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MY SUN DAY NEWS

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News & Features Columnists Editorials Hang Your Hat Obituaries My Huntley News

February 24, 2011

Chris La Pelusa

Life 101

Unlike many Sun City residents, George Keller of Neighborhood 2 does not use a snow-removal service, claiming, “You never know when they’re going to come. It’s easier to [snow] blow it.”

Radio flyer

For years, Sun City resident Allen Pollack has taken to the air above Huntley as a pilot of small-engine aircraft, but with the Senate’s recent passing of the Local Community Radio Act on December 18, 2010, Pollack and Sun City resident Dorothy Litwin, along with a group of like-minded partners, may soon have their chance to take to the airwaves over Huntley in a different form, with HCR, Huntley Community Radio, a not-for-profit low-power FM (LPFM) station Pollack and others have been working hard to develop … and, well, get off the ground.

Today’s technology, who’s pushing whose buttons?

By and large, most of today’s technology is beyond me. In telling this to Sun City residents, I think I’ve finally reached an audience that understands what I’m saying because I’m a little, how do you say, out of date, perhaps even an outcast with my friends and mostly my teenage and twenty-something nieces and nephews, whose lives are powered Intel.

A little praise goes for a lot of pounds

New Year’s was only a couple weeks ago, but I’m sure some people are already starting to question their resolutions.

A Grace filled Christmas

One week out of the year, Sun City resident and “This Week in AgriBusiness” co-host Orion Samuelson turns the attention of his popular RFD-TV agriculture/agribusiness news show over to how a rural community church celebrates Christmas.

A Christmas Story

All good Christmas stories come with a little mystery, magic, and miracle. This one has all three and took place right on a cold and frosty Sun City driveway one Christmas night five years ago.

One-one-on approach to your New Year’s resolution

High on the top of New Year’s resolution lists—in fact, according to most national statistics, it’s ranked the highest “promise” of the new year—is fitness, getting in better shape, becoming a healthier you.

Jingle bells are really alarm bells, are they not?

Without fail, every holiday season around now, my sister will ask me, “Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet?” And then, knowing my answer without my having to say it, she’ll proceed to tell me, “I had mine done by October.” Note the by October, not in October. I call this the surprise-and-conquer method to holiday shopping, a real cloak-and-dagger operation: get in, get out before the holidays ever knew you were there.

Fun and games

For one night this season, the Fun Nite Committee will put away their bingo cards and tumbler and roll out an evening of holiday entertainment with their first-ever Fun Nite Holiday Party.

What I’ll be thinking about around the Thanksgiving table

Whether my parents want to admit it or not, and no matter how much my mother tells me I was a welcomed addition to the family and loved all the same, I know that I was an oops baby … unless two people plan to have a child at 38 and 40 (mother and father respectively) and to separate their first batch of kids from their last child by 17-, 14-, and 10-and-half years.

100 voices plus 2 shows equals perfect harmony

One hundred voices talking all at once makes cacophony. But 100 voices all singing in harmony makes the 2010 Prairie Singers Christmas concert.

Lack of state funding jeopardizes interlibrary loan program

“I think everybody’s well aware the state is going through a financial crunch at the moment. And it has obligations that it’s not able to fill financially.”

Crazy or ambitious? Is there a difference really?

If there’s one thing that could be said about my professional endeavors, it’s that I’m no coward … either that, or I’m completely crazy. I tend to think it’s a little of both.

Call to arms

For almost 200 years, Huntley has never failed to live up to the words of John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Since the War of 1812, dozens upon dozens of Huntley residents responded to this nation’s call to arms, defending our freedom and the freedom of others in every conflict since almost 50 years before Huntley’s official founding in 1851.

Friend, mentor, community leader remembered

When I learned that Jim Roberts passed away, it was like a scene from 23 years ago. I was in my parents’ kitchen, talking to my mother while digging around their refrigerator for a rod of string cheese. My mother was on the phone with my father doing the thing that women do so well: swinging two conversations at once (me here, him there).

And who said you can’t buy your happiness? I can

If there was one way (among the many, I assure you) that I was a strange child, it was that I didn’t like candy or sweets of almost any sort. Imagine that: a child who does not like sugar!

Little sticks

When most people see a toothpick, its obvious uses come to mind. But when Cesar Vega of Neighborhood 31 looks at a toothpick, he sees the Eifel Tower, a Model T Ford, a stagecoach, or perhaps a working trolley car, among many other wonders of mechanics and structure.

Art & Alma’s, the story as it is told

BURLINGTON – It may be decades since the last person used a hitching post at Art & Alma’s restaurant rather than a parking space, but the history of that Great American Era still remains in this fine-dining establishment.

I’m sorry, I have no more cars to give to the gods

Have you ever thought that you’d rather actually go insane than have car troubles (although, those two usually go hand-in-hand, don’t they)? Of course, going insane would be worse than having car troubles, but I’ve never liked the saying “It could be worse,” because where does that forward-thinking end? Has anyone said that to you, and you said, “Fine, explain”?

Labor of love

With the approaching production of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, it’s business as usual for the Theatre Company of Sun City. And when each show’s production consists of thousands of man hours and managing fiscal responsibilities, the Theatre Company of Sun City operates very much like a business, a not so small one at that.

When you don’t have cash, you get karma

Little more than a year ago, I became a thief when I unwittingly stole approximately $25 of goods from a grocery store.

In plein air

Whoever said art needs to hang on walls? Why not in a garden? This is just what you’ll find 3 to 8 p.m. Saturday, September 18, at the Art Show in My Secret Garden, where the Sun City Pencil & Pallet Club will display their original fine art at the Gardens of Woodstock.

Call me Christine, why don’t you

The library is a favorite place for me and my wife to visit. Both constant readers, writers, newspaper owners, editors, and with me a literary publicist and she a copyeditor for a publishing company, one might expect as much. And I’m also a firm believer that you can always learn new things at the library … like, fellas, maybe your wife is more “man” than you are.

Playing by heart

In 2007, after nearly a 30-year hiatus from his tenor sax, Frank Ardito of N. 30 picked up his instrument to get back into the swing of things. He bought a new case and had his sax reconditioned and started performing again and loved every minute of it. Then doctors diagnosed Ardito with an aggressive form of stomach cancer, and once again, he had to put down his music.

A mile in someone else’s shoes

There are numerous reasons why people walk: for exercise, to relax, for transportation (the most basic of reasons, of course), or, at 8 a.m. Saturday, September 25, at St. Catherine of Sienna in West Dundee, people will walk for the poor.

School days

It’s that time of year again. Kids everywhere are heading back to school, toting a backpack full of fresh supplies. With McHenry County College’s RAP Program, so are many adults 50 and older. Only with MCC’s RAP Program, it is with the ease of a no-pressure, test-free atmosphere, where adults 55 and older may “Rediscover the joy of learning through active participation with like-minded peers.”