Respect

The amazing life of a 25-year-old hamburger

Storm chasers taunt nature. Rock climbers tempt gravity. Golfers follow around a walnut-sized ball for 3½ miles and keep count. In life, we all are motivated by passions that can propel us to interesting, if not, outwardly crazy pursuits.

Santa's sleigh

Legislation making virtual meetings should be defeated

Every city council or school board has issues large and small that impact the lives of the people it serves.

No magic wand for gun violence

Catholic priest and Chicago community activist Michael Pfleger has now twice called on Gov. JB Pritzker to declare a “state of emergency” over his city’s notorious gun violence problems.

Fright night

Postmaster General DeJoy must change course – and fast

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy certainly gets more press than his predecessors. Some of the early commentary was downright bizarre but now, the head of the United States Postal Service is facing legitimate criticism over the degradation of service standards and piloting of postal banking services.

Combine fire puts things in whole new light

The excitement for the start of harvest went up in flames in a matter of minutes on Ropp Farms near Normal in McLean County.

Supply chain

Rotten fruit, appropriate signs and a call from the Pope?

FLICK LITE. The latest listings, as offered by the readers and your own resident Lite Boy:

Hearing probably won’t matter in redistricting, lawsuit might

The Illinois House Redistricting Committee held its first hearing last week on new congressional and judicial subcircuit district maps at the Michael Bilandic Building in Chicago. Another half-dozen hearings were scheduled for the following seven days to redraw the maps, which have to be reconfigured after each decennial census.

The Enemy

Scary

What it’s like to actually be on Jeopardy?

It’s older than many of its viewers, first airing in 1965, just after JFK, before Vietnam was more than just a conflict, a game show that inverts life, first giving you the answer while making you ask the question. 

How are the speaker and the governor getting along?

At the end of August, after the Illinois Senate had been unable to find a consensus on the massive climate/energy bill and punted the issue to the House, I asked Senate President Don Harmon during a press conference why he hadn’t addressed Gov. JB Pritzker’s list of problems, legal and otherwise, with the Senate’s proposal.

Low pressure

Forgetting to make peace

My parents divorced after I left home in 1966 and much of the emotional fall out that followed track...

The inexhaustible journey of a simple Fred

If life is a journey, Fred Spitzzeri is on one interesting road trip. If change is life’s only constant, then Fred, age 67, is the poster child there, too.

Pause

Give the game back to the kids

Whenever I go to a high school or college football game, I cringe at the sight of players on the field, standing as if witless (which they aren’t), looking to the sidelines for instructions from the coaches for the play to call and defense to mount.