Saturday coffee.
Another cold week in Chicago. Another cold Saturday morning. It will barely get above freezing next week. We’re in the thick of it now. Spring break is six long weeks away.
My art room was converted from the old school library (before they became Learning Resource Centers), so it still has the original heaters that work independently of the school boiler. They are window units which are intended to be air coolers too. But the cooling components died years ago and they cannot be replaced.
My room is in the corner of the building with two external walls. I am constantly running out to the breaker box and switching the heat on. Then off. Then on. Then off. Too hot. Too cold. Too hot. Too cold.
We are under a flight approach to O’Hare. Some days the planes can get so low you can wave to the pilot and see him wave back. Because of that, we will get federal money to seal and air condition the building for noise abatement. By the time that happens I will be well in to my retirement years.
Bob Herbert remembers Howard Zinn. He wonders why believing in democracy is considered radical, even by Zinn?
NYT columnist Bob Herbert had lunch with Howard Zinn just before the great people’s historian passed away last week.
I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. (He called himself a radical.) He was an unbelievably decent man who felt obliged to challenge injustice and unfairness wherever he found it. What was so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence with the government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to warfare should be found, that blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities should have the same rights as whites, that the interests of powerful political leaders and corporate elites are not the same as those of ordinary people who are struggling from week to week to make ends meet?
The Daily News’ Juan Gonzalez asks?
Can Obama be looking after Main Street while these two characters hanging around?
Obama can’t keep blasting big banks for their excesses while Timothy Geithner stands to his right and Larry Summers stands to his left.
Whether Obama likes it or not, his two top economic aides have become his biggest toxic asset.
The return of “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak.
The names have returned to the headlines after almost 25 years. In a sleezy ad, Dan Hynes, who is running for governor against Pat Quinn, ran a portion of an interview with the late great Mayor Harold Washington which criticized Quinn. Hynes, of course comes from an old Machine family. His daddy, Tom Hynes was part of the anti-Washington clique headed by “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak, once powerful alderman from the 10th ward.
Vrdolyak’s name has also reappeared this week when a three judge panel ruled that the probation sentence Fast Eddie received in a corruption trial was too light.
Judge Richard Posner had said during a hearing last December that probation was “nothing” for such a “serious offense.” Posner also questioned (judge) Shadur’s notion that because of the outpouring of public support for Vrdolyak — including letters from football players Tank Johnson and Brian Urlacher — that was all the more reason he shouldn’t get jail time, saying it didn’t “offset all the ethical violations in [Vrdolyak's] history.”
Vrdolyak will go in front of a new judge to be re-sentenced.
I don’t know about Harold. But there’s a smile on my face.
