Welcome to WeeklyWilson.com, where author/film critic Connie (Corcoran) Wilson avoids totally losing her marbles in semi-retirement by writing about film (see the Chicago Film Festival reviews and SXSW), politics and books----her own books and those of other people. You'll also find her diverging frequently to share humorous (or not-so-humorous) anecdotes and concerns. Try it! You'll like it!

Category: Uncategorized Page 11 of 20

Toyota Tundra Tears A New One in Prius, Tank-side

Terrible Toyota Tundra

I decided to post this account of my car accident of March 31, 2011, to warn other drivers who might not want to have their small car crushed by a giant silver behemoth of a truck, simply because they are driving up Kennedy Drive, on their way to Best Buy to purchase 3 flash drives. Not in any particular rush. Just 12 blocks or so away from home.

For those who live in the Illinois Quad Cities, I want to warn you of this “most dangerous” intersection…(or one of the most dangerous)…in the city. I mean, of course, 30th Avenue and Kennedy Drive, right where the Walgreen store sits. I was driving south toward the Jewel store on Kennedy Drive. I came to the intersection mentioned above and noticed that there were several cars in the left turn lane (which would be a turn to head your car toward Silvis, something I did every morning for 17 and ½ years, so I know that turn well).

I was paying attention. I was only driving 30 mph. You have to pay attention in the East Moline to Moline area, or you will be picked up for speeding. I try to always run radar. The border between Moline/East Moline on 30th Avenue as you drive towards Wilson Junior High School is particularly problematical.

There is a hill on 30th Avenue, or perhaps it is more accurate to call it a dip. As your car heads towards Moline (from East Moline) the speed limit drops from 35 mph in East Moline to 30 mph in Moline, with almost no marking. And this happens at the bottom of a hill. So, the police thoughtfully park their vehicles on a side street, wait for you to reach the bottom of the hill and (probably) move above 30 mph, so that they can give you a ticket for speeding.

At the bottom of said hill you are usually  “fair game” to be picked up for speeding, since you may have inadvertently picked up speed as you coasted down the hill (it’s called gravity), and you are entering Moline’s 5 miles per hour slower speed limit, although you have not changed roads or directions. If this seems unfair to you, join the club. In order to be in strict compliance with the change in driving speed between Moline and East Moline, you’ll have to be applying your brake as you coast down the hill. Otherwise, you’ll be facing the music in court. Be aware. Be wary. You could try defying gravity, but I doubt if you’ll have much luck with this approach.

But I was not ON 30th Avenue this day.

I was merely diving slowly (I only go 30 mph now everywhere to avoid speed traps like the one on 30th Avenue mentioned above) up Kennedy Drive towards the Jewel store in Kennedy Square (and on past it to Best Buy out near Southpark Mall.)

As I approached the red light at the intersection of 30th Avenue and Kennedy Drive, heading towards Kennedy Square (i.e., southbound) I stayed on the right side next to the right curb, since it was apparent that the left-turning cars would hold up traffic that merely wanted to go straight down Kennedy. Here comes the rub.
When you go THROUGH the intersection, still heading south towards Kennedy Square, the two-lane road often has cars parked along the right side curb. Not always, but often. This day, I considered myself lucky. No cars parked on the right. Clear sailing in the “right” lane, (which is not really a lane, but will ultimately narrow so that you will have to “merge” into the left lane.)

As I cleared the intersection, I noticed in my rear view mirror that a very large silver truck was tailgating me. The driver was practically in my back seat. He seemed to be going very fast, to me (remember: I’m the one who only drives 30 mph for the reasons mentioned above), but he may simply have been going 35 mph, the speed limit in East Moline (but NOT in Moline).

I glanced in my rear view mirror and commented, to myself, that I was glad I could continue to hug the right hand side curb and didn’t have to “merge” right away, because the person driving the truck was apparently in a much bigger hurry than me and very territorial about being first with a bullet. He was obviously an “Alpha Male” type who must remain in front of all other drivers at all times. Fine by me, I thought. You just go ahead and zip right on past me! I’ll just stay over here on the right, hugging this curb, until you take your giant silver whomper-stomper of a vehicle and head on down the road. Picture me saying, “Dum, dum, de dum”at that point. I also knew this intersection was a “ bad” one because my mother-in-law once had a car accident there when picking up my daughter from her piano lesson, so, no fool I, I would just hug that curb and let old Mr. Silverback or Silver Truck have the whole road for his giant ugly vehicle. No hurry on MY part to “merge.”
Unfortunately, just as I consciously willed this ill-mannered tailgating creep to zoom on down Kennedy Drive and leave me there, a curb-hugger, he hit me.

I heard a grinding, scraping, crushing sound, and my car shuddered violently. It nearly went out of control.  If this idiot pushed me into the oncoming northbound traffic (i.e., the cars coming from Kennedy Square and heading north up Kennedy Drive), I would be hit broadside. I was fighting to control the car and thinking, “This mouth-breathing Neanderthal just HIT me!”

I searched the right-hand side of the road, frantically looking for a place I could pull over and get my car (and me) out of harm’s way. Luckily, the vacant lot and not-very-heavily traveled gravel road at 35th Avenue and 2nd Street was immediately ahead on my right. I actually had the presence of mind to signal for a right turn before pulling over and stopping my car. I had already made a note of the license plate of the Silver Toyota truck, as I wondered if he would stop at all, since he had just rear-ended a small car driving ahead of him in traffic, a car he should not have been that close to in the first place.

Mr. Neanderthal jumped down from his silver truck and was waving his arms and screaming. Why was he screaming? Beats the hell out of me! HE had just creamed my vehicle, knocking it so violently that I almost was pushed into the ongoing traffic lane, and now HE was yelling at ME. What’s wrong with this picture?

I glanced quickly at the back wheel well area of my green Prius (“the grasshopper”) and saw that parts of it were sticking out at 90 degree angles from the rest of my car. (Ooooo. That can’t be good, I thought.) One thought I had was this, “I wonder if I can drive this car after he hit me and crushed the wheel well area? It might be that the piece that is totally turn off my vehicle will puncture the tire or something.” I said nothing to the wildly gesticulating elderly male driver so out-of-control in front of me. He had obviously hit me. It was too late for him to UN-hit me, so now we simply must deal with the consequences in an adult manner. Or so I thought. That only works if both of you are capable of behaving in an adult manner. I have learned recently that many MANY adults are arrested at a maturity level of a twelve-year-old. In fact, when I visited the State Farm insurance agency, the young girl helping me file the claim said, after she heard how awful the elderly drive had been, “Yeah. The old ones are worse than the younger kids, usually.” Food for thought. Cranky old person? A stereotype, but one this guy certainly fit. And, keep in mind…THIS guy’s vehicle was not hurt AT ALL. The policeman wrote down ZERO dollars damage to his truck, so why was HE screaming at ME? Seems rather immature and unfriendly and, also, potentially designed to distract attention from the very real fact that he had just rear-ended the vehicle of a woman who was even older than he was old, but was still capable of trying to act like a civilized human being, which, I have learned, to my chagrin, many Control Freak types are not. Get in their way and they freak out.

