November 19th, 2009 02:40pm
Linda Grist Cunningham
When I moved to town in 1991, I built a something I loosely named the “must call back” list. The list has morphed many times over almost two decades, but for much of that time the Top 20 remained reasonably consistent — allowing for the occasional retirement, unexpected death or new player in town.
The call back list started with this question to staffers in the New Tower: Who are the people whose phone calls I must return within an hour?
I asked the same question of strangers and folks around town as I met them in those early years. I collected hundreds of names and made dozens of personal contacts. It was a good way to meet the people who made a difference, and I add to it frequently.
The Top 20 or so were those men and women whose names consistently were offered up. Webbs Norman, former executive director of the Park District, was number one. He stayed at the pinnacle even after he retired. That’s because Webbs knew everyone, could get the right people at the right table at the right time. Everyone still returns Webbs’ calls, and no one refuses an invitation to break bread at one of his favorite haunts.
I had lunch today with another Top 20, Mike Tulley of Liebovich, Pro Am and Boylan connections. He has been helpful with his insights and a good sounding board over the years. Mike’s retiring at the end of the year, and I got to thinking as I drove back to the News Tower: My old Top 20 list needs updating again.
I now have half a dozen on the new list. So, I ask you: Who are the younguns whose phone calls have to be returned in one hour?
November 18th, 2009 08:52am
Linda Grist Cunningham
Every other year after 50 and ditch the breast self exam. That’s the new mammogram recommendation from the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, a government panel of doctors and scientists. The American Cancer Society’s recommendation remains, at least for now, annual mammograms after 40 and do the monthly thing.
The “LGC Says” recommendation is get one every year after 40 — and do the monthly self exam. Get a mammogram more frequently if there’s a family history or if your’re just cautious and concerned. When the statistics say that one in eight women will be a breast cancer patient and when pretty much every woman I know has been touched personally by breast cancer, I can’t imagine saying, “oh, well, let’s not….”
The American Cancer Society is befuddled by the task force recommendations since they appear to be coming out of nowhere. The task force is putting a pretty face on its recommendations and pooh-poohing the idea that there’s any harm. In fairness to the task force, the ongoing research about the efficacy of annual mammograms and self exams is conflicting.
I’ve had a mammogram annually since I was about 20. Sometimes several mammograms a year. I have that “history” thing going on. My grandmother died in her fifties. My mother is a five-year-plus survivor of stage 4b. I don’t fool around with this stuff.
So, what to do? Get the mammogram, do the self exam. And, when your oh-so-great, private insurance company refuses to pay for it — and they will, then what? Save grocery money and pay for it yourself. Bottom line: If, indeed, you find that tiny lump or the mammogram shows a “spot,” you’ve got a better chance of seeing your kids grow up and your great-grandchildren born.
November 16th, 2009 11:03am
Linda Grist Cunningham
For me, it boils down to this: The terrorists ought to be locked up wherever it costs the taxpayers the least and wherever the security is the best. Usually U.S. Congressman Don Manzullo would sing a similar tune, but these days he’s more about touting the national Republican line.
President Obama wants Guantanamo Bay closed. The Republicans do not. If Obama gets his way, the remaining terrorists have got to be locked up somewhere safe and sound. The feds have their eyes on the state maximum security prison in Thomson. Check out the details from Chuck Sweeny and Matt Williams here.
So, what does Manzullo have to say? He’s opposed to the idea of terrorists in an Illinois prison because they might someday be released into the wilds of northwestern Illinois. He’s OK with homegrown terrorists and criminals, I presume. Just not the foreign ones.
I have no problem with Manzullo toeing the party line; that’s what parties are for. But I am embarrassed when my congressman wanders around the state and national headlines sounding like Henny Penny when she thought the sky was falling.
The law says the terrorists cannot be released in the U.S. And the reason for maximum security is, well, maximum security.
Find another reason to oppose this, congressman, or just be quiet.
