Memnison Journal

The complete set is here at Flickr.  A sample after the cut:

From Dick Meyer at NPR on Blago and Made-off:
As audacious as Blagojevich’s political gluttony is, it is easy to find far worse political corruption, much of it perfectly legal: Distorting intelligence to invade Iraq, torturing prisoners, failure to regulate Wall Street, and systematic pork-barrel boondoggling come quickly to mind. If you’re feeling expansive, how about [...]

From April through September, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry is having a big Harry Potter Exhibition…tickets just started going on sale. I know a mom and two little girls who would like to go…and a whole ton of fans.

Well, if you’d never heard of our Governor before, you have now.    My reflections on this inside.

I, as some of you have probably figured out, am a total news junkie.
Yes, it’s true.  However, we don’t subscribe to any newspapers. 99.99% of my news stuff is online.  *If* I end up with a Kindle for Christmas, I’m thinking about subscribing to the NYT, and maybe the WaPost or the Tribune.  But the [...]

On Van Buren Street, a tan sedan attempted to drive around Obama’s motorcade.  “The SUV cut the car off immediately, and the security team aimed their weapons at the car,” the pool report said…
And always remember why the windows are open in the security vehicles leading and tailing the president’s car: To give the sharpshooters [...]

It was wonderful to see people at the con; the best part, to me, was wandering around and chatting with con friends I hadn’t seen in a while and catching up with them.   Long chats with Kerri Ellen Kelly, Christa (Linda Sugar’s sister), Deb Kosiba (who was minding her store, so to speak, and I [...]

Going back to my response posts,  I want to stress that I never assume that anyone voting against Obama is a racist, or that Republicans are racists, or that either on the Republican ticket is a racist.  I know better.
I’ve lived with serious racists, had racism and sexism used against me and mine (you do [...]

Some more Sissy trip pictures, from the beginning and the end have been put into the Flickr set (which is now organized chronologically).

Some last pictures from Meredith’s trip to see her sister; both of them have been sad and miss each other a good deal. More at the set at Flickr here.

There’s a new report out that is predicting $7 a gallon gas by 2010 and a serious collapse of the gasoline car market by that time as people start to seriously give up having a car around.
This would force the working poor off the roads, but having them use public transport only works in places [...]

The picture that a zillion drivers from Chicago to Galena have seen over and over again is here, but what’s the story behind it?
For now the billboard stands as a testament to Hermann’s dream. “Do you know how many toilet seats there are in the United States? Over a billion,” he said. ”I’m still dedicated. [...]

Chicago Tribune obituary for Ross Cascio, the founder of the Lincoln Park Pirates - er, Lincoln Towing Service in Chicago, that mentions the above as the church where his funeral was going to take place…
ross_cascio_obit (PDF, 350 K)

Going through my pile of clippings, I ran into a Tribune article about the creation of an eruv in the Lakefront area of Chicago.  Never knew what the durn things were, but it’s a fascinating part of Orthodox Jewish practice.  Of course, that may be my law school education talking or something.