Mr. Neanderthal was now berating me. (Seems odd, but there you have it….) He was being totally uncivil. I immediately gave him my name. I asked him what his name was.

“I’m not giving you my name, you smart ass.”

Well, this was going well, wasn’t it?  I ask the man who has just ruined my car…(and damn near caused me serious bodily injury) for his NAME at the scene of an accident he has caused and he refuses to give it to me!

I tried a different tack. “I think we should exchange insurance information.” I went to my car to get mine out of the glove box.

Mr. Neanderthal says, “I ain’t giving you no insurance information. I’ll only give it to the po-lice.” (He pronounced police as 2 syllables.)

Since I frequently am in Chicago, a second home, and the Chicago police do NOT want to be bothered by people who are merely randomly running their vehicles into one another UNLESS one of them is hurt (neither of us was, fortunately), I mentioned this fact. “I’m not sure the police want to be called, unless there is personal injury, and we’re both okay.”

Wow! Wrong thing to say! And, I admit, more the way it works in the Big City than in East Moline, Illinois.
”You shut up, you smart ass.”

I think Mr. Neanderthal then also called me a liar or some other uncomplimentary thing for having shared this bit of Big City information about police responses to accidents in big cities which, admittedly, may not apply in what my friend D.J. refers to as “Poopyville.” (D.J. means no harm, and, himself lives in Las Vegas, so people who live in glass houses shouldn’t put down wholesome communities that are in the middle of nowhere, but D.J.said it, not me.)

Since I have endured quite a bit of verbal abuse online recently, which would include the Tea Party members who didn’t like the piece I did praising Eisenhower (go figure) and the ex-collaborator who has been trolling some really questionable sites and lying his ass off to the point that legal action will be taken, and now Mr. Neanderthal, who was being a complete jerk. Mr. Neanderthal didn’t need to admit guilt, but it would have been nice to have heard him say something human or compassionate like, “Gee, this is too bad.”

But no. Mr. Neanderthal, whose large silver truck had NO damage [but did have a number of colorful paint chips on his undented bumper] (makes you wonder how many other cars he has hit with his large ramming speed vehicle?) was going to simply verbally abuse me, waving his arms about and acting like a total child and complete jerk. In fact, I think there are even some rules about HAVING to give your name, if asked, at the scene of an accident, which someone closer to his size should remind him about. But this idiot wasn’t going to provide his name when politely asked.

At no time did I verbally abuse this person or call him names, or accuse him at that time of what he had done (i.e., ram into me while following too closely and driving too fast) but, hey! I could have said, “Look, you jerk! Look at the damage you just did to my vehicle! What-the-hell were you thinking, driving up behind me that fast?” But I did not say any of these things to the rude, unpleasant, 64-year-old creep who rear-ended me and then acted put out at ME! I knew he was working on some story that would make this (somehow) be MY fault. He was the type. I could just hear him now. And I could also imagine that, if I made any effort to speak with him further, Mr. Neanderthal might actually become violent.
True, it was only 3:30 in the afternoon. But I was a woman, driving alone, and an old fart with gray hair was waving his hands in the air in a threatening manner. Perhaps it was time to retreat to my vehicle and call for back up. Which I did.
Back up, in this instance, meant my retired husband, napping at home.

I got in my dented Prius, locked the doors, got out my phone, and dialed my husband, who was approximately 13 blocks away, asleep. He, in turn, called the police. I gave the spouse directions to my location just up the street and, within 5 minutes, the cavalry rode to the rescue.

For one thing, I needed someone with some mechanical aptitude to take a look at my wheel well and tell me if I could drive away from this fender bender.

For another, I might need someone to clock Fart Man if he took a swing at me.

For a third, men don’t really like to listen to “the little woman” and it would be far better if I had a man present, backing me up and telling this guy to shut up. I have known this since the days I spearheaded (some would say master-minded, but, with all the collective bargaining rights in the entire state of Wisconsin going under, perhaps masterminding something that only lasts for 31 years isn’t anything to brag about) collective bargaining rights in Silvis, Illinois. That would be the SEA efforts to gain collective bargaining rights. I insisted that a man stand up with me then, as Co-chairman of our teachers’ group, and I definitely wanted one here with me now.

By now, the police had arrived, which means one officer who seemed to be about 30 years old. Fart Man, the old Neanderthal who would not provide his name or insurance information but felt like a Big Man threatening a 5’ 2” woman whose car he had just ruined while driving like a maniac. Naturally, Mr. Neanderthal insisted on telling HIS story first. I ambled over near where he was bending the cop’s ear, because I just knew Neanderthal Man was giving a creative version of how innocent he was. [HE didn’t drive right up my rear end, practically into my back seat. HE wasn’t going fast. HE wasn’t tailgating. He was totally blameless, of course, and I should be hanged as a witch at sunrise.]

This seems to be quite the refrain of late. I had considered taking out an ad offering to be the “scapegoat” for all the world’s problems, (for a fee, of course.)  Mr. Policeman didn’t want me to listen in on the old fart’s version. He instructed me to go sit in my vehicle, which I did without protest, joining my husband there. He had found my insurance papers for me in my glove box when I became rattled at the prospect of imminent injury from Neanderthal man and fled to hide within my vehicle.

Now the young policeman (who actually said, after taking my statement that he wished we had met under different circumstances) took my statement (and it took him a really long time to write everything up, indicating that there was zero damage to Mr. Neanderthal’s vehicle, but $1,500 to mine.)

We have now taken my poor Grasshopper to the Toyota dealership and filled out claims forms with State Farm and I will be without a vehicle for some period of time while parts are ordered and repairs are made. I am grateful that I was not hurt. I am grateful, also, that Mr. Neanderthal was not hurt… although I wish he would try, for once in his selfish life, to put himself in someone else’s shoes and realize that tailgating someone and hogging the road (I would have had to merge, eventually, but HE was not going to let some little Libtard car push his big ol’ honkin’ Toyota Tundra around. HE was going to be Numero Uno in line and, if you don’t like it, well, I’ll just gun my vehicle and run right over you!) And I wasn’t even at the point of needing to “merge.” God only knows what he might have done if I HAD tried to merge, with him in the left lane. I’m glad I never tried to do so while his silver truck was on the loose.

