Category > Moëtry in the Potion
This morning in Champaign-Urbana, a few hundred freshmen are waking to an unfamiliar and unpleasant reality. For the first time in their lives, there's a new soundscape to their living environment. They've never noticed sound before. They've never known what it's like to live between reverberating walls, bordering long hallways of clattering linoleum floors, below someone else. For the first time in their lives, they sleep within spitting distance of a busy street, or actual country music.
| To beat the rush, I submit my Christopher Hitchens obituary prematurely. It's no big deal for either of us. Hitchens and I have both been asked, by serious editors of serious news organizations, to write obits of living people. I did it for NPR. He did it for The New Statesman. He divulges this assignment in Hitch-22, which opens and closes with Hitchens' tale of the first premature report of his death. Seeing his visage captioned "the late Christopher Hitchens" …
Sometime around midnight on June 16, 1972 a small team of CIA-trained spies infiltrated the Democratic National Committee on the sixth floor of the Watergate Hotel and Office Building. 38 years later, it still seems like a weird thing to do. Author Geoff Shepard points out that campaign intelligence long-ago determined that you'd not find much intersting stuff in a committee office. So why did they do it? And how the hell did such a stupid endeavor bring down a …
Watergate was a third-rate burglary, or, Watergate was a massive corruption of the American executive branch. 38 years since G. Gordon Liddy and a team of espionage artistes burgled the Democratic National Committee, people still argue Watergate's significance: dumb bungling or fiendish plot? Your viewpoint presages your political affiliation. Democrats choose option B. Geoff Shepard offers a third alternative: Watergate was an ongoing public relations campaign designed to ensure Ted Kennedy's ascendance to the presidency.
People confuse their cars with their homes. I can understand that. They're lounging in a reclining chair, talking on the phone, watching a movie and cramming salty foods into their fat faces. Sometimes they fall asleep. But the car is not the home. And when you steer your car on to public roads, you waive Constitutional rights enjoyed at home. Police can stop you without probable cause. Police can stop you without even particularized suspicion — just to see if …
"Now you're making me burp," my mother declared, supine, from her hospital gurney. When they first wheeled rolled her into the Recovery Room, she couldn't say anything. Her tongue was dry and swollen. Her eyes rolled and darted. She was Anakin Skywalker, unmasked. Now, a few hours later, she could say anything, and did. Her sentences featured verb-subject-object structure. It was not abstract poetry. Only her meaning was completely indecipherable. She was in the room, but she was not really …
Welcome to a misleadingly titled piece on elective radical mastectomy. (To those of you hoping for boob pictures, I recommend National Geographic.) Toward the end of my research on the amazing Amy Cohen, I realized I'd missed the biggest heroic story in her big heroic story. Amy got bad results from medical tests on her "breast cancer gene." Following her sister's successful treatment for the disease, and remembering her mother's successful treatment in the 1970s, Amy decided she wanted to …
As Mica Swyers pointed out the other day it's moving time. There are lots of new people in town. And lots of others, ex-dorm residents, are experiencing homemaking for the first time. For you newbs who've just stepped off the boat, congratulations on finding Smile Politely already. You're on your way. Although it seems as if you've left civilization and landed in the sticks, we actually have a higher level of urbane sophistication here, what with the average I.Q. skewed …
Hello to you faithful six readers who've clicked through to SP despite the wholly unexpected Delightful Days of July, 2009. Why are you in town? Bucking the mainstream? Furthermore, what are you doing inside? Why are you reading the interweb? The Dog Days of August should afford you plenty of opportunity to skulk in basements, wondering whether you can dig yourselves any farther from the sun. Right now, you are the beneficiary of a meteorological anomaly. Go out into it, …
"Public health issues are very personal to me," she said, recounting how her father died of diabetes and hypertension, her mother from smoking-related lung cancer and her brother and only sibling from HIV-related complications. In each case, she said, her family members died from preventable diseases. This week Barack Obama nominated Regina Benjamin to be the 18th Surgeon General of the United States. Because Benjamin is a black woman who stresses the value of preventative medicine, I can't help but …
Most Recent Opinion Comments
Curtis Orchard is always good for an hour or three, especially if you have rugrats.
eugh….I remember that sex ed class and i’m pretty sure I know the teacher you’re referring to. that place was hell.
Love the story about sex ed at the middle school. That’s what I do every day for my job—it’s so exciting to see students engaged in material many adults and parents assume is above their understanding or maturity level. Thanks for sharing! Oh, and if you…
“Rag Doll” by Aerosmith is a great accompanying song when you are throwing a tennis ball onto the floor to bother the people below you.
