Mary Ann Monkeys Around

For our friend Elizabeth’s baby shower, Mary Ann had the clever idea of a unifying gift theme of…monkeys. All the little baby clothes and a blanket had monkeys on them. She bought little baby books about Curious George. She bought one of those little barrels of monkeys (which I would keep away from the baby for a while, Scott and Elizabeth). All that was fine, although I personally had to go to a Kohl’s and help her one day. My testosterone levels are low to begin with, but I didn’t have to shave for two weeks after looking at all those onesies.

The tough part was the barrel. Mary Ann wanted to put everything in a barrel. The only problem is that a barrel is an oddly-shaped object, and it’s not easy to create one from scratch. Her early versions were square. I pointed out that barrels aren’t square. After some venting by Mary Ann, I helped create a more barrel-like prototype. Just ten or twelve hours of work later, she’d completed a very cute, cartoon-like barrel.

The best part was her idea for what would happen when Elizabeth opened the barrel. Props to Mary Ann for that one.

Best wishes to Scott and Elizabeth!

P.S. Nice nappy bag, Scott!

Cook County Sheep Report

Can you Ohio people imagine a county, a single county, looking at a $300,000,000.00 deficit for one year?  Well, that’s what we were facing here in Cook County, Illinois.  For years, the county was run by an outwardly amiable grifter named John Stroger, whose main purpose in life seemed to be to provide high-paying jobs for friends and family members.  His second priority was to name things after himself.  Anyway, as the last election for Cook County Board President approached, Stroger had a severe stroke that ended any possibility of him resuming his duties (such as they were).  Even though everyone knew Stroger was finished, the county government refused to confirm this and he stayed on the ballot.  Ridiculously, even though there was a good reform candidate, Forrest Claypool, on the ballot, the sheep of Cook County voted for Stroger in the Democratic primary.  So there we were with a near-dead candidate for County Board Presdent.  Months after the primary, the Democratic organization finally acknowledged that John Stroger couldn’t run.  Instead of slotting Claypool, the possible reformer, the men in the back rooms picked — you guessed it — Todd Stroger, John Stroger’s completely unqualified son.  Todd won the general election and ever since has been carrying on his father’s proud tradition of nepotism.  As the Sun-Times put it in an article about Todd Stroger’s new PR guy, “his hiring comes on the heels of Stroger hiring another childhood friend, his cousin, his best friend’s wife and even his floor leader’s girlfriend for high-level county jobs.”

Now, we learn that the county is imposing a one-percent raise in its sales tax to pay for all those Strogeritic salaries, as well as the mounting debt incurred throughout John Stroger’s reign.   Our sales tax here in Chicago will be going up to a total of 10.25%, the highest of any major city in the U.S.  But will the sheep do anything about it?  Nope.  They’ll continue volunteering as racks of lamb for the Stroger table, with plenty of shank left over for the Daleys.

I love Chicago.  I love most of the people of Chicago.  But as voters on a local level, they’re often muttonheads.