Morning News

The Underdog - Spoon
O Tannenbaum - Vince Guaraldi (that's Vince Guaraldi, not Vince Gerasole)
Shut up and Let Me Go - The Ting Tings
Poker Face - Lady GaGa

The headlines today kind of make it hard to enjoy this nice, unseasonably warm Friday.
Ed spent the morning outside the CME Group to preview the new unemployment numbers that were due out this morning. Those numbers have since been released, and show that last month, unemployment rose to 10.2 percent. The last time unemployment was above 10.2 percent was when Ronald Reagan was president, Harold Washington had just been elected mayor of Chicago, and “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” and “Every Breath You Take” were among the hits on the radio. But the unemployment figures are back up there again now, and they're likely to get even worse.
In real numbers, 10.2 percent means 16 million people without work. This is even though the Dow Jones has climbed back past the 10,000 mark, nobody is talking about a return to the 1930s anymore, and officially, and they’re saying the recession is over. By some standards, it is. But it’s hard to convince people of that when unemployment has been getting worse for 22 months straight – the longest on records dating back 70 years.
Last week, the federal government said the economy grew at a 3.5 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter, which is evidence of a rebound. But it’s not enough of a rebound to bring on rapid hiring, and the prospect of a jobless recovery is looking likely.
Ed spoke this morning with Performance Trust Capital Partners Vice President Brian Battle, who talked about the significance of unemployment figures.

He also talked with Michael Erwin of CareerBuilder.com about how to search for a job when unemployment is high and rising.



 For the latest business headlines, click here.

It’s very rare that I find myself not knowing what to write. But in the wake of something as tragic and shocking as the massacre at Fort Hood, it really is difficult to find words.
So I’ll just recap the facts of what we know right now. We know that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist trained to help soldiers in distress, opened fire on his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas yesterday. Thirteen people are dead, and at least 30 are wounded. Hasan himself was shot four times during the rampage, but contrary to the earliest reports, it turned out he survived.
We know that Hasan, 39, acted alone. We have heard reports that in the past, he resisted deployment to Iraq, that his name appeared on radical Internet postings, and that he shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” which is Arabic for, “God is great!” before the rampage. And while the motive isn’t clear yet, this is enough for some blogs out there to characterize the massacre as a “terrorist attack.” Was it? We don’t know yet if it was a “terrorist attack” of the radical Islamist variety. But if we’re just to take the expression “terrorist attack” at face value, the answer, without a doubt, is yes.

We also know that a soldier from Bolingbrook was among those killed in the attack. Pfc. Michael Pearson, 21, was at Fort Hood training to deactivate bombs.
But there are still a lot of answers that we’ll have to wait to find out. In the meantime, all we can do is offer our thoughts and condolences to the families of those who were slain, and those who served with them.
In the video below, Manuel Gallegus has the latest about the Fort Hood massacre. Also, here is a slideshow of images taken as the news broke yesterday.

The Coffee Song - Ralph's World (This is definitely not the Sinatra song.)
That's Not My Name - The Ting-Tings
Dynamite - Christina Aguilera
Clocks - Coldplay
Big Yellow Taxi - Counting Crows
Island in the Sun - Weezer
Upside Down - Jack Johnson
I Love This Town - Bon Jovi
Better in Time - Leona Lewis

It’s getting to be that time of year where staying home and curling up in front of the fireplace with a good book is far preferable to doing anything outside. This week, the much-awaited Fall Books Special edition of the Chicago Reader came out. The theme this year is “The Gritty City;” the stories about the rough and seamy side of Chicago that you would have seen in an old Mike Royko column, or an old edition of John Drummond’s “Chicago Chronicles” on the CBS 2 News of yore.
Here are some highlights (click the links for the reviews):
 But now, retired Los Angeles police detective Steve Hodel writes in his new book that he thinks the “Lipstick Killer” wasn’t long-serving prisoner William Heirens, but his own father.
 Columbia College history professor Dominic Pacyga has taken his expertise in the city’s history, both its glory and its past racial, ethnic and political strife, to write Chicago’s first biography.
 Jon-Henri Damski wrote vividly about both the dazzling and the seedy side of life in Chicago’s gay community in the 1970s through the 1990s, and his stories are being brought together 12 years after his death.
 Attorney Jeffrey Haas is revisiting the deadly shooting of Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton by police officers commissioned by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, and he’s calling Hampton’s death a murder.

