MY SUN DAY NEWS
April 7, 2016
There’s the saying “Time flies when you’re having fun?” Well, in my opinion, time just flies. Somebody mentions 2005 to me, and I think, Oh yeah, last year. Somebody mentions the movie Jerry McGuire was released 20 years ago, and I say, “No it didn’t. Come on. Couldn’t be more than five years ago.” If somebody asks me how old I am, I say, “I don’t know. I’m not 30 but I’m not 40, so somewhere between there?”
Here’s a detail about me that everyone who works with me knows (and probably hates) and what all my friends and family know (and probably hate). I hate checking voice mail. I do it, but it’s a task I’d rather not.
When I was a kid, health food was something parents gave their children when they hated them.
I’m installing a trigger warning into this edition’s Happy Trails for those easily excited or have heart conditions because what I’m about to disclose is shocking.
My wife and I adhere to a pretty strict “no shoes in the house” policy. Mainly because, well, the ground is gross. Just stand at a urinal in any men’s room and look down. Men, you know what I’m talking about. Ladies, you can imagine.
Like most of the world, I watched the events unfold in Paris with grief and horror.
After reading Executive Director Deanna Loughran’s letter to residents in regards to the issues between the board, the Sun Day, and Dwight Esau, there are really only two items worth responding to.
It’s really a wonder to me how Halloween has become so successful as a holiday. Halloween is the one time of year where we encourage each other to be hideous.
For the Sun Day PERSONALLY, the board’s unwillingness to communicate is of very little consequence. It will not negatively impact the paper’s performance. Organizations or governing bodies throwing up media roadblocks is old hat. It’s as common as Illinois road construction and handled the same way: you go around it.
I’m going to be blunt. Under very strict parameters, I believe in assisted suicide and human euthanasia. More in human euthanasia than in assisted suicide, in fact, but unless you’re a death-row inmate, human euthanasia isn’t a remote possibility in this country, so assisted suicide is the next best option…I guess.
The biggest mistake a writer usually makes when writing about personal grief or an experience that produces heightened emotions is writing about it too soon. What flows is usually deeply personal and doesn’t make much sense to readers in general. Moreover, the spilling of emotions can make people uncomfortable. At the time of writing this, the hurt of losing our dog is still fresh, but I strapped on my journalist cap and did my best to keep the experience of euthanizing our dog as “journalistic” as possible.
I’m 37, and I’m growing increasingly more terrified to get older. There, I caught your attention, and you probably cracked a rueful smile. However, the joke’s on you because I’m not worried about getting older for reasons you might suspect. (That’s coming, I’m sure.)
I was on the phone with Sun Day advertising representative Kurt Kuehnert the other day, discussing a client’s ad copy, and he said, “They want either red, white, or blue.” He immediately interrupted himself with, “Wait, that’s wrong. They want red, white, or blue….” Can you see the difference? Let’s clarify it.
The window was always there. He knew the window was there (it wasn’t covered by a dresser or armoire or even veiled behind a curtain for ages), and he saw it every day. But one day, he saw it differently. How a stranger might view it.
Despite his limited availability, Andy Steckling has been dedicated to organizing and helming each edition of the Sun Day and has done so with consistent effort and a keen sense for all news-related items.
I’ve written a lot of different material that covers a broad spectrum of categories, during my career. I’ve dabbled in everything from fiction to non-fiction, including ghost writing a chapter on China’s copper usage and how it impacted the stock market for a book on market analysis, which, by the way, was way outside my area of expertise, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But I pulled through, as I usually do on writing projects because I’m pretty decent. Not great, but decent. What I’m not decent at is writing jokes.
I’m almost 37 and my feet are becoming pickier than a toddler’s eating habits. Shoe shopping is a Goldilocks state in which I can be found standing in an aisle, slightly adjusting my weight on mismatched shoes, with a look of severe consternation on my face. Picking the right shoe has become a tight balancing act of comfort, style (which I care little about), and budget (which I care a lot about).
I admit it. I’ve had my nose buried in outside writing projects the past week and haven’t been paying much attention to news beyond Sun City and the Huntley area. Maybe not even beyond Sun City. Perhaps I should count myself lucky I’ve been bundled up in a world of fiction; otherwise, my said nose might have caught a serious case of frostbite when the Siberian Express cold front swept through, which I missed entirely.
There are very few things out there that make me want to crawl out of my skin. The oddest among them is running a hand over wallpaper. To me, it’s the equivalent of running a fingernail over a chalkboard. Until a month ago, worms were not my list of Things That Make You Go Ugh. But one intestinal parasitic infection later, and the idea of worms makes my skin crawl.
For somebody who writes fiction and is addicted to reading, I find character arcs mostly phony. They’re a necessity, sure. But no matter how many times I get tingly seeing Ebenezer Scrooge drop that coin out the window, I ultimately think character arcs are fluff. Who changes their entire outlook on life in the space of night, pushy ghosts or not? I’m certain if the story kept going, by March Scrooge would be back to penny-pinching Cratchit once he put the ghost of Christmas Future safely in the past.
I recently had a spirited conversation with a Sun City resident in regards to the Sun Day’s content, specifically its blend of content. It was the caller’s opinion that the Sun Day doesn’t report enough Sun City items that would be deemed “news” or more accurately “hard news.”
I was in my early 20s, working as a manager in a restaurant, when I first heard the concept “perceiving is believing” or said differently “perception is reality.” It was part of our management training booklet, in a section that discussed quality of service. Although the concept was new to me and had its appeal, I, forever the idealist, sort of rejected it because there’s always an impregnable truth.
I think if you’ve been reading Happy Trails for any length of time, you’ll know I’m pretty vanilla in both my writing style and subject matter. I basically write stuff that’s suitable for any age to read, which, for the most part, is good advice, if not for any other reason than it’s more marketable. But I’m going out on an editorial limb in this edition and am writing about swear words. I’ll mask them (It’s Halloween soon, after all), but no matter how many of these @#!% I put in, we all know a swear word when we see it.
A few years ago, former Sun Day Managing Editor Mason Souza told me I looked like a guy who liked folk music. I almost fired him.
If you’ve read Happy Trails over the past four years, you’ll know that I don’t write about current events. I don’t write about global or local issues for two reasons. First, editorials are a place where journalists finally get to express their views, and I think there are enough journalists inserting their opinions into the media flow today.
A lesson I never seem to learn is “Never say never.” Just when I thought I dispensed a full-proof “never,” my tastes change or I’m forced into a position that causes me to acquiesce my “nevers” and submit to something I said I’d never do. And humility is born.
In my entire adult life (my entire life, really), I’ve never had a job that respected weekends or holidays—federal, religious, or otherwise. If I wasn’t working in newspapers, I was working in restaurants, and neither field acknowledges that standard, time-honored American tradition of not working weekends. My days off have usually been a Monday here, Tuesday there, Friday there, or on very rare occasion, a whopping Tuesday AND Wednesday.
At the risk of sounding like I’m writing an obituary, I want to tell you about someone both very special and very important to the Sun Day.
When my wife and I moved into our home in the summer of 2012, we had very different views on what the progress of our new home would look like. My wife wanted it finished as soon as possible. I wanted to make it a work in progress. Marriage is a work in progress.
I regret to inform you that this edition of the Sun Day is the last edition that will serve the Edgewater Community.
