Events

Welcome to stop #82 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Art History Brewing, 649 W. State St., GenevaTrain line: Union Pacific West, GenevaTime from Chicago: 72 minutes (Zone H)Distance from station: 1.0 km Art History Brewing opened in the summer of 2020, a few months after their planned March 15th opening (oops). They got through the pandemic in part by brewing for Hopleaf, the excellent Belgian-inspired restaurant less than a kilometer from my house. But for whatever reason, none of their beers...

The Atlantic's Ross Andersen recaps a mass murder at the Rock Creek Park Zoo in Washington, D.C.: Tales of fox cunning are as old as culture. Aesop’s foxes were constantly involved in deceptions. In Apache lore, a thieving fox stands in for Prometheus, stealing fire for humans. I imagine that at the zoo, the fox walked back and forth along the flamingo fence, sussing out its vulnerabilities. Tunneling underneath wasn’t practical: A concrete dig barrier extends underground, too deep for a single night’s...

Welcome to stop #81 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Obscurity Brewing, 113 W. North St., ElburnTrain line: Union Pacific West, ElburnTime from Chicago: 85 minutes (Zone I)Distance from station: 1.2 km Elburn, Ill., is the end of the line for the Union Pacific West line. The station opened in 2006, extending the line past Geneva for the first time since the Chicago & North Western ceased intercity train service in 1971. In fact, when the last C&NW train pulled into Elburn 51 years ago, it...

The storm predicted to drop 100 mm of snow on Chicago yesterday missed us completely. That made my Brews & Choos research a lot more pleasant, though I did tromp all over the place in heavy boots that I apparently didn't need. Of course, had I not worn them, I would now be writing about my cold, wet socks. So while I'm getting two reviews together for later this week, go ahead and read this: Illinois had the 18th warmest and 17th wettest winter on record, including the state's 6th warmest January, with...

My company distributes each employee's paid time off (PTO) by distributing a certain number of hours of per half-month pay period. The hours accumulate in a bank that the employee can tap into at any time. Salaried employees can spend it in half-day increments, making it a straightforward arithmetic problem to see how much time off one has available. There is, of course, a catch: At some point, you hit your maximum number of PTO hours, and it stops accruing. I will be at that point on the 31st of this...

A couple of updates. First, Paul Vallas picked up a key endorsement, which may bring over some of Lori Lightfoot's voters: Newly-retired Jesse White, the first African-American elected as Illinois Secretary of State, is endorsing Paul Vallas, giving Vallas a leg up in his quest to claim the 20% share of the Black vote he needs to win the April 4 mayoral runoff against Brandon Johnson. White, 88, retired in January after a record six terms as secretary of state. In four of those elections, he was the...

Perhaps the first day of spring brings encourages some spring cleaning? Or at least, revisiting stories of the recent and more distant past: The Navy has revisited how it names ships, deciding that naming United States vessels after events or people from a failed rebellion doesn't quite work. As a consequence, the guided missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville (CG-62, named after a Confederate victory) will become the USS Robert Smalls, named after the former slave who stole the CSS Planter right from...

For the first time since 1983, a sitting Chicago mayor failed to win re-election*, sadly keeping the total proportion of women not being re-elected at 100%. So the April 4th runoff will see the Chicago Public Schools candidate face off against the Chicago Teachers Union candidate: Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson are headed to an April 4 runoff for mayor of Chicago after Mayor Lori Lightfoot conceded defeat Tuesday night, sealing her fate as a one-term mayor. With 98 percent of precincts reporting...

At my day job, we just ended our 80th sprint on the project, with a lot of small but useful features that will make our side of the app easier to maintain. I like productive days like this. I even voted! And now I will rest on my laurels for a bit and read these stories: If you don't worry that the entire US Supreme Court has the technical expertise of your 99-year-old great uncle, perhaps you should? Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explains how giving economic aid to Ukraine benefits the West. In part...

The first female Speaker of the House of Commons died Sunday: She served as Speaker from 1992 to 2000, before going on to become a baroness in the House of Lords from 2001. The current Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle described her as "an inspirational woman" who was known for her "no-nonsense style". She was the Labour MP for West Bromwich West from 1973 to 2000. "To be the first woman Speaker was truly groundbreaking and Betty certainly broke that glass ceiling with panache," Sir Lindsay said. "Betty was one...