December 1999 or bust! “To [Chicago School Reform Board president Gery] Chico’s mind, the test of the new board’s success will be if reading scores of the 109 schools in probation climb 5 percent to 10 percent within three years,” writes Grant Pick in Catalyst (December). “You can hold me accountable if we’re not making progress,” Chico says. “If we lose, the [decentralization-minded] reform people can come back in, and we’ll hold them accountable.”
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“No city clerk has ever become mayor,” writes Russ Stewart in Illinois Politics (November), speculating on the post-Daley succession in 2003 or 2007, when the city will have nonpartisan mayoral elections. Current city clerk James Laski “makes no secret about his desire to be mayor. He fully understands that he will never beat Daley, but he is also keenly aware that Daley has not–and never will–groom a successor….Being a scrapper and a fighter–who is willing to take on Daley–is what boosted [city treasurer Miriam] Santos to the heights of popularity. Laski is following the same script. In a Daley-less mayoral race, with several Hispanics running, and one or more blacks, Laski should get enough votes to secure a place for himself in the runoff.”
All those years in med school were worth it after all. Dr. Marco De La Cruz, director of behavioral medicine at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, on holiday stress: “If you’re not having fun, that’s the first sign you’re getting stressed out.”
“Many obscure or moribund Christmas customs were revived in America in the 1960s as part of the new interest in ethnic consciousness,” according to a recent University of Illinois release. For instance, the festival of Santa Lucia, a day traditionally devoted to drunken revelry in western Sweden, was rarely celebrated in the U.S. until Lindsborg, Kansas, began using it to increase Christmas business in 1962. “Local girls, dressed in white robes and crowned with candle-lit evergreen wreaths, served cookies and coffee to holiday shoppers. With the addition of food and art sales, musicians and folk dances, the program attracted tourists and caught on in the Midwest, especially in Bishop Hill, Ill., the Andersonville section of Chicago, and St. Paul, Minn. ‘There was a charming irony, of course,’ [U. of I. history professor Elizabeth] Pleck said: ‘The desire to escape from the commercialism and homogeneity of the American shopping mall led tourists to an ersatz presentation intended to encourage Christmas shopping.’” And a heterogeneous new year to all.
