Two passings to note.
RIP, Margot Paulos, whose son Dan has been Lilly’s boyfriend for more than two years now. I never met Ms. Paulos, who lived on Long Island, and I’m sorry I won’t have that opportunity.
RIP, Norris Hickerson, whom I knew in Nashville ca. 1983, because we had some friends in common (especially Mike). One weekend in particular, sometime in my post-graduation haze that fall, about a half dozen of us hung out with Norris at his family’s suburban townhouse.
Soon he would return to Hong Kong, where, owing to a career move on the part of his father, Norris had spend many of his formative years. We lost touch until linking nominally on Facebook some years ago. He seems to have made a life for himself in Hong Kong, until passing suddenly of heart disease at roughly my age.
As expected, chilly air blew our way late last week. Not fully winter, but definitely a prelude. A few snowflakes fell Saturday night, but never amounted to much accumulation. And as long as the wind is low, walking the dog is still pleasant.
Spent a few minutes today ridding our dining table of junk mail, including the last of the vote-for-me postcards. Plus a faux newspaper, one of the odder direct mail political efforts I’ve seen lately, and one of the funnier ones since Phil Crane got the boot, which involved a series of amusing anti-Crane postcards.
One difference: the Crane cards were supposed to be funny. I don’t think that’s the case for the faux newspaper.
It looks like a physical newspaper, maybe one laid out by a college newsroom (something I know first hand). It calls itself the North Cook News, and comes in at a slender eight pages. It is a newspaper only in the most technical sense, produced by an entity called Local Government Information Services in the staff box, which lists no staff by name. North Cook News is actually campaign literature of the anti-candidate sort. In this case, against Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
Here is a sampling of headlines:
Maybe Gov. Pritzker should resign too;” [sic] former governor slams current one
Why hasn’t Gov. J.B. Pritzker been prosecuted for dodging property taxes?
— and my own favorite, for sheer entertainment value:
Report says Pritzker-family foundation funding ‘overnight camp’ for cross-dressing eight year olds.
Guess NCN was angling for some O tempora! O mores! sort of outrage, but these arguments apparently didn’t persuade enough voters to neutralize the governor’s 53.8% statewide vote percentage last week, or more specifically his 65.4% in suburban Cook County.