November 13th, 2009 05:30pm
Linda Grist Cunningham
I groan when I hear we have yet another Editorial Board with some governmental, non-profit, out-of-town “developer” or quasi-public-private group that has, ta-da, the solution for downtown Rockford.
Our board has heard the plans, partnerships, consultants and pipe dreams for decades. The messages never change, just the mouths out of which they come. And, within months, sometimes within days, the binders are gathering dust.
So, Thursday, when Editorial Editor Wally Haas, said “are you coming to this,” I cast about for an excuse. Finding none that seemed plausible, I went. An hour later I was glad I had.
Live Work Learn Play is a Montreal (yes, Canada) urban planning firm that develops. LWLP is under contract to another new (groan) public-private partnership called Rock River Development Partnership. That group is loosely defined as six private citizens, headed by SupplyCore’s Peter Provenzano, and funded by a bunch of government entities with some tax dollars to spare.
Staff writer Sean Driscoll explained the plan in his story in Friday’s newspaper.
There is much in that to get annoyed about: another”comprehensive plan” to swallow; another “outside” expert; another public-private partnership. I grew weary — and remain tempted to just declare the whole thing “dead on arrival.”
But, I’m going to wait and see because there are some things about this deal that are very different from the past.
First, LWLP is reputable and successful around the world. They aren’t small-time and they aren’t inexperienced. They do, indeed, have reputation and expertise. Which makes me increasingly fascinated with why they have agreed to take on the Rockford project. Clearly, they see some significant potential here for something. They do not appear to be the kind of company that takes on a guaranteed failure.
Second, they are younguns and they aren’t part of the old, tired generation (that’s us, I say, with some sadness…). They are part of the newest and most cutting edge wave of urban planners They are all about creating living centers in urban areas. Looking at downtown Rockford from those perspectives, I can see why LWLP would be intrigued by the potential of our downtown.
Third, despite my huge concerns about open government, and my usual “been there done that,” I think we need to put our cynicism aside for the moment and see what’s really up and really possible here. These guys are not the consulting “geniuses” that have given us boiler plate reports in the past. They’re developers. Something just might be right about this.
November 11th, 2009 08:42am
Linda Grist Cunningham
For decades, Bill O’Donnell has been the host for lunches around town that bring together a motley assortment of friends, acquaintances and strangers to share a meal and a conversation.
In the golden age of conversation, we knew these as salons. They weren’t 60-minute business breakfasts where a deal gets done and a contract signed. They weren’t anonymous hit-and-run postings on the Web. Instead, salons were opportunities for civil and often civic discussions among people who cared about ideas.
An invitation to an O’Donnell lunch is a treasured thing, and I have been fortunate to be on his guest list. It was one of those salons several months ago that sparked the idea for the Register Star’s “Voices of History” project. I sat for almost two hours listening to a dozen men recount their tales of growing up during the Depression and their service during World War II. The storytelling was capivating.
And, so I asked Bill if he’d round up a bunch of his friends, acquaintances and assorted buddies and let them tell their tales for an oral history project. I had only two criteria: They needed to be old enough to actually remember the Great Depression and they had to be lucid. OK, so the lucid might not have sounded politically correct, but I knew we had to have men and women who could tell their stories for print and for video.
Over the past months, writer Geri Nikolai and videographer Billy Kulpa have spent weeks listening to the stories that make up the fabric of our community. In print and online, this five-part series, which includes the bonus of today’s stories on the veterans, is a gift to those who take the time to read and listen. It is community conversation at its best.
November 9th, 2009 04:24pm
Linda Grist Cunningham
Get over it, people. We’re done with the Zits stuff, though I admit it’s been a fascinating observation of human behavior. Start with this: From Nov. 5, when I did the first post through this morning, Nov. 9, the two Zits posts drove more than 1,250 page views.