That, my friends, was my Thursday afternoon (March 31), one day after my wedding anniversary (over 40, so alert the media). It was not the anniversary present I had most desired.

I hope Mr. Neanderthal learns to be civil, polite and courteous and also reads up on the rules about how you MUST give your name at the scene of an accident, something that he flatly refused to do. As for the “let’s call the cops” thing: I needed the cops more than he did, since he had obviously done this sort of thing before (judging from the variety of paint colors displayed on his undented bumper) and he seemed to be a very unpleasant, impolite, poorly raised creep. I’m not going to give you his name. He knows who he is. If there’s any justice an even BIGGER vehicle will tailgate him and cream his car some day, and maybe, if he’s as mouthy and unpleasant as he was to me, cream him, as well.
Whatever happened to the days when, if you rear-ended somebody who was driving ahead of you, it was an automatic ticket. That’s what it should have been, for this guy. But instead, he’s still out there, tailgating unsuspecting small vehicles and probably shouting “ramming speed!” as he hits them. And, of course, telling HIS fantastical story to the police FIRST, because God forbid anyone but Mr. Neanderthal is allowed to go first.
Doesn’t he remember the Beatitude that said, “The first shall be last?” Keep that in mind while speeding up Kennedy Drive in East Moline, Illinois, hoping to be able to, at some point, merge into traffic without having to fight your way in.

“Confessions of an Apotemnophile”

[*The story reprinted below is just one of those from my short story collection Hellfire & Damnation, which is due out soon from The Merry Blacksmith publisher. Read more about the collection at www.HellfireandDamnationtheBook.com, which will be available from Amazon.com in both print and e-book formats this month. It is Stoker-recommended and nominated for a Silver Feather Award and an IPPY.]

CONFESSIONS OF AN APOTEMNOPHILE

by Connie (Corcoran) Wilson, M.S.

Apotemnophilia. What-the-hell is THAT? Sounds like a breed of hippopotamus. The word slid deliciously off my tongue as I sat in the waiting room, thumbing through the reference work the psychiatrist had given me.

Body integrity identity disorder. What’s that got to do with me? There’s nothing wrong with me. Nothing that a little amputation won’t fix, that is. I’ve wanted to be rid of my left leg, now, since I met my first amputee at the hospital with my mother when I was six years old.

“What happened to your leg, Mister?” I asked. Mom was around the corner in the hospital, visiting Grandpa, who was in an oxygen tent. She had parked me on a bench near the elevator. She told me not to move a muscle before she entered the room where my Grandfather lay dying. I think she was afraid that I would be too upset seeing Gramps in his weakened condition. The end was near.

The stranger smiled. “It’s a long story, little boy.”

“That’s okay. I’m waiting for my mom, anyway.”

“I think your mother should be here if I’m going to tell you how I lost my leg. She might not approve of my story.” He held his hands outstretched, in the universal gesture that means, “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.” Sort of a half-shrug, palms upward.

And so Mr. Burden, sitting in his wheelchair waiting for the elevator, did not tell me until much later how he had gone to the park that warm September day in Florida, sat cross-legged on the lawn, rested the shotgun on his right thigh, cocked the trigger and intentionally blown off his left leg. The shot caused little pain. He made sure of that by aiming the barrel at a pre-selected point on his knee. Blood and muscle were exposed everywhere. The lower leg was hanging only by a grisly thread of bone and tissue. He tied the tourniquet tightly enough around his upper thigh to keep from bleeding to death.

Mr. Burden, a retired architect, then reached for the cell phone, which he’d placed next to him before the blast, dialed 911, and summoned help. Today, as he sat in the wheelchair in this hospital, five feet from the bench where I waited for my mother, he was not about to tell me his story. I would only learn it later, in adulthood.

But his story became my story.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the mysterious man and his missing leg. I kept looking at my left leg. When I returned home, I started tucking my left pants leg up under me, pretending that my left leg was gone.

“Gregory White! What are you doing?”

“Just playing.”

“Playing what?”

“Just playing around.”

“Go outside and really play. Run around with the other boys. Quit that!” My mother walked back into the kitchen from my room. She seemed upset.

Let’s face it: I was a strange kid. From the time I was six, I often thought of Mr. Burden’s missing limb. And I wished with all my heart that my own left leg were missing above the knee. I felt deep guilt at hating my left leg, but I couldn’t rid myself of my loathing for it. I wanted it gone. Permanently. It was my burden.

For a long time, I thought I was the only one in the world with this bizarre desire.  I felt deep guilt. I wanted this aberrant wish of mine to disappear. I wanted to be “normal.” If Mr. Burden had told me what had happened to his leg, that day in the hospital, would it have made me feel more “normal,” knowing that there were more of me? I don’t know.  Finally, I acted on my secret suppressed dream and contacted a physician. I was thirty years old.

“Doc, I want you to remove my left leg above the knee.”

The physician looked startled. He glanced away from me. “What?”

“I want you to amputate my left leg. Above the knee.”

“Is there something wrong with your leg?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then why do you want it cut off?

“I’ve had this feeling since I was six years old. I just do.”

The orthopedic surgeon took out a pad and scribbled Dr. Hans Frank, 210 West 42nd Street, Suite 703. Before he handed it to me, he said, “My agreeing to amputate a healthy limb would be crazy. It would be a violation of the Hippocratic oath. It would be tantamount to a paranoid-schizophrenic coming in here and telling me to ‘talk to the other voices’ in treating him. We all live by the credo, ‘First do no harm.’ You don’t need a surgeon. You need a good psychiatrist.”

Dr. Frank, in turn, recommended the article I had been reading in his waiting room, Apotemnophilia, sub-titled “Two Cases of Self-demand Amputation As a Paraphilia.” The only promising thing about the article was its inclusion in The Journal of Sex Research. I was sure Dr. Frank was a very good psychiatrist, but I didn’t think I’d be a very good patient. I tossed the article in the glossy magazine towards the stack of reading material on the waiting room table. It hit the top of the untidy stack, and a small landslide of stacked-up magazines and papers slid noisily to the floor, causing the other patients to stare in my direction.

Embarrassed, I rose to leave, before I had even been seen. Disappointment, again.

I knew I was absolutely fine, despite the first doctor’s reaction. I also thought that finding some other people like me would be helpful. That is how I met up with Paul Campagna on the Internet.

“The apotemnophilia group is divided into pretenders, devotees and wannabees, “ Paul told me during our first phone conversation. Paul would stop to cough a deep smoker’s cough every few minutes.

