Lincoln Park in Chicago is my DREAM CITY!

So, Natalie went for a two-week immersion set of classes in Improvisation and Comedy Screen Writing at Second City. Her flight to Chicago was cancelled by American Airlines. She had ten minutes to purchase a new ticket, and get on another airline, running back and forth between Southwest and American to try to handle the baggage she'd already checked on the first airline.
It was just unthinkable that she'd miss one moment of her classes. They're expensive, and this is her dream. American Airlines is pretty automated when it comes to customer service. She called, I called and after five days of continuing effort, her suitcase finally made it to her hostel.

Then she got sick. She telephoned me with, "mom, I can't breathe, I'm sick," at 5:00AM. I'm about 600 miles away. I begged her to get to a hospital, especially in view of the headache that accompanied her symptoms. I expected she got the flu on her flight. The Walgreen's walk-in clinic sold her a $41.00 inhaler and sent her on her way. I'm wondering if there's a conflict of interest there somewhere.

I had already decided I'd be leaving at the first possible moment to join her and drive her home. Good thing I did because Thursday night, her wallet "vanished magically" in transit. She'd just used her debit card to put money on the transit card and "poof" next time she looked, the wallet was gone. You can't fly without picture ID. You can't even pick up a Western Union moneygram.

Benjamin and Denise Carroll came to her rescue. Ben lives there and his mother Denise sent him with funds $$$. THANK YOU, PRECIOUS ONES!

Mom and I drove to Chicago in record time. Mega Yay for "Heart O Chicago" motel, with a more-than-decent $74.00 rate, unbelievable in the middle of a huge metropolis. It was clean and comfortable. The clerk wouldn't take a reservation so I had to race across a town I didn't know, following my Godfrey-voiced Garmin. We made it just in time to get the last room. Whew!

It was a joy just to drive around in Lincoln Park. OK, I'll admit it's a funny scale by which to judge the fitness of a district, but girls were dressed in minimal outfits with lots of summer skin showing; congregating, walking, standing securely in such a way that I relaxed about the safety-on-the-street of my daughter. Young men conversed, strolled, rode bikes and just generally made it look like a great place for young ones to live, play, work and visit. There were plenty of enticing restaurants and businesses amid the architecture of old established buildings one just wanted to stroll through for the old worlde ambience.

It's a place I am definitely going to revisit and "sit a spell." Natalie was sad to leave, and so was I.

Taking Liberties

Emails are forwarded about what it was like to grow up in the 60s and 70s, but I have to add my own small retrospect about when we didn't have to wear seatbelts; anyone could smoke a cigarette; fireworks came in strengths that could blow your hands off and we all knew someone who had done that; and spin-the-bottle JUST got a kiss, and THAT felt like a delicious taboo. Boys could carry a pocket knife and I could take a flare to show and tell without the ATF surrounding my parents' trailer afterward. Lawsuits were rare and colas were a dime, but they tasted different, and better, I swear they did!

I'm afraid of losing my freedom, the thing I was born into and came very happily to take for granted. They're going to put an obesity tax on that cola; cigarettes are effectively outlawed; and OK, so they are a hazard, but so is life, it's 100% fatal (OK 99.9999999%) We won't be able to sell our houses without updating them to Green standards. I can't drive my Ford Expedition because it's a guzzler, how about the fact that it can haul 9 people? Does that count? I can't shoot a wolf if it's killing my kittens. Everything about me is going to be measured, weighed and what privileges I have or what I pay for them will be meted out according to someone else's rigorous standard.

I thought only crazy little men with funny mustaches and a penchant for throwing up a hand while saying "heil!" cared about a Master Race and total control.

We're being cinched like fish in a net and we will NOT be able to move away from the filet knife. The unborn aren't safe, the elderly aren't safe, the infirm and disabled are surely a "drain on the system."

Well, that's enough trouble for one day. By the way, I LIKE Sarah Palin and I get what she did ENTIRELY. OK, so it wasn't enough for one day after all.