By Harold Henderson
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The new Metra train station at Lake-Cook Road, where the Tri-state meets the Edens and office “campuses” are too far to walk from anywhere, has “great potential to attract nontraditional commuters to the Lake-Cook area during traditional rush hours,” according to On the (Bi)Level (January), the Metra newsletter. In the works are shuttle vans to the office campuses, bus service, maybe even light rail eventually. “Lots of other places are watching Lake-Cook. If we all make it work, this may be one way to tie suburban sprawl together and lessen those slavish bonds to the single-occupant motor vehicle during rush hour. And why are the planners trembling? They get nudgy when their plans are actually implemented. ‘What if it doesn’t work?’ they mumble into their brown lunch bags. Don’t worry, fellas. We’ll make it work. You did good.”
Department of understatement. From a letter by the Evanston-based Nuclear Energy Information Service: “An investigative reporter from Milwaukee was able to drive his unmarked van into the [Commonwealth Edison] Zion reactor complex, and got deep into the security building before even being challenged. Good thing the van contained cameras–not explosives–and that Timothy McVeigh wasn’t driving. We’d have a qualitatively different state if it were otherwise.”
“Most any pastor can help people in times of need,” writes George Buttrick in Christian Ministry, quoted in the Chicago-based Salt of the Earth (March/April). “It takes a real pastor to go into a family where someone has just been promoted to the presidency of the local bank and say, ‘Mary, I’ve just gotten the news of your promotion. So I rushed right over knowing that this promotion is placing you in an extremely vulnerable position as far as your soul is concerned. I wanted to come stand beside you during this time of potential temptation. Could we pray?’”