“What’s the difference?

“A pretender just wants to make a person think he’s disabled. He uses a wheelchair or crutches. Stuff like that.”

“OK. What’s a devotee do?”

“A devotee is sexually attracted to people who have had amputations.”

“Really?”

“Really,” said Paul.

“And wannabees?”

“Wannabees get the most attention. They really and truly live for the removal of the healthy limb. You and I are wannabees. Do you want to do something about it?” When he asked me this, he leaned forward, cigarette in hand, the ash on the end hovering perilously above my martini on the bar, “Jimmy’s Place,” where we had agreed to meet in person. There was a glint in his eye that told me he was not just making idle conversation.

Paul began, “I feel like my legs don’t belong to me. They shouldn’t be there. My legs cause me to feel an overwhelming sense of despair.” A heavy sigh followed that statement. The smoke from his cigarette spiraled towards the bar’s ceiling, as I re-distributed my weight on the bar stool covered in the fake red leather. Naugahyde, I think it’s called, and my butt made farting sounds when I slid atop it.  This was the neutral location we had selected to meet and talk about our mutual ailment. No commitments, no recriminations if we didn’t get along when we met. We’d just play it by ear. It was a seedy-looking place, with old Sinatra songs like “My Way” playing in the background, as Paul smoked and coughed his way through his comments.

I nodded my head in agreement with Paul’s words about being comfortable in your own body and cracked a joke, “I’m just trying to get a leg up on this thing.”  Puns were my weakness. If Paul had no sense of humor about our condition, we wouldn’t get along.  But he smiled appreciatively and raised his martini glass to clink against mine, saying, “Touché.” Followed by “Cheers!”  We drank in silence for a moment, considering our mutual plight.

Paul was not as new to this disorder as I was. He had been trying to convince a reputable doctor in his home state of Connecticut to amputate both of his legs for the past fifteen years. He had logged more shrink time on the couch than Woody Allen. Now he was sixty years old and he was just….ready.

“What can we do…if we’re wannabees?” I asked Paul.

“I’ve been doing some research,” Paul said. “There’s supposed to be a doctor in Matamoras, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas. He’ll perform the surgery, …for a price.”

“How much does he want?” I asked.

“Twenty thousand dollars for me. It’s ten thousand per leg.”

I emitted a low whistle. Twenty thousand dollars was a fair chunk of change. But Paul was a wealthy attorney, and the insurance game had been good to me. Paul and I set off for Matamoras, full of hope that the doctor he had read about would free us both of our unwanted appendages.

When we arrived in Matamoras, we searched for the doctor’s office in the winding streets of the old city, near the Cathedral. The trees in the park across the street from the church were festooned with winding, upward-spiraling strings of white lights, as it was near Thanksgiving. It was a surreal Disneyland effect, given our reasons for being here. When we couldn’t find the doctor’s office, we called the cell phone number he had given us.

“No. I don’t do the surgery in the office, and I’ve recently moved,” he told Paul on the phone. “Check into a suite at the brand new Holiday Inn on the edge of town.” It seemed that being brand-new was a trade-off for not being a hospital.

“But…you won’t do the surgery there, will you?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. It’s quite safe,” he said. “Do you have the money?”

Paul quickly reassured the mysterious “Dr. X,” as he wished to be called, that he had twenty thousand dollars for the removal of both of his legs, and I had ten thousand dollars for the removal of just my left leg, below the knee. We proceeded to the Holiday Inn, as directed, and checked in. I used a fake name; I was prepared to pay cash. The motel already had Christmas trees set up in the lobby, decorated with gold bows, even though it was only Thanksgiving. Nothing like rushing the season, I thought. And then I thought, Christmas this year I won’t have to live with my left leg. And I smiled for the first time since I had left home in New York, thinking what a nice early-season present that would be.

At the desk, we asked the receptionist if she knew “Dr. X.”

She looked away and then said, “Yes.” Nothing more. After that, she scurried from the desk and into the back room. Paul and I exchanged wary glances.

When we had each checked into our suites, which were, as advertised, brand new, we met in the bar for a drink. Paul began chain-smoking immediately, as the plastic palm tree in the corner alternately lit up blue and then green, advertising a brand of tequila I had never heard of.

“I don’t know, Paul. I’m not so sure about this,” I said. Paul sensed my uneasiness, but, by this point, he had adopted a certain fatalistic attitude.

“Nothing ventured; nothing gained,” he responded. He put out the cigarette he was smoking, shrugging as he did so and coughing as though he might not make it till surgery in the morning.

“I know you’re right, but what do we really know about this doctor? He won’t even give us his real name.”

“Well, you understand why that is, don’t you? He’d be arrested. No doctor in the United States will knowingly amputate a healthy limb. This doctor is from Brownsville, but he crosses the border to do the surgeries here, for fear he’ll lose his license to practice medicine if the authorities in the United States find out. If it’s any consolation to you, I found out that his real name is Dr. Miguel Ortega, even though he wants us to call him ‘Dr. X.’”

“Yes, I understand why that is,” I said, “but it’s hardly confidence-inspiring.”

“Look at it this way, Gregg. You don’t have to go through with it. I’m going to do it. It’s now or never, for me. I’ve been this way for over twenty-five years. I just don’t want to go on living this way any longer. This doctor has done many sexual reassignment surgeries. Compared to cutting off some guy’s schlong, cutting off my sixty-year-old legs shouldn’t be a big deal.” He threw back another vodka martini and smiled. We both laughed at his use of the word “schlong,” and Paul lit another cigarette.

And so it was that Paul’s legs were surgically removed at the Holiday Inn in Matamoras, Mexico, at daybreak. During the night, I had a moment when I realized I could not go through with my surgery. I dreamt of limbless legs, like those iron statues in Grant Park in Chicago, marching towards an open flame-filled crematorium door. Bodiless legs. When I awakened, I was shaking like a Mexican hairless and drenched with a cold sweat. I just was not as brave as Paul. Or maybe not as desperate.

When I left him, Paul was recuperating in his suite, two Mexican nurse’s aides by his side.  He was very groggy and doped up on painkillers. I squeezed his hand, wished him well, and left for the airport. I pocketed an OxyContin pill or two from the tray near his bed, figuring I’d find out what old radio Rush found so addictive about them. Might not have the opportunity again; Paul wouldn’t mind. Plus, Paul was currently in no condition to argue about it, if he did.

One week later I read about the arrest of a Dr. Miguel Ortega in Brownsville. He was charged with murder after the body of a sixty-year-old man, Paul Campagna, was found in a suite at the Holiday Inn in Matamoras, Mexico. The victim had been dead for three days. Gangrene.