For context: Editor’s Note is generally in the top 10 rrstar.com blogs (Pat Cunningham’s Applesauce is the granddaddy of them all; he gets more page views than the next nine combined.) I can usually hold my own at position seven, eight or nine. With 1,250 page views, plus what I normally drive in a month, I’m going to jump right up there to the middle of the pack.
So, did I do all that Zits stuff to “sell” traffic? Nah. But, it’s sure tempting to play to the lowest common denominator.
Then there’s this: Just because those posting rabid responses and calling me names think their righteousness is where the world circles, consider that my print newspaper readers do not all share your sentiments. The Register Star and rrstar.com reach 86 percent of the adults in the Rock River Valley. That’s a couple hundred thousand people; trust me when I say there’s not agreement among them. Different strokes; different folks.
And, this: Censorship, which a bunch of folks love tossing around, is when the government steps in and shuts down or interferes with the free flow of information. The last time I checked, I was not a government entity, get no government funding and am not an elected or appointed official. So, when I decide what goes into — or out of — a newspaper or Web site, it’s not censorship. It’s editing and you might hate the heck out of my choices, but it’s not censorship.
How about this: It’s a comic strip. I wrote both those posts with tongue-in-cheek and some few readers got that right away. The rest? Not so much. Ditto, by the way, the syndicate rep. There are a host of more important posts on my blog, including the one on curb cuts, which far too many appeared to sail right past.
And, this: I appreciate and am grateful for those who took the time to post, call, e-mail, even snail-mail. Comics are very, very personal things, and no editor messes with them without good reason. I felt I had a good reason; many of you disagreed. That’s OK. The First Amendment says so.
November 6th, 2009 11:36am
Linda Grist Cunningham
Sometimes I just love a tempest in a teapot. Takes my mind off the serious issues I deal with everyday. Occasionally it’s fun to get all pseudo-excited about not much. So, when Jeremy’s parents took their clothes off in the Zits strip, well, I pulled it, sent nasty-grams to the syndicate and cartoonists.
Zits is back on Sunday.
OK, yes, I was sorta serious. Some of our readers were just nuts over naked cartoon characters and didn’t “get it” that the strip was riffing off the fat cherubs of “Love Is…” fame. But, really, as I told the syndicate rep, I just don’t have time for dumb stuff. Put the clothes back on.
Bless the folks at King Features. The responded seriously and well. This from comics editor Brendan Burford:
“Hello Linda, John Killian alerted me to the unfortunate feedback you’ve been receiving about the recent ZITS comic strips. As you and John both noted, you never know what might touch a nerve with readers, and I apologize for the grief you’ve experienced as a result of the naked cherub-like LOVE IS… parodies featured in ZITS this week.
“We felt that many Americans know the characters from the LOVE IS… feature and that this was a fair parody. We also felt that the nudity of the characters in the ZITS strips was no more gratuitous than the cherubs in the original feature, and decided to allow the strips through. I assure you we did consider these strips, both from a legal stand point (the parody) and a taste stand point (the nudity) before allowing them through the pipeline.
“To my knowledge, out of the 1,600+ newspapers that ZITS appears in, your readers are the only ones who have had such a problem with the depiction. That said, these complaints don’t always reach my desk.
“The ZITS creators, Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman are at the very top of their profession and we’re proud of how many people relate to, laugh with and are touched by their strip everyday. I know you can expect to see only the very best quality from them for many years to come. Although some readers may have been bent out of shape over these couple of strips, the joy and laughter ZITS brings readers throughout the year can’t be measured. It frustrates me that sometimes the noise made by a dissenting few can eclipse the overwhelming number of people who find something truly wonderful on a daily basis.”
I say, well said. Now, back to seeing what other mischief is happening in the comics.
November 5th, 2009 04:05pm
Linda Grist Cunningham
I just pulled my favorite comic strip, Zits. And, it’ll stay pulled until creators Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman put some clothes back on Jeremy’s parents.