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/agriculture/2010-09-01/south-farms-taking-aim-birds-noise.html If U of I did any research into repelling birds, they would use a very silent but effective high output LASER instead of adding noise pollution to the already olfactory polluted area http://www.allpestco.com/2009/06/laser-bird-deterrent-or-laser-gun-vs-birds/
“I have some reading to catch up on, poolside.“ Classic.
What sticks in my neck is that most noise (unwanted sound) is a violation of the law. So why is it often so difficult to get the authorities to address the issue? Why are the anti-social elements so protected? These lowlife induviduals now seem to have the…
Spirit echoes - http://www.iainandjane.com/work/silentsound/index.shtml
People are entitled to peace and quiet. That gift has been lost and once lost is hard to regain. Anti-noise activitists fight for everyone’s right to have peace and quiet. Thanks to those that fight for our right to peace and quiet.
Most Recent Comments
Illinois has simply had no luck at all in these Mizzou games. None. I think maybe we’re do for a couple of bounces to go our way. If we get one or two (or sever or eight) breaks, I think it’s a win.
Jason, Savoy could easily join the CPL tax district, which is probably closer to most Savoy residents than the Tolono library is. But my impression is that Savoy residents as a whole don’t want to pay the cost of the CPL (Tolono’s library taxes are cheaper), even…
Sorry, but I am lagging behind on updates to the map. Also, some construction projects were delayed from their original start date. On a more positive note, I am putting together a map of haunted houses in Central Illinois. I have a few plotted already, and I…
I’ve never gotten the privilege of all the services CPL cardholders get. I just want to be able to go out of my way to drive to the CPL to check out books, pay fines, maybe buy some coffee, and enjoy the library. None of those activities…
These days, there is more to using a library than checking out books. At one time, paying into the Lincoln Trails system probably would cover the expenses incurred by other libraries in the system. Now, with Internet, videos, coffee shops, wireless Internet hubs, etc., I suspect the…
(speaking as a Savoy resident) By paying taxes to support a member of the LTLS, we are paying our “fair share” to use any LTLS library—Tolono, Champaign, Urbana, etc. This is how library systems work. The 6% of CPL’s circulation represented by Tolono users is NOT significant…
I read Timbo’s argument. I think the key word is “speculating.“
I would be interested to hear more about the “word on the street”—how are individual hauling companies fulfilling their promise to recycle?
Timbo makes a smart, sound argument. Reread it.
I joined on 09-09-09 after living here over a year, and having to listen to my dad tell me how his best friend is, like, #27 or something crazy like that, and how said friend never lived further than 50 feet from the Illini Inn while going…
And, I might add, no one is being prevented from using the Champaign library. They are just being asked to pay their fair share if they are going to use it as their primary library.
The equation is pretty simple here. If you want social services, then pay the taxes required to run those social services. These things only work if everyone puts in their fair share. As a heavy user of the Champaign Library, I say bravo to this new policy.
Curtis Orchard is always good for an hour or three, especially if you have rugrats.
What is the increased marginal cost of serving a resident of Savoy or Mahomet? I suspect negligible. What is the increased revenue to be realized by this new policy? I suspect very little. Aside from these financial aspects, what are the most probable results from this new…
Looks like you are also all members of the killer sideburns club.
Thanks for the article, Ben. I was not familiar with this band until now and even though I won’t be able to attend the show on Friday they are now on my radar. A *good* jam band is hard to find, and these folks appear to fill…
Nice article, love the Dead quote in the beginning. If they can get down here to Central FL I’ll definitely be heading out to the show. Some of my friends have finally stopped wincing when I say “jam band.“ I’ve now tried my best at more descriptive…
@Annie: Yeah, my bad. That was the best part! Drinking + memory exercises = fun @Rob: According to Ask the English Teacher, “My dictionary says ‘drunk’ is an archaic past tense of ‘drink.‘“ We’re all about the new grammar around here.
Katie, have the residents of Savoy and Tolono thought about having their taxes raised a little to help their public library expand? That’s a possibility for them. And then everybody wins.
good call on that Herring recording, Josh. Love that version of Exit Music….here’s a clip of the Cinco de Mayo show (from about six months prior). As I recall, this Shakedown went on for roughly a half hour, while getting into the Trampled Underfoot jam in the…
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Sorry, but I am lagging behind on updates to the map. Also, some construction projects were delayed from their original start date. On a more positive note, I am putting together a map of haunted houses in Central Illinois. I have a few plotted already, and I…