I put down the USA Today, stunned and nearly bit through my lower lip. Paul! It’s Paul! I can’t even honor his memory by going to his funeral. If anyone were to find out that I had been Paul’s companion in Mexico, who knew what might happen? I could lose my job. Insurance agencies frown on their top agents running off to Mexico to have their healthy legs amputated. I could hear the water cooler talk now. Thank God I paid cash and used an alias when I checked into that Holiday Inn!

A few months passed, and my longing to become limbless grew more intense. First, I contemplated killing my lower left leg by submerging it in a vat of dry ice. I’d read about a woman in Wales who had succeeded in doing that. After that, the doctors had to help her. Then it came to me.

I would follow the lead of the very first amputee I had ever encountered: Mr. Burden. Only I wouldn’t use a shotgun because, quite frankly, I feared I would lack the necessary courage to pull the trigger at the moment of truth. After all, I had failed to pull the trigger in Matamoras, figuratively speaking.

First, I charged up my cell phone. I already had an Amtrak schedule. Sometimes I use the train to travel into the city. I began drinking vodka martinis in the afternoon, in honor of Paul, and I drove to the deserted railroad crossing. The midnight train would come through. I would tie a tourniquet in place before the train’s arrival, place my leg on the track, and call 911 to summon help. It would work! It had to; I owed it to myself, and I owed it to Paul.

I had taken the Oxycontin I had taken from Paul’s motel room (Paul’s purloined pills) and the several martinis I’d drunk helped me quell my fear, as I held tightly to the cell phone that would summon the ambulance after the train had done the dirty work. To be honest, I was so smashed by the time I heard the sound of the oncoming locomotive that I was actually drunkenly humming “Midnight Train to Georgia.” The wet grass beside the tracks had stained my white shirt. The cold steel of the rail, cooler in the drop of the evening temperature, felt comforting, somehow. It reminded me of my childhood bicycling days, when I’d put my legs up on the handlebars and roll full-speed down Twelfth Street near my house. I was ready to roll now. Full speed ahead.

The pain, when the train crossed over and amputated my leg, was excruciating.  I was almost zonked out… just drunk enough to lay there, my left leg extended across the tracks. I was scared, yes, but I was determined. This time, there would be no turning back. I kept thinking, I hate my leg, I hate my leg, I hate my leg.

After the train came barreling through, oblivious to my presence on the tracks, I picked up my cell phone and dialed “911.”

I heard, “We’re sorry. Your carrier has no service in this area.”  The no-service message repeated five times, followed by a tinny three-toned beep.

Please hang up and try your call again. Robotic. Chilly. Useless. The phone fell from my grasp as I lapsed into unconsciousness.

Thanksgiving, 2010

Ava & Elise Dancing

More Piano Highlights

Wilson Family Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving Day, 2010, saw 22 Wilsons or Casteleins gather in East Moline, Illinois, for the 42nd straight year.

Here is some film of the youngest members of the clan, Ava & Elise Wilson and Sofia Castelein playing the piano on Thursday, November 25th, 2010.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” opened and it is, indeed, a fitting sequel to the 1987 film. Oliver Stone’s revisiting of greed and corruption on “Wall Street” comes to us at a time when we have just dodged the bullet of a second Great Depression (or have we?)

The film opens with a scene of Gordon Gekko’s (Michael Douglas’) release from what is billed as Otis Federal Prison (actually Sing Sing) in 2001, after 8 years behind bars for insider trading and other financial misdeeds while working on Wall Street. When Gordon’s personal belongings are returned to him, the huge cell phone is the most anachronistic object. It is huge, by today’s standards. He walks outside to find no one waiting for him. One imagines the scene to be analogous to what would occur if Bernie Madoff were ever to be released from prison.

The backstory involves Gekko’s purported desire to reconcile with his daughter, Winnie (Carrie Mulligan). He says several times, “Winnie’s all I got left.” Unfortunately, Winnie has not talked to Gordon in several years, apparently the result of her feeling that, had Gordon been there, her brother Rudy would not have died of a drug overdose.

These scenes must have cut very close to the bone for the veteran actor. His brother Eric died of a drug and alcohol overdose on July 6, 2004 at age 46. Couple that with the recent incarceration of Michael Douglas’ only son Cameron for trafficking in meth and you have a man who can relate to the scenes he plays opposite Academy Award nominee Carrie Mulligan as his daughter Winnie

With the recent announcement (Aug. 16, 2010) that Michael Douglas has Stage 4 throat cancer many of the movie’s lines take on added significance, such as this one: “Time is the priority, not money.

Shia LaBoeuf as Jake Moore is in love with Gordon’s (Michael Douglas’) daughter Winnie and has proposed marriage to her. She has accepted. He is a trader on Wall Street and she runs a left-leaning liberal blog called “The Frozen Truth.” To a veteran movie-goer like myself, I consider it noteworthy that, when Jake (LaBoeuf) wants to break news to the world, rather than going to the “New York Times” like Robert Redford did in “Three Days of the Condor” or to the “Washington Post” in “All the President’s Men,” he goes to his girlfriend Carrie and lets her break the story on her blog. (Maybe there’s hope for my www.WeeklyWilson.com blog, after all!).

The best thing about this film is the script, written by Allan Loeb and Steven Schiff, based on the original characters from the 1987 film created by Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser. With the excellent lines that have been scripted for them, all the actors give tour de force performances. All are genuinely convincing right down the line, starting with Douglas, LaBoeuf and Mulligan and moving on to Josh Brolin as  bad guy trader Bretton James, veteran character actor Eli Wallach as “Jules”, Frank Langella as Jake Moore’s elderly mentor, and too many other veteran actors and actresses to mention each by name (Oscar-winner Susan Sarandon plays a small part as Jake’s mother and Sylvia Miles has an even smaller part as a real estate agent.

Here are a few of the lines from the film that will give you its flavor:

Frank Langella, as Lou, the old trader at the fictional firm Keller Zabel, which seems to have been modeled on:  “It’s no fun any more.  It’s just a bunch of machines telling us what to do.”

On September 15, 2008, IRL (in real life), Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy following the housing and credit crash on Wall Street. It was the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, with Lehman Brothers holding more than $600 billion in assets. The U.S. government turned a deaf ear to pleas for help from Lehman Brothers to help it remain afloat. Later, however, the government decided that AIG was “too big to fail’ and bailed out that financial institution (and several others), using U.S. taxpayers’ money. In this fictional account of recent history, Lehman Brothers is represented by the fictional firm of Keller Zabel, whose shares plummet from $79 to an offer of $2 made to old hand Lou (Frank Langella), a low blow, which, in filmdom, is engineered by bad guy Josh Brolin portraying trader Bretton James. There are many pseudonyms for real Wall Street firms in the film. There is the fictitious Churchill Schwarz (Goldman Sachs?) and the nefarious Locust Fund, as well as Hydra Offshore Oil, which is LaBoeuf’s pet project to turn water into a substitute for oil.

