Archive for October 5th, 2008
October 5th, 2008
I had occasion to travel Saturday  on Roosevelt Road. No, not the one in Chicago, the one in Machesney Park.
I remember a few years ago when Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL brought some federal money and Machesney Park village officials vowed to get the road rebuilt.
Now, folks, if you have never been on Roosevelt Road, I suggest you drive down it. The road is the darnedest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s ltwo lanes, no curbs and gutters, separated by an ill-defined median with utility polls that run down the middle of the road. The road is bumpy.
Machesney Park just passed a one cent sales tax for roads. I wonder if they’re going to use it on Roosevelt Road, or if the village is only interested in developing the  new part of the village. Because it sure seems like it to a casual observer like me
What say you, Linda Vaughn?.
October 5th, 2008
The financial panic is spreading to Europe. The Financial Times  reports that the German government has stepped in to guarantee the savings of all Germans, some €568 billion (that’s the symbol for euros for those of you in Chemung).
In Britian, The Guardian, says the German action is putting pressure on the Labour government to follow suit and guarantee Brits’ savings.
October 5th, 2008
Graffiti has been sprouting up all over — once again. The latest so-called “gang” chicken scratchings are all over a couple of apartment buildings on Auburn Street between Rockton and Ridge avenues. And there’s the same mindless stuff on the Family Dollar on Broadway. Graffiti on a utility company box on Ridge Avenue has been removed.
Looks to me as if the  city’s anti-graffiti crew is getting beat by the tagging crew.
October 5th, 2008
Barack Obama did a pret ty good job discussing his unusual past — including his teenaged drug use — in his autobiographies.
One thing he didn’t talk about was a man who he served on boards with in Chicago, William Ayers, the unrepentent 60s radical whose actions and views against the United States are abhorrent to anyone this side of the Taliban.
Obama’s failure to explain Ayers early on could cost him the election, as the McCain campaign tries to turn the campaign away from the sinking economy.
Palin hit Obama about Ayers on Sunday, and word from the McCain campaign is they’re going to hammer the Ayers assocition home. The only thing McCain has ruled out is bringing up Jeramiah Wright. No matter, the 527 groups will do that.
October 5th, 2008
Have you been wondering why Sarah Palin of Alaska talks like a woman out of Lake Wobegon, Minn.? I wondered that myself, until this article in the New York Times appeared in Sunday’s edition. Seems that Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley, or “Mat-Su,” where Palin grew up, was settled in the Great Depression by farmers from Minnesota.
My hunch is that because Alaska is so remote, the speech pattern and accent in Mat-Su remains much the same as the way the Minnesota settlers talked in the 1930s. Palin’s speech pattern reminds me of Frances McDormand’s exaggerated “Minneswegian” dialect in “Fargo.”
Modern Minnesotans retain traces of the old “Minneswegian,” but they mostly speak standard Midwestern English.
