Water Tower PlaceSteve and Mary in ChicagoHouse of Blues Chicago Mike Ditka's ChicagoIt has been a long winter thus far. My sweetie and I had about hit the end of our rope. It started in December with way too much snow and cold. Many trips across hill and stream to fulfill family traditions, only to end up with the much dreaded flu. (I did not have it then, mine staggered itself by two weeks only to take what could have be... Read Full Story

 As I approached my heart quickened with the sound of drums, all sorts of drums keeping a steady 4 – 4 pattern.  Not all the patterns were the same, some of them fast, others slow, the timbre was varied but the rhythm was sustained.  I turned the corner to find children dancing with anticipation over the possibility of getting to hold stick in hand. The growing fervor of drum and beat was moving them beyond containment.  Weaving my way through little ones, no taller than my thigh, I looked pa... Read Full Story

Give me a break!  I feel bamboozled!  The Obama’s had a private CHEF?  Okay, this just blew the simple Hyde Park, one of the crowd facade!  Please, does anyone else get it?  Seriously, we are suppose to believe they are just a normal family, doing normal things.  Whatever! It is politics as usual.  No, America, there was no “suzy-homemaker” living in that house. Check it out, Oh and how much do our Senators make a year, how many grassroot, community organizers afford the sal... Read Full Story

If this old addage, (actually biblical in nature) is true then the United States is in for a wonderful four years.  Yes, I know there are many of my regular readers that are scratching their heads and saying, “wait a minute, you did not support the election of President Obama.”  To you, I say, you are right.  I did not.  But, that does not mean that it is the man that is the problem. It was and is the many things surrounding him.  I still do not support many of his ideas.  He has ... Read Full Story

Thanks to my new lime green reading glasses, Lenscrafter and Vogue. Okay, so it set me back almost $300! I finally broke down and did it. I went for my eye exam and decided that the little $1 readers from the Dollar Tree were no longer going to carry the reading load I have before me. I have just begun the daunting task of undoing the cart before the horse, and am rearranging the steed and putting it in front of the cart, which is what I should have done many a year ago. You see, I am en... Read Full Story

Well, it has indeed been a busy week in the White House.  Around the world we are all settling in to a new President, one who seems to be swift with pen, and has obviously, while remaining silent has been cultivating the changes that would be in place before the end of the month of January.  A man of action, now that is a good thing.  So if he is so swift of pen, then some of these “to do’s” will not be difficult to implement.  He is an education president, so it should be i... Read Full Story

This picture was taken on the 20th of January at 7:10 in the morning, by SRC. The glow of the sunrise signals a new day, the morning after, the cold is present,but yet on the horizon is a warm glow and a promise of a power far greater than any of us. Beyond the wires, the brick, the cement, the mortar, off in the distant is what graces the roof tops of every community in the United States,... a church steeple. Good Morning America, and God Bless! Read Full Story

“If stories come to you, care for them and learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.” Barry Lopez, in Crow and WeaselOur stories are not supposed to be horded and kept in the recesses of our brains, but rather, they should be thrown to the four corners of the world. Just like love, we cannot worry ourselves with the constant concern that it is returned. We know that when we give we receive if not immediately, then ultimate... Read Full Story

#4 - Listen to research!  (”What greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth?” Cicero) Yes, not some recent “pie in the sky” reworded catch phrase used to justify a publisher’s big-money marketing scheme, an attempt to convince us that we need to reinvent the wheel, but research, pure research.  Pay attention to what really works and do it.  Explain to the American people why reading scores have slowly climbed over 35 yea... Read Full Story

"The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost than by the stories it loves and believes in." - H. GoddardI cannot help but connect this to the profound "change" that is about to happen, or, has already happened. B.H. Obama has been elected. That is the "change" his breaking through the glass ceiling. I think it would be unfair to say that he broke through it alone. My assumption is that he would be the first to say that he was merely t... Read Full Story