So put on your long underwear, have a beer and a shot and a bowl of czerina (look it up), and bury your nose in a fine book.

I’m going to spare you all my typical book-length rant. I addressed the issue about the new, scaled-back Christmas tree earlier this week; I’ll miss the big one, but if a single tree is what the city can afford and is the wisest use of taxpayers’ money, so be it. If free rides for seniors are taken away, the CTA and/or Springfield legislators should expect some angry and vociferous protests; taking rights, privileges or programs away once they’re granted tends to prove unpopular. And while I can understand why he wants to wear Nikes, Marcus Jordan is not entitled to wear a different shoe on the basketball court than everyone else just because of who his father is.

That leaves this tragic and bizarre story about the22-month-old baby girl who was thrown onto the track beds at the Morse Avenue Red Line ‘L’ stop when a train’s doors closed on her stroller. Only now, the question is, how much of the story is really true?
As you’ve no doubt heard by now, on Monday evening around 6:30 p.m., the mother was trying to board a train at the Morse stop with the stroller, when the door closed on the stroller with the baby in it. Then the train began moving while the mother was still on the platform, and the baby hit her head several times on the platform before being thrown into the gravel track beds. She was rescued and taken to Children’s Memorial Hospital, and the train operator wasn’t made aware of what happened until arriving at the Berwyn station 2 miles away.
Now the motorman is suspended without pay. And the Amalgamated Transit Union is casting doubt on the entire story, particularly the fact that a stroller was found in remarkably good condition after being dragged by an ‘L’ train and crashing into metal bars.
Now, it seems to me that the basic story of the girl being hurled from the train has enough witnesses to add up. There was the couple who helped rescue the little girl from the train tracks, and other witnesses. For the whole story to be fabricated, these people would all have to be in on a conspiracy, and so, presumably, would several doctors and nurses at Children’s Memorial Hospital. So while I don't know for sure what happened -- I wasn't there -- I think we can take the story at face value.
But as for the stroller, I can see why Transit Union President Robert Kelly is casting doubt on the stories that have been circulating. What exactly happened isn’t even fully clear; originally, the story seemed to be that the stroller remained wedged in the door of the train all the way to the Berwyn stop. Frankly, that’s next to impossible. The stroller would have been banging against the support columns at every station between Morse and Berwyn – a total of four – and would have been mangled and wrecked by the end of the trip. Furthermore, this accident didn’t happen in the dead of night when only a few drunks, stoners and untreated mental patients are on the train. It was at 6:30 p.m., and sooner or later – make that at the very next stop – someone would have noticed the stroller, if only to kick it out of the way while boarding the train.
Well, I don't know if the story was just vague at the beginning or if I got it wrong, but now it sounds like no one was really saying the stroller was wedged in the train doors for two miles; the train operator merely says she wasn’t notified of the incident with the baby until she arrived at the Berwyn stop. She says she searched the train cars for someone stuck in the doors at the Loyola stop, and didn’t realize she was supposed to be looking in the stroller. Rather, she saw kids playing with one and just removed it at the Granville stop, two stops away from the starting point.
So what’s the truth about all this? I don’t know. There will be a complete investigation, and once it’s over, I’d like to hear the complete story. And while I think it’s appropriate for some kind of action to be taken against the train operator, suspending her without pay does seem kind of harsh when we still don’t know for sure what happened.

Here is Kristyn Hartman’s story about the CTA stroller incident, and the doubts that have been raised about it:

Here are today's questions:

1. Chicago will save up to $250,000 by scaling down the 85-foot Christmas tree to a 54 foot single tree. Are you OK with that?
2. Should seniors continue to ride for free on public transit? Or just needy seniors? Or should everyone pay (at a senior rate)?
3. The University of Central Florida has lost its agreement with Adidas because Marcus Jordan wore Nikes. Should he have worn Adidas?
4. The stroller said to have been stuck in the doors of a CTA train is unscathed. Stories conflict. But the train operator suspended without pay. Is that right?

