case you had these questions, too. When did states issue their stay-at...
Grocery shopping before a holiday always causes me a bit of angst as I try to find the perfect time when everything on my list will be on the shelves and the fewest number of customers will be in the store. My anxiety was exacerbated last week with social distancing on my mind. When would most people head out to buy food for Easter dinner? Good Friday? Saturday? Should I go early? Late? I settled on Thursday after work. I had two hours before our church's Maundy Thursday Zoom...
The role reversal that's taken place at my house over the last few weeks has left me a little unsettled. It's also brought me great joy. As I head out for work each morning, I leave Dan and Ainsley at home. He has been grounded from traveling - something that typically occupies about 50 percent of his time - and she and students across the state have been banned from school. They've set up their work stations at the dining room table, side by side so he can make sure she does...
Despite my attempts to keep a positive attitude as we shelter in place, I'm not doing as well as I'd like. My husband's cousin was hospitalized Monday with COVID-19. She is on an antibiotic, her brother told us, and the doctor is optimistic about how her lungs sound. My mom, her sweetheart and my father-in-law are all in lockdown at their assisted living facility. So far no cases have been reported in their building, but someone in the nursing home across the parking lot has...
This past week has been a week of firsts - for me and so many others. Ainsley had her first experience with e-learning and Dan had his first experience as her teacher/dean/principal. The three of us participated in our first FaceTime live worship session Sunday. We were new users of Zoom for Ainsley's Sunday school class in the morning and an evening celebration my two neighbors (we all have March 18-22 birthdays). I watched as my mom had her inaugural experience with...
My dog is exhausted. It's one of the unexpected side effects of the "social distancing" we're all doing. Dogs are experiencing, as one Facebook post called it, unprecedented levels of People Being Home. And it's wearing Lizzy out. I feel somewhat exhausted by this COVID-19 situation, too. I've been trying to spend more time outdoors, get as much exercise as I can, keep things in perspective and get lost in a good escape novel (currently Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol"). I've...
Sixteen years ago, seconds before the curtain rose on my first Community Revue, I received some great advice from our director. “Remember the moments,” he told me. I still have the list of memories I wrote after the 2004 show, “Hinsdale: The Reality Factor.” I have not been as diligent about recording the special moments from subsequent shows, but those three words from Dave Heilmann have stayed with me all these years. His advice reminds me of a piece I had read in the Trib a few years earlier. Michele Weldon wrote in the...
We all have those songs that transport us back to a particular moment in time. Play Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel" and I'm on the dance floor at the Hippodrome in London on one of the final days of a college short-term trip in January 1988. A few lines of "Some Enchanted Evening" and I'm back at James Hart Junior High School, watching the eighth-graders perform "South Pacific" and my closest friend's heartbreak (long story). And when Barack danced with Michelle...
Chocolate. Alcohol. Social media. Did you give up any of these for Lent? I've always found Lent to be an interesting time of deprivation bookended by indulgences (paczki on Fat Tuesday, baskets filled with chocolate bunnies on Easter Sunday). As a practicing Methodist (read non-Catholic), I found the 40-day period confusing. Why give something up just to overindulge again a month and a half later? I posed that question in a column years ago and received a rather condescending...
I've discovered words of wisdom in unexpectedly places recently and thought I'd share. In response to my favorite closing question in an interview - "Anything else?" - Penn Jillette told Tim Ferris ("The Tim Ferris Show" #405) his goal is to stop using the words "us" and "them." "They say one of the worst things about Hitler was he turned his enemies into him," Jillette said. "The people that really, really dislike Trump, for very good reasons, have become so unkind and so ang...