At one point in the movie, Jake Moore (Shia LaBoeuf) asks Michael Douglas’ character of Gordon Gekko, “Are we going under?” Douglas responds, “You’re asking the wrong question.” Jacob says, “What’s the right question?” And Gordon responds, “Who isn’t?”

Telling old hand Lou (Frank Langella) that “Your valuations are no longer believable” drives him to commit suicide, and much of the rest of the film is about Jake’s desire to exact revenge for his mentor’s death.

The scene in the college auditorium where Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is lecturing has been in heavy rotation on televison ads for the film, and it is a good scene. Among other things Gordon says (courtesy of scriptwriters Loeb and Schiff), is: “You’re the NINJA generation:  No income. No job. No assets.” Gordon also repeats his mantra that “Greed is good” and says, “Now, it seems, it’s legal.” He says that “Only 75 people in the world know what they are talking about” regarding Wall Street traders and says, “Greed got greedier…The beauty of the deal; no one is responsible because everybody’s drinking the same Kool Ade.” He also says, “The mother of all evil is speculation” as he comments on “borrowing to the hilt.” Listening to the cancer-stricken Douglas (Stage 4 throat cancer) call the Wall Street situation “systemic, global…it’s a cancer” hits home.  Phrases like, “He’s (Lou) one of the toughest guys who ever wore shoes” also resonate, as Shia LaBoeuf relates how Lou (Frank Langella) saw to it that he got a scholarship to Fordham.

Another great soliloquy:  “Money’s a bitch that never sleeps, and if you don[t keep one eye on her, you may end up with it gone forever.” Susan Sarandon is run in as a nurse-turned-realtor who has been making money flipping houses and is constantly turning to her stockbroker son to bail her out as the market crashes.  At one point, Shia says to his mother, “What’d you think:  it was just going to shoot up in perpetuity?” as he writes out checks to his mother for $200,000 first and, later for $30,000 he barely has, at that point. When Shia LaBoeuf reveals that Bretton James has just offered him a job with his firm, Douglas says, “You just rocketed to the center of the Universe.” A later stunt by Jake to get even with Bretton which involves spreading rumors that are not necessarily true leads Douglas to warn LaBoeuf that, “You induced others to trade on information you knew to be false,” warning him that this, too, is a crime punishable by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission).

There are several metaphors for the fragile yet brutal nature of Wall Street trading, including a framed tulip photograph and a painting that is supposedly by Goya. As a seasoned movie-goer you know that, sooner or later, one character or the other will smash either the framed tulip picture or the Goya.

I enjoyed the line that Douglas has when Jake Moore comes to him and tells him that Bretton James “screwed me.” Douglas replies, “Shocker.” Not too heartening is Douglas’ line, “They (greedy traders) never die. They just come back in different forms.”  Here’s another good one from Gordon Gekko (Douglas):  “When choosing between 2 evils, I always like to try the one that I haven’t tried before.”

I genuinely liked this movie (although it didn’t hold my interest nearly as well as “The Town” that is out now), but there were 2 things that I didn’t like that much. One was the music, with original music by Craig Armstrong and Bud Carr as the Executive Music Producer. (The music in “Up in the Air” with Rick Clark supervising was infinitely more appropriate). At the end, the song playing over the credits is reggae-influenced, which seemed somehow out of synch with the world of Wall Street. The other thing that disappointed me was one of two reconciliations that takes place at film’s end. I don’t want to ruin the film for those who have not yet seen it, so I’ll just say that one seemed appropriate and consistent with the character portrayed and one seemed contrived.

A recent line from George Clooney’s “The American,” scrawled on my notepad, seemed to fit this movie, too. “You are Americans. You think you can escape history. You live for the present.” Too true.

East Moline Hog Farm Earns 2 Pages in 8/17 Chicago “Tribune”

In reading today’s Chicago “Tribune,” a turn to pages 6 and 7 revealed a two-page story about the Triumph hog plant in East Moline, the town in which I reside most of the time and the school system which my children attended.

The Triumph hog plant has been hanging fire for 5 years or so. Current Mayor John Thodos said, “This project is already four or five years old, so if anyone has patience, I do.” Thodos came in as Mayor, displacing Jose “Joe” Moreno in a race that saw many discrepancies at a ward level and, I have no doubt, would have shown even more discrepancies had the recount been done city-wide. As the 1st Ward candidate who paid for a recount and has written about the really astonishing irregularities that occurred in just one small ward (i.e., voters who did not exist…but whose addresses were the residences of employees of then-Democratic County Chairman John Gianulis; 3 people in a booth at once; dying people signing absentee ballots that they knew nothing about; actual miscounting of the absentee ballots, proven during a paid-for recount), it has been with some interest that I have watched the progress (or lack thereof) in the city of East Moline since that election.

Most, if not all, of the plans that Mayor Moreno had laid out for the city, which included a downtown Farmers’ Market area among others and a “Revitalize East Moline” committee of leaders in the area, but did not include a giant hog plant that would slaughter 16,000 hogs a day, were buried when Mayor Thodos’ ascended to the throne.   Mayor Thodos recently tried to run (unsuccessfully) for a different county-wide office, so it is clear that he viewed the Mayor’s office only as a stepping-stone in his political career.

Under Mayor Thodos, East Moline has been left “out of the loop,” the Loop being the all-Quad City bus loop. The downtown has continued to deteriorate and businesses have continued to flee. Representative Phil Hare (D, IL) says that “There is 25% unemployment in the building trades right now, and this (Triumph plant) would put at least 600 people to work on construction.  We shouldn’t summarily thumb our nose at these jobs because of something that potentially might happen.  We can act out of fear again or we can act out of trying to improve our economy.” Those of us reading about the impending hog plant might also add, “or we can act intelligently, but in the best long-term interests of the community.”

This last sentiment regarding remediating any odor or groundwater problems the plant creates seems valid and admirable, but there are many who are less enthused…like those who live in East Moline near the plant or those who know the ins-and-outs of giant hog confinement plants, which are growing in number and size. It’s a bit like the BP Gulf Disaster. Wouldn’t an ounce of prevention have been worth a pound of the not-that-successful cure we’ve seen for the past many months?

