I see a few wing walkers in that bunch!

Chicago is a world class city and a wonderful place to live. Your comments about Chicago are ignorant and offensive. I don’t know where you live but I wouldn’t presume to make disparaging comments about that place for 2 reasons… 1) I don’t live there, thus am no authority on the place you live; 2) It would be an offensive, ignorant thing to do. CITIES ARE AMERICA TOO BY NEIL STEINBERG Sun-Times Columnist - November 7, 2008 The word “politics” comes from the Greek “polis,” meaning city, and it is an irony of American politics that our cities tend to get the backhand. No candidate hesitates to stand in a cornfield and declare that he will bring this nation back to its cherished small-town roots. But what politician holds a photo-op beside a chain-link fence on a gritty urban block and endorses the values of the hardworking bus driver? Very few. So it is significant that Barack Obama — community organizer, Kenwood resident — celebrated his historic victory not Downstate in Springfield, not in a suburban hotel ballroom, but in Grant Park, in the heart of Chicago. Obama is a city dweller. People are already talking about the good he will bring to Chicago, and of course they’re thinking about money — federal dollars in our pockets. And while money is always nice, there are benefits beyond cash, and Tuesday night was a priceless gift to the city. Michigan Avenue stroll After the rally and the speech, nearly a quarter of a million people poured out of Grant Park and onto Michigan Avenue. A river of humanity, from curb to curb, from Roosevelt Road to the Wrigley Building. All ages, all races, wearing new Obama T-shirts and fancy church clothes. At every intersection, the cross-streets were jammed for blocks. It seemed so strange, so fantastical — this famous street, empty of cars but crowded with Chicagoans, waving flags in the brightly lit midnight. “Take a good look around,” I told my 13-year-old son, as we walked down the middle of Michigan Avenue. “Because you are never going to see this again.” This was the part we had worried about, win or lose. What would happen afterward? Readers had warned me not to go downtown. It could get ugly. “If he does win, I’ll be in my basement, clinging to my guns and religion,” wrote Will County reader Sam Langham. (“In Beecher?” I wrote back. “I’d gather my courage and sit in my yard if I were you. It’s such lovely weather … “) Like so many fears, which feel weighty before the fact, concern about the crowd suddenly seemed ridiculous, even shameful. People whooped and danced. A street saxophonist played “Hail to the Chief.” Entire families, down to wide-eyed toddlers, held hands. Everyone was smiling. The place I choked up, oddly enough, was in front of the Hilton Chicago. “This was the Conrad Hilton,” I told my boy, in my pedantic dad fashion. “This was the spot where the protesters sat down, and were beaten by the cops. Right here.” The contrast was stunning, between the long-ago violent night, seared in public memory, and now this harmonious scene (kudos to the police, who watched from the median, some steely eyed, some bemused, and helped keep everybody in line. The City That Works worked — planning and discipline paid off). The crowd’s happy exit from Grant Park barely made the news, to be expected, I suppose, given the speech and the huge historic shift that the election of Barack Obama represents. Still, ignoring it is an oversight — had three people thrown bricks, it would have been labeled a riot and waved as a harbinger of the social unraveling the bigots expect any moment now. So why overlook the peaceful outcome? The crowd seemed to understand the gravity of the moment, seemed to know their behavior mattered. There were no arrests in Grant Park, itself an astounding fact (Not that it matters to those determined to be fearful, already pointing at the few arrests on the West Side as Evidence of Something Scary. Guys, there are arrests and shootings on the West Side every night of the year). In front of the Art Institute, the young people danced, hopping around to the clanging of a cowbell, chanting, “Ohhhhhh, O, O, Oh, Obama!!!” My son edged toward them, watching, while I held back. It struck me that, for the first time, the president of the United States will be younger than myself. One generation rises, the next recedes. Only the city itself remains. “So tonight, let us ask ourselves,” Obama had said, an hour earlier. “If our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky … what change will they see? What progress will we have made?” If Tuesday is any indication, we’ll make a lot. We already have. The nation didn’t change Tuesday night — it had already changed gradually, over years and decades, through hard work and determination, sacrifice and struggle. What happened Tuesday night is that we realized it. The nation elected an extraordinary Chicagoan as its next leader, and the people poured out into the city streets and looked at one another, and saw the change. ‘America, America’ Were people really singing in the street? Yes, I can report, on good authority, that at least one prematurely cynical teenage boy, a born skeptic who earlier that evening compared Chicago to a wormy apple, “addled with corruption,” spontaneously broke into song as he walked up Michigan Avenue. “O beautiful, for spacious skies … ” he began. “For amber waves of grain,” his father, no small cynic himself, joined in “For purple mountains majesty … ” they continued together, loudly and off-key, linked arm in arm. “Above the fruited plain. America, America, God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good, with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.” Was it important? One thing this election has taught me is that there are lots of facts, an infinity of facts, and too many people seize on just a few, puzzle pieces that fit neatly into their puzzled minds. Then they ignore the rest, staring at one pebble in a field of boulders. The father and son singing might not be important. But it’s something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

LOL LOL LOL LOL

Okpulot Taha: End result, my butt cheeks end up middle of my back and my breasts end up under my chin. LOL..LOL..LOL.. Ya put it on backwards, ya dope !! Just kidding. Maybe you bought the wrong size… maybe people are smaller in Mexico… maybe I should shut up while I’m ahead…

A fifty gallon drum of jello sitting on a California earthquake fault line” LOL LOL LOL Only in America!

Okpulot T —-“Half a can of my old man’s axle grease — a small shovel as a shoehorn” You have just had me doubled over! Keep on shakin’ baby! LOL

Amen to that MaryPage.