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Ham and cheddar scones. Egg and watercress sandwiches. Salmon spread on pumpernickel. Sticky toffee pudding. That's the menu for tonight's book club meeting, a perfect compliment to our discussion of Jane Austen's "Emma," led by yours truly. To be honest, we probably won't discuss the book that much because we'll be watching the 1996 film version starring Gwyneth Paltrow as we sip on Earl Grey and English breakfast tea. (I imagine some other beverages will find their way into...
The doorbell rang shortly after dinner Tuesday night. As I flipped the deadbolt and opened the door, I expected to find someone trying to sell me more popcorn or more cookies (both of which I'm currently trying to avoid!). Instead I saw a woman and her young son, who was holding a package, standing on my front stoop. "Does Ainsley live here?" the woman asked. "She does," I answered, and they explained that a package for her had been delivered to their house, which has the...
I was excited to learn, while working on the Pulse feature this week, that I am not the only one who struggles with New Year’s resolutions. I found all sorts of encouraging statistics. Twenty-five percent give up their resolutions after a week, 64 percent after the first month. Only 9 percent of resolvers are successful — and only 41 percent bother to make them in the first place. After decades of failure making resolutions, I tried a new strategy two years ago. I made a “21 for 21” list of nonresolutions, following a sugge...
I've learned over the past three years that change is inevitable - even when it comes to cherished holiday traditions. But there's one I plan to continue as long as I can. The final issue of the year also happens to be the issue before Ainsley's birthday, and I've used this space for more than a decade to pen her an annual letter. I typically make the same two points in my introduction each year and will do so again. I am grateful she has yet to object to the very public...
More than a decade ago associate editor Ken Knutson and I covered one of my favorite Christmas stories of all time. Hinsdale's Wes Gibson and his elves - or rather, employees - from Gibson Consulting Inc. visited homes in this village, Burr Ridge and Willowbrook to bring Christmas to six families who were clients of HCS Family Services. They baked cookies, brought and decorated trees and left a host of gifts to be opened Christmas morning. One family received a new car,...
I feel like Sally Field at the 1985 Oscars. You like us. You really like us. Field unfortunately was misquoted and that's not exactly what she said (read more about it online, if you wish). And we didn't just win an Oscar - or even a newspaper award. But we have been looking through responses to our request for voluntary contributions to the paper, which we solicited in a recent letter to all Hinsdaleans and in ads in the paper (one appears today on Page 15). And they are...
Ainsley enjoyed a piece of chocolate with her breakfast this morning. Chocolate (unless it's in the Nutella on her waffles) typically isn't on the morning menu at our house, but it will be for the next 24 days as Ainsley opens the numbered squares on her Advent calendar. She'll also take one of the characters from a numbered pocket and Velcro it in the manger scene on a large fabric Advent calendar hanging on the fridge. It was a gift her first Christmas from my friend (and...
My cell phone rang at 4:50 p.m. Saturday. It was Slonoff. “It’s a little early,” I thought to myself. “But this has gotta be a call about Thanksgiving.” I was right. Jim was searching for frozen cranberry juice cocktail to make his cranberry sauce — which is actually my cranberry sauce — for Thanksgiving dinner. Then on Monday I heard this snippet of conversation: “I make a sauce of brown sugar, vanilla and butter and then I pour that over the sweet potatoes,” Jim...
Monday mornings can be tough. This past one, I lost my credit card before I even got in the shower. I had planned to combine my morning walk with a quick errand to pick up some cold medicine for my daughter. So I put my credit card in my pocket with my earbuds and headed out. To get a full 2 miles in, I headed in the opposite direction of the store for the first half of my walk. By the time I had circled back to my house, I decided to give up on the rest of my walk and just dr...
I never asked my dad, who's been gone 20 years, about the time he spent in the Army in Korea. He served there between 1958 and 1960, a good five years after the war ended. I found a photo album after my mom passed away filled with pictures of his time in the service. I wish I could look at it with him. I didn't want to make that same mistake with my birth father, Bob Short. He has shared some stories about his time in the Marines in Vietnam with me since we first got in...
I’ve been thinking a lot about the seasons of life. Perhaps it’s the sign of a mid-life crisis (arriving late!) or a symptom of the pandemic’s extended unwind. Maybe it’s my resistance to change, which surfaced early, according to the story my mom used to tell about how I would cry every time she put on sunglasses. On Monday, as I watched our 2-year-old next-door neighbor toddle over and try to decide whether she wanted to say “trick or treat,” I couldn’t help but think of...
I never saw Christina Aguilera's original "Beautiful" video when it came out 20 years ago. I'm not sure I would have appreciated it if I had. But as the mother of a soon-to-be 14-year-old who sees herself as anything but beautiful, I found the remake of the video - released in honor of World Mental Health Day and the 20th anniversary of her album "Stripped" - to be profound. The new video dramatically illustrates the pressures kids are under today, with images from...