You can leave a comment at the bottom of this entry, or:
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Under Pressure - David Bowie with Queen
Living on the Edge - Aerosmith
Alarm Clock - The Rumble Strips
Who Says You Can't Go Home - Bon Jovi
Sweet Home Chicago - The Blues Brothers
How Sweet It Is - James Taylor
Viva La Vida - Coldplay
Other Side of the World - K.T. Tunstall
Enjoy the Silence - Depeche Mode
It's the End of the World As We Know It - REM

Look at the preview picture in the embedded video down there. What kind of animal does that look like to you? A tired, elderly elephant that somehow never had a trunk? The result of a bizarre interspecies crossbreeding between a naked mole rat and a capybara? Some plodding creature that wanders through a gloomy desert in a Dr. Seuss illustration?
Actually, believe it or not, it’s a bear.
That’s right, that’s a bear. I’m sure they don’t have any bears like this at the Build-a-Bear Workshop. I’m sure that in the world of the Berenstain Bears, a bear such as this would be scolded by Mama Bear for playing with the hedge clippers. I’m sure that if Bear and Ojo found themselves looking like the bear below, environmental inspectors would be rushing to the Big Blue House to see what horrible toxic substance was attacking their skin.
But in real life, this can happen to bears. This bear’s name is Dolores, and she lives at the Leipzig Zoo in Germany. And not just Dolores, but all the female bears at the zoo, are suddenly and inexplicably losing their hair.



Also in news from the animal kingdom, a new study has taught us some interesting information about fiddler crabs. If you’re a male fiddler crab, it doesn’t matter if you’re sloppy and wear glasses with masking tape on them and ill-fitting clothes that went out of fashion before you were born. As long as you protect the female crabs from intruders, they’ll flock to you like Paris Hilton to Rick Salomon, or Pamela Anderson to Tommy Lee.

The man inside Big Bird, Caroll Spinney, will be 76 in December. But Big Bird himself is always 6. This may seem counterintuitive, given that the actors, as opposed to the Muppet characters, on “Sesame Street” have all gotten older and their personal relationships have changed. Do you know that at one time, Luis was merely Maria’s boss, and she was dating David? Do you even remember David? And do you know that Susan has been married to three different guys, curiously all named Gordon (the same actor has portrayed Gordon for the past 35 years, but there were two others before him.)
And in Big Bird’s long stretch of being 6 years old, the Muppet characters haven’t been consistent. Big Bird was very much 6 when I was watching “Sesame Street,” but there was no Abby Cadabby or Zoe or Baby Bear then, and Elmo was only a minor character. And likewise, when was the last time you saw Herbert Birdsfoot, or the non-CGI Twiddlebugs, or Mr. Don Music? Rumor has it that Mr. Music was written out because too many little kids adopted his dramatic flair for banging his head on the piano. And yet all the while, Big Bird has remained 6.
Well, Big Bird may remain 6 years old forever, and I don’t envy that position in the slightest. But “Sesame Street” itself is 40. Few shows survive for 40 years, particularly with original cast members – Spinney, Loretta Long (Susan) and Bob McGrath (Bob) have been around the whole time. And those of us who are old enough to remember the “Sesame Street” of yore with its comical Muppets, trippy animation, and wistful Joe Raposo songs may make a habit of complaining about the new, more sanitized Elmo-centric “Sesame Street.” But all of us born in the past 40 years are lucky to have grown up with “Sesame Street,” no matter when we encountered it.
So why not celebrate today. Have a birdseed milkshake or an ice cream sundae with pickles and sardines on it. Break into a chorus of “I Love Trash” or the James Taylor classic “Jellyman Kelly” (sorry; they don't seem to have posted that one.) And pay a visit to the all the monsters and grouches in your neighborhood. I’m sure they’d appreciate it.
 Sesame Street Official Web Site