One morning, you wake up and discover that your planet is being demolished. It's disheartening. You'd put so much work into your planet.
It's the same feeling you get when you find out that your home is not in the quiet neighborhood that you'd imagined. Instead, it's next to a parking lot of a multi-unit dwelling. Car doors slam at all hours. The ignition and revving of engines happens any time one of your 22 neighbors goes to work or class or veers home from the bars, possibly plowing through your trash cans, certainly not using inside voices as they stagger to their apartments.
Fortunately, in most cities, you'd have a voice in whether adjoining properties can be redeveloped from single-family houses to overflowing monstrosities of humanity.
But not in Urbana.
Urbana's municipal elections packet includes, of all things, a loyalty oath.
It's optional. Nevertheless, a disavowal of violent communist overthrow is the last thing I'd expect to find among materials generated by The People's Republic of Urbana. A paperback copy of The Communist Manifesto wouldn't surprise me. I mean, it's Urbana for Petrograd's sake.
I've enjoyed the lively discussion between my editor and his vast readership regarding appropriate subjects for local newspapers.
It recalled to me an article about porn, also from Illini Media. The article critiqued a couple of porn sites. (I couldn't find it searching the217.com. Can anyone help?) I found it a thoroughly appropriate article for a college newspaper, printed or online. College kids — and high school kids for that matter — are bursting with hormones. The males are particularly bursting, and often. (This is why Joycelyn Elders is my heroine. She understands human bodily functions in a way that churchy people refuse to do.)
Election withdrawal?
Is not refreshing the RealClearPolitics page every five minutes leaving you with a big chunk of free time? Maybe I can help with your doledrums.
Next Up — The Rove Pardon.
Pardons leak from the Oval Office, silent but deadly, around Giftsmas. This year, we'll get a slew of them — just as we did on January 20, 2001. The Biggie, no doubt, will go to Karl Rove.
Deal with it. It's in the Constitution.
John McCain's biggest problem might be honesty. If he were dishonest, the companies that fix elections might ensure his victory tonight.
Unfortunately for McCain, he truly has spent his career fighting pork and the special interests who feast on it. Take, for example, his earnest assessment of The War Indu$try in Eugene Jarecki's masterpiece Why We Fight.
Let's everybody take off school, and work, on Wednesday. Chancellor Herman, school superintendents, bosses: Let's have a day off to commemorate an epochal moment. This moment marks the dawn of a new era.
In honor of Crispus Attucks, Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, Harriett Tubman, Elizabeth Jennings Graham and Rosa Parks, Sarah E. Goode, Dr. Charles Drew, MLK, Alex Haley, Joycelyn Elders...
...and Barack Obama.
Last time I saw my old friend Justin, he was training to be a union plumber. You see, in order to be a plumber, you have to have specific training. It's not good enough just to be smart.
The presidency is like that, too.
That's why "Sarah Palin" continues to be the the two words separating John McCain from electoral viability. And yes, some people still have the balls to call her smart. One of them is Illinois grad Stephen Moore, who recently embarrassed himself parroting the GOP line contrasting Barack Obama and Palin on executive experience. It starts at about 6:12 of this video.
Sarah Palin's politics remain undefined, much less cast in stone. Her Roe V. Wade interview — broadcast on October 1, with Katie Couric — suggests to me that like most women, she doesn't like abortions; and like most women who don't like abortions, Palin is pro-choice.
She just doesn't know it.
Q: How many Corporate Vice Presidents does it take to ruin a Customer Service experience?
A: Two or more
I walked in to the Urbana Meijer this morning at 6:15, picked out my mini-cart, and headed for produce. I picked out a dry red leaf lettuce ($1.49/lb) from the wet ones -- why pay for the water? -- and a stalk of ginger root ($2.99/lb). I also peeked at the Thompson Seedless green grapes ($0.99/lb). As I headed off towards Baked Goods, a pudgy stuffed shirt named Bartlett called to me from across the aisle.
"Hey," he began . . . not the warmest of greetings, "we're not open."
"What time do you open?" I queried, knowing the ribbon cutting was scheduled for 7.
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