"Don't worry, be happy." You can still hear it, can't you? "Ooh, ooh, ooh ooh oo-ooh ooh oo-ooh, don't worry Ooh, ooh, ooh ooh oo-ooh ooh oo-ooh, be happy." Ah, Bobby McFerrin, so much easier said - or sang - than done. Which is why authors like Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who penned "The Power of Positive Thinking," and Dale Carnegie, author of "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" have sold millions of copies. And why magazines like Real Simple publish special editions...
While reading Sarah Ban Breathnach’s best-seller “Simple Abundance” years ago, I first encountered the term “secret anniversaries of the heart,” a line from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Holidays.” “The holiest of all holidays are those Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart ...” The phrase struck me when I read it and is on my mind this week, even though the anniversaries of the heart I am celebrating are not particularly secret...
So let me get this straight. A group called Local Government Information Services - linked to conservative Republican Dan Proft - decides to print what is essentially campaign advertisements disguised as a newspaper. The Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, whose press does commercial jobs in addition to printing its own paper, prints the piece. And now the Daily Herald and its owner, Paddock Publications, are the bad guys? What? Let me be clear. I am not a fan of what I would...
I wrote a column once about the cost of raising kids and got an estimate from my financial planner on the price tag for four years of college starting in 2027, the year Ainsley graduates from high school. The projected tab to go to Northwestern at that time was $475,000. Almost half a million dollars. At first I was shocked. Then I tried to convince myself that she seems more of a state school kinda girl. A visit to Illinois Wesleyan University for homecoming one year...
"Right now, it's like this." I was introduced to this phrase earlier this week while listening to one of the Teacher Talks on the Ten Percent Happier app. "Duh," you might be saying to yourself. "Of course right now it's like this. How else would it be?" Or it might have reminded you of another phrase often used to characterize current circumstances: "This too shall pass." So how is it for you right now? My right now is Wednesday afternoon, with deadline looming and my...
I hope all of you love reading the work of our contributing columnists as much as I do. You’ve seen some different — but familiar — faces this summer as former contributors penned some guest columns to fill our annual summer break. Now it’s time to return to our regularly scheduled programming. And, as is the case every September, I must bid farewell to the writers who are moving off the rotation. This year that is Bret Conway, Mistie Psaledas, Kelly Abate Kallas and student...
Despite the appearance of pumpkin spice coffee and baking mixes in the grocery store and the start of "meteorological fall" today, I continue to mark the beginning of my favorite season with the autumnal equinox (Sept. 22 this year). That said, I appreciate the fact that the kids are back in school (unless they go to Hinsdale Central) and that Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer. With those facts in mind, it seems appropriate to reflect on the highlights of summer 2022....
I still remember the outfit Ainsley wore the first day of kindergarten - a navy short-sleeved T-shirt dress with fuchsia and yellow trim. I bought it for her weeks before school started and might have asked her if she liked it. But that was the extent of her input on her first-day-of-school attire. Things proceeded like this quite nicely for several years. In first grade, she wore an adorable light blue dress with white butterflies. In second grade, a sleeveless shirt...
If you are a woman of a certain age, perhaps you've seen this Facebook post. "To all my female friends from 40 years and up ... most of us are going through the next phase of our lives. We're at that age where we see wrinkles, gray hair and extra pounds. Menopause has already appeared or just waiting around the corner. We see the cute 25-year-olds and sigh. But we were also 25, just as they one day will be our age. What they bring to the table with their youth and zest, there...
We concluded what I have dubbed “Summer of The Beatles: Part 1” (Paul McCartney concert, two American English performances, one by the Beatelles) with a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland this past weekend. I should note early on, lest she feels overlooked, that my sister and her husband live outside of Cleveland and the weekend was a wonderful chance to visit them as well. But we’ve known about the special Beatles exhibit at the Rock Hall for some time now a...
Typing up obituaries was part of my very first reporting gig in 1989. The way things were structured at the time, the new reporter in The Doings newsroom inherited the responsibility — and kept it until the next new reporter was hired. The person who preceded me, if I remember correctly, had to type up obits for about a month. I did it for a full year and was oh so happy to let the assignment go. But life in so many ways is circular, and when Jim Slonoff and I started The H...
Working remote is nothing new. I've done it while I've been sick, while my husband had COVID and the first two years my daughter went to sleep-away camp in Holland, Mich. But I've never worked remotely "on the road," so to speak, where I've stayed in a different hotel every night. That's what I did last week as I accompanied my husband, Dan, on sales calls. We dropped Ainsley off near the shores of Lake Michigan Monday and hit the road Tuesday, traveling some 558 miles to...
Signs provide us with all kinds of information. "Slow, children playing" lets us know kids reside on a particular block. (Since kids live on many blocks that don't have such signs, these warnings also might indicate worried parents live on the block as well.) Signs indicating downtown Hinsdale and the Robbins Park subdivision are on the National Register of Historic Places demonstrate the importance of the village's past to Hinsdaleans - or at least to those who are...
