Archive for 'In the News'

Use ‘em or lose ‘em

Posted 04 February 2008 | By | Categories: In the News, Village Hall | 5 Comments

Just eight weeks left to use up those garbage stickers. Come March 31, it won’t be Allied Waste trucks rumbling down our streets but ones from ARC Disposal. Residents will soon receive a flier from the village outlining the new service. In the meantime, it’s available as a PDF on the village website. From now [...]

Creative Writing 101

Posted 13 December 2007 | By | Categories: In the News, People, Places and Things | 7 Comments

I’m picturing a couple of high school kids collapsing into fits of laughter with each over-the-top addition to Wikipedia’s Downers Grove entry. Clearly, mischief was being made last night (at 8:58 p.m., to be exact). Among the shocking tidbits mixed into the on-line encyclopedia’s plain-vanilla recitation of our town’s demographic, educational, political and historical attributes [...]

Up in smoke

Posted 16 November 2007 | By | Categories: In the News, Village Council | 4 Comments

A reader writes of watching a couple of girls drop a lit cigarette as they walked along Gilbert Avenue earlier this week. “Had I not been walking behind them to stamp out the glowing embers, a fire could possibly have ignited the dry leaves and quickly burned out of control in the breeze that evening,” [...]

I take it back

Posted 13 July 2007 | By | Categories: In the News | 11 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I commended the Downers Grove Reporter for its beefed up news coverage and snappy redesign. Turns out, my huzzahs were premature. Either Downers Grove doesn’t have enough news to fill a handful of tabloid pages each week, or the Reporter is just not interested in covering it. And after seeing [...]

The Reporter reports!

Posted 30 June 2007 | By | Categories: Commentary, In the News | 2 Comments

The Downers Grove Reporter rolled out its redesign a couple of weeks ago and while I abhor the decision to give over one whole page — and the cover, at that — to a photo, I think it’s a definite improvement. The paper seems to have increased its meeting coverage, not only in the paper [...]

War of the words

Posted 27 April 2007 | By | Categories: District 99, In the News | 8 Comments

Am I the only one who found the charge of disorderly conduct a strange reprimand for the Cary-Grove high school senior who wrote a violent essay? The student, Allen Lee, was arrested Tuesday after the school brought his creative writing assignment to the attention of police. The paper was submitted only a week after the [...]

To protect and defend

Posted 24 April 2007 | By | Categories: In the News | 17 Comments

When my children first began to step outside my sphere of influence and into the wider world of school, play dates and sleepovers, I realized it would be forever more difficult to ensure their safety. Other parents struggled with the same realization. I recall a PTA meeting where a mother introduced a voluntary contract for [...]

No news isn’t good news

Posted 30 March 2007 | By | Categories: Commentary, In the News | 2 Comments

Back when I was paid to hang out in newsrooms, we had a little fun at the New York Tiimes’ expense. We reconstructed that paper’s self-important motto, All the News That’s Fit to Print, as “all the news that fits we print.” Lame journalist humor that, come to think of it, describes our own Downers [...]