 In 1980, U.S. hog and farm operations, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, numbered 666,550. As of 2009, there were only 71,450 as small family farmers were gobbled up by large hog confinement operations.  There were 30,000 Illinois hog and pig farming operations in 1980, but the numbers declined with each passing decade, to approximately half that number in 1990 (15,300) to 5,100 in 2000 to only 2,900 in 2007. A drop from 30,000 operations to less than 3,000 in under 30 years is not only astounding, it is over a 90% drop in the old-fashioned family farm(s) of my youth.

Representative Phil Hare, aware of the opposition of some in the community who do not want the hog plant in their back yard, did say, “I would not support the facility for a minute if I thought we were going to have environmental problems.  Triumph is not getting a pass here.  Should any environmental degradation occur, immediate remediation would be necessary.” This sounds admirable, but the fact is that, if a gigantic hog processing plant is placed close to East Moline, factory hog  farms of the same scale cannot be far behind. This is proven by the statistics of our own U.S. Department of Agriculture, just cited. The number of hogs or pigs, per farm, in thousands, has been consistently rising, moving up from fewer than 500 hogs per facility to numbers of 2,000 or more in the years since 1992.

There are knowledgeable opponents, like Jerry Neff, chairman of the local Sierra Club, who say, “It’s a huge plant being built on a wetland and a flood plain that could end up flooding nearby homes.” Max Muller of the Environment Illinois non-profit advocacy group says, “The facility will increase demand for food animals that will probably be met by factory farms in Illinois.  We already have all sorts of environmental problems from factory farms, including manure spills into waterways and odor issues.  Until we clean up regulation of factory farm pollution, we don’t want to be furthering demand for the products from them.”

Triumph is a Missouri-based processor which pays approximately $12.10 an hour, which amounts to approximately $25,100 a year in annual salary, according to spokesman Pat Lilly, who says that construction on the hotly-debated plant could start this spring.

81% of all U.S. hogs are raised in facilities that house 2000+ animals. The toll to small operators and the small family farm has been catastrophic.  To further demonstrate that the plant and the animals (and the problems?) are coming, Triumph officials, who did not agree to be interviewed for the  “Tribune” story, confirmed that they already have contracts with suppliers for hogs to be raised in confinement facilities and raised specifically to be slaughtered at the controversial East Moline plant.

This particular Triumph plant would slaughter 16,000 hogs a day, but taxpayers in the area were asked for millions in local tax breaks. The tax breaks required unanimous approval by 5 local city councils and there was one hold-out back in 2005. Just months later, now-disgraced ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich resuscitated the project with an economic package worth $16 million (while defaulting on a promise to the Silvis Schools to provide $11.4 million for a new school.)

By 2007, Triumph had purchased 116 acres of land in East Moline on which to build. East Moline applied for a $4.8 million economic development grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce, for water and sewer construction on the site. The company is still eligible for the state’s $16 million package, according to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, but the department would neither confirm nor deny whether it was discussing this funding with the company, and Triumph Foods was not talking.

Foes of the Triumph meat processing plant’s location in East Moline of the Illinois Quad Cities include Art Norris, who is a former hog farmer. He described the treatment of animals raised in such facilities as “inhumane” and said the staggering amount of feces created by hogs and the number of plants already discharging into the Rock River are signs that the plant will do the damage that Representative Hare says the city of East Moline would then have to take steps to remediate. No “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” thinking here; just “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” Norris continues, “Triumph has already said that a lot of this meat will be going to Japan, so they get the meat and we get the waste the plant leaves behind.” It should be noted that Norris has been dubbed the Quad Cities’ Waterkeeper by a national advocacy group aimed at protecting waterways from pollution.

The fact is that large plants like the one proposed for East Moline by Triumph attract undocumented workers who are more vulnerable to unfair labor practices. These undocumented workers strain social services, including medical and educational facilities. The poorest city in the state of Iowa (Columbus Junction) is one where a huge meat processing plant is located, quite near Iowa City, and the University has found it necessary to take a mobile bus approach to providing any kind of medical services to the poor workers who staff the plant and have no medical benefits for themselves or their children. I attended a meeting about diagnosing ADD and ADHD in such children of workers, as well as providing pap smears and other routine health care to the impoverished workers, who often do not speak English as their native language.

Even more stunning than the indifference to those in the community who have pointed to hog confinement plants, with their large lagoons of manure, as unattractive and dangerous to the ground water of the area is the feeling that, as Bill Wundram phrases it, “Is anybody there? Does anybody care?” Yes, somebody is here and cares, but there seems to be little interest in listening to those who are not quite as convinced that “a job is a job is a job” is the right philosophy. With 25% unemployment in the building trades, 600 people needed to build such a behemoth of a plant, and jobs for workers available thereafter (albeit jobs without benefits that attract only hourly workers and yield a very low annual salary), is the benefit to the community worth the cost? Do those who live near the plant want the odor and constant traffic of incoming animals on trucks? What do you think?

For opponents of the plant, there are only 2 bright spots: 1) Triumph has not yet applied for the permits it needs from the Illinois EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and that could take months if not years to process, and (2) On the horizon is a new concept, designed to save the family farmer. This new concept involves a traveling mobile slaughter unit (cost: $250,000 or more for start-up of each), which is being championed by Kim Snyder of Kankakee.  She says, “If we can get this going, I see it growing very, very quickly.” She markets her own meat via www.faithsfarm.com and supplies the Park Grill at Millennium Park in Chicago with its meat.

Adds Snyder, who says the mobile slaughterhouses are safer and travel with an inspector, there are only about 20 mobile slaughter units for poultry and half a dozen for cattle around the country now. But, says Arion Thiboumery of Ames (ISU), “There’s a lot of enthusiasm for this.  In large plants, the animals go by real fast.  This is much smaller; so it’s slower and many people say it’s safer.” Steve Skelton of Kentucky State University says, “It’s made a big difference for farmers. They’re making money again.”  Snyder, who is pioneering the idea of the mobile slaughterhouse says, “How cool would it be for a chef or just for anyone to walk out here and choose an animal, then have it slaughtered and pretty much ready to go?”

For those of us who find the concept of slaughtering animals something we only want to know about in the abstract, it’s not that cool, but the idea of bringing consumers closer to control of the food they are consuming is not only healthy but appealing.  Since the mobile slaughter houses process only 5 cows a day, not only safety for the workers but safety for the food would be pluses for the concept.

I remember visiting my hometown of Independence, Iowa when a large hog confinement plant in the fields nearby made the air so redolent that your eyes stung and you had to stay indoors. The more affluent residents of this cottage town for Waterloo/Cedar Falls and Cedar Rapids were not amused that their expensive summer homes were almost unusable as a result of the hog stench, and the problem was addressed and no longer exists. Here we are, in East Moline (and the Quad Cities, in general) attempting to go down the same road that others have traveled with horrible results.