If you don’t follow Zits, none of this will matter to you. If you do read Zits, here’s why it’s gone for now. Seems Scott and Borgman ran out of sophisticated ideas and decided to riff on the tired, goofy, pudgy “Love Is…” cherubs with a series of strips titled “Love Isn’t…”
Not original, but, hey, doing a daily strip is hard work and not every idea is gonna be great. This one careened off the table to flat out dumb when they decided to take off the clothes of Jeremy’s parents.
Since I do not have the time nor the inclination to deal with the ruckus those naked parents created among some of our comics’ readers, I pulled the strip and sent a note to King Features, the syndicated distributor. Said note said: Strip pulled until the clothes come back.
Unfortunately, the Friday strip was printed in GO before I saw the Thursday one. Don’t look if comic strip nudity offends you. And on Saturday, it’s gone and the comics pages are safe again from middle-aged, saggy cherubs.
If you can’t do without Jeremy and his naked parents, we’ll post Saturdays’ strip online at go.rrstar.com.
November 4th, 2009 09:53am
Linda Grist Cunningham
When I read this headline, I smiled — and then I was ashamed. After all, violence is never a good thing and beating up a coworker in the newsroom is the stuff of which firings are made.
Here’s the headline and the story to go with it: Washington Post’s”… Weingarten says hurrah to newsroom fisticuffs”
First of all, the word “fisticuffs” is just wonderfully delightful. Second, when all was said and done, this fight between two journalists was as much about their reporting and writing as it was about bad behavior. That much passion over the work one does is a good thing, a very good thing. Smacking around a coworker is not.
I am a child of old-fashioned newsrooms from the time decades before human resources people, legislation and victim-cultures took over the workplace. There was mostly nothing to like about those old newsrooms in which little counted except white and male. Woe be to the ones who were different. But, it was the way it was and we learned to cope, survive and thrive.
There was one good part and in today’s newsrooms it’s mostly gone, sandpapered out by the rules, the laws and the good intentions and righteousness of those who knew the workplace needed to change. Disappearing is the culture of the eccentric that drove the mythological uprisings in which journalists fought loudly and publicly over stories, sources, even the choice of words in a first paragraph. Rarely did we resort to fisticuffs, but the passion most definitely ran high.
We should say good riddance to the violence, of course. But, I am just a tad sad today knowing that gone is the eccentricity that made newsrooms ditsy, important places. The kind of places that drove one editor I know to toss a typewriter at a reporter because the reporter took his story assignment too casually and blew the deadline.
November 3rd, 2009 09:28am
Linda Grist Cunningham
We are never going to learn, so I’d pretty much decided not to run on about this ever again, but then there was last Wednesday morning.
There it was, all bright, clean concrete. Another curb cut along the Rockford side of Riverside Boulevard. Oh, I understand why it’s there. The small retailers in the strip mall have been advertising for years that they’re hard to find, but be patient because they’re worth it. I guess they finally wore down the no curb cut enforcement folks. I don’t really blame the shop keepers. They’ve got to earn a living, too.
But another curb cut along a four-lane, sort-of-divided main road? Between the stoplights and the curb cuts, Loves Park and Rockford have turned East Riverside into another traffic and pedestrian nightmare.
By the early 1990s, East State Street was already a goner. But there was still hope for Perryville, Riverside and 173. We could have done the right things, from limited access frontage roads, sidewalks and pedestrian overpasses to timed (and limited) stoplights. But, no, everyone with a hammer got a green light and a curb cut.
I remember once challenging a major player in local development to “show everyone else what it means to develop retail space and do it environmentally responsibly so it blends into the neighborhoods.” He said he thought that was a fine idea — and promptly added more asphalt to another strip mall.
Same with a former Rockford mayor to whom I had complained about the zoning variances granted at the corners of Riverside and Mulford. City needs the cash, he said. Simple as that. And up went the “mountain” and an always-failing shopping center.
We say we want open, green space and responsible development. We’re lying to ourselves. Witness that Riverside curb cut.
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