As someone who was invited to tour the Triumph plant (full disclosure; the invitation was actually extended to my husband, and I would have gone along, had we been available), I can only imagine how vast a difference exists between a large facillity like Triumph’s proposed plant and a small mobile slaughterhouse option.

I am unconvinced that there won’t be unpleasant side-effects for the Quad City community, including odor, strain on social service agencies and schools, an uptick in violent crime, and a generally undesirable reputation that will adhere to the town, just as the presence of the mental health facility did for years. (And I grew up in a town with a mental health institute, one of 4 in the state of Iowa, so I know how “reputation” of  a town hangs on for years.)

I’m also a realist and aware that “money talks and bullshit walks.” Americans, over a lifetime, consume 21,000 animals and, while houses and cars cost fourteen times what they did 50 years ago, the price of chicken hasn’t even doubled, thanks to the efficiency (if not the humanity) of factory poultry farms. We eat 150 times as many chickens a year as we did 80 years ago. (All  poultry facts courtesy of “Life” by Joel Stein in the August 23, 2010 issue of “Time” magazine on pp. 51-52.)

Still, I think some investigation into the intentions of Triumph should be made now, before those EPA permits are applied for and those of us in the Quad Cities, especially East Moline, Illinois, are all awash in sewage sludge.

Car Tire on Lake Shore Drive Is Narrow Miss

This is a stream-of-consciousness article, so bear with me.

I was driving in to Chicago (Tuesday) at about 2:30 p.m. and was approaching the city’s heart on LakeShore Drive, near McCormick Place, where there are 3 or 4 lanes going in to the city and 3 or 4 coming out, separated by a short retaining wall.

My peripheral vision is not that great. I am actually restricted on my driver’s license to driving only vehicles “with side mirrors” because I have flunked the peripheral vision test part on the driver’s license eye exam on more than one occasion. I wonder if it is related to cataracts developing around the edges of my cornea?

Regardless of the reason, I saw, out of the corner of my right eye, smoke. I looked over and saw that a car in the far right lane was smoking. It was driving on the axle. And the tire was bouncing across three lanes of busy traffic heading right towards me. I knew that, in order to keep the tire from making contact with my vehicle, a Toyota Prius, I needed to brake hard RIGHT NOW. I prayed that the guy behind me wouldn’t rear-end me (he didn’t). So, the tire missed me by less than six inches, I’d say, and then hit the retaining wall.

I remember thinking: “Oh, oh.”

Rather than rebounding towards me, the tire bounced literally 8 to 10 feet in teh air after hitting the wall and then sailed OVER the wall and continued to bounce its way through the outgoing lanes of traffic. I would have liked to have watched to see what was going to happen, but the traffic was moving at roughly 60 miles an hour, so no deal there, I hope it didn’t cause any accidents for the outgoing traffic.

It made me think of the tire tread that was thrown up and hit my car’s grill, taking out all of the grill-work and tearing the cardboard thing off the bottom of my car that somehow is used to insulate the motor mechanism from the pavement, I guess. St. Christopher has recently been defrocked, but he must have been watching out for me.

PlanetUSA Connection

<strong><a href=”http://www.planetusa.us/”>PlanetUSA</a></strong>: USA search engine

Weekly Wilson signed up for this.  Not sure what it is, but I was told to post a link to it on my blog, and here it is.

Ellen DeGeneres Quits “American Idol”

The latest blow to the franchise that was “American Idol” is the news that Ellen DeGeneres will not be reprising her role as judge for a second season.

This comes on the heels of the departure of Simon Cowell, largely thought to signal a death knell for the once-invulnerable show.

There was also a news piece recently that the show did not plan to have tryouts in Chicago next season. Considering that both of this past year’s finalists came out of the Chicago auditions, this seems odd.

And, on an unrelated observation, does anyone else think that the Brit (Simon Fuller) tapped to replace Larry King looks like the departing head of BP, Tony Hayward? Just wondering.

Grant Park, Chicago, on July 9, 2010

Grant Park flowerbeds.

When it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, you want to take a stroll to see what is happening in Grant Park, which happens to be in my neighborhood.

Besides gorgeous flower beds, there was a young man preparing to jump over a piece of park equipment on a small bicycle, for reasons that only he could explain.

Beginning of bike stunt in Grant Park.

Bike begins to go airborne.

He had no ramp, but he did have a friend ready to take pictures. I took a few of Trent, attired in his Burt Reynolds shirt, too, as he went airborne with his toddler-sized mountain bike.

Then there was the woman with the fat golden retrievers who, instead of walking the , was actually pushing them in what looked like a baby carriage. (And here I thought when people talked about how you have to “walk” dogs, they meant that the dogs would be actually walking.

And, last, but certainly not least, there was the giant eyeball, a sculpture positioned in Pritzker Park at State and VanBuren that stands 30 feet high and weighs 14,000 pounds. The downtown Chicago Loop Alliance commissioned the sculpture from Oak Park artist Tony Tasset, 49, and he used 24 pieces of fiberglass to produce a giant sculpture based on his own blue eye, but magnified over 1,000 times. The pieces of the sculpture, which was crafted in Sparta, Wisconsin, had to be trucked in on 13 trucks, according to the evening news.

Blagojevich Witness in Trial Takes A Hard Fall

Check out this video of a witness being decked outside the Chicago courtroom of the trial. Only in Chicago.

&nbsp;<embed type=’application/x-shockwave-flash’ salign=’l’ flashvars=’&amp;titleAvailable=true&amp;playerAvailable=true&amp;searchAvailable=false&amp;shareFlag=N&amp;singleURL=http://chicagotribune.vidcms.trb.com/alfresco/service/edge/content/7fbebf55-fd1e-424f-9f58-78fbbe068be4&amp;propName=chicagotribune.com&amp;hostURL=http://www.chicagotribune.com&amp;swfPath=http://chicagotribune.vid.trb.com/player/&amp;omAccount=tribglobal&amp;omnitureServer=www.chicagotribune.com’ allowscriptaccess=’always’ allowfullscreen=’true’ menu=’true’ name=’PaperVideoTest’ bgcolor=’#ffffff’ devicefont=’false’ wmode=’transparent’ scale=’showall’ loop=’true’ play=’true’ pluginspage=’http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer’ quality=’high’ src=’http://chicagotribune.vid.trb.com/player/PaperVideoTest.swf’ align=’middle’ height=’450′ width=’300′></embed>

Page 11 of 20

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén