Enjoying the thought of seeing evening sunshine; or, What 'is' time?!?

We’re now in that time of year that seems to offend a certain segment of our society in a way that I never truly will comprehend.

How was your Monday?

I’m referring to the concept of Daylight Saving Time – where the clocks are adjusted by an hour so as to create as much daylight as possible.

BY THE TIME the concept reaches its peak in mid-June, we’ll have the sun still shining in the skies above us until about 9 p.m. Which is certainly a more pleasing notion than the idea of sundown arriving by about 4:30 p.m. – which is what it was at back in December when so-called “natural time” is at its peak.

I like the idea of as much daylight as possible. I wish it were possible to have Daylight Saving Time year-round – and yes, I realize the vagaries of the Earth’s tilt and natural rotation around the Sun would mean we couldn’t ever have a year-round sundown around 9 p.m.

So I’m happy to think the amount of daylight we’re going to experience will stretch out longer and longer with the coming days. It’s like we get a little more time to use to get our business done.

Although I’m also aware that my view is not a popular one amongst some people. For all I know, some people reading this are now shouting choice obscenities and questioning my overall intelligence quotient.

SOME PEOPLE WANT to think that standard time is the way things are supposed to be. As though we’re somehow messing with Mother Nature’s natural structure of our Earth by altering time.

Even though time, itself, is a man-made concept. The time zones created originally in this country to accommodate railroad schedules.

Or, back in the Soviet Union of old – which was such a large country that it stretched across 11 of the globe’s 24 time zones (as opposed to the continental United States that covers four zones), yet all 11 zones were put on “Moscow Time.”

Way too accurate to be humorous

Which meant there were the easternmost regions of that nation that spent much of their days in the dark. THAT MAY BE the most depressing part of the U.S.S.R.

WHICH MAKES ME appreciate the idea of the coming of more daylight all the more.

Waking up on Sunday at 8 a.m. because my body clock thought it was still 7 a.m. wasn’t a jolt to me the way some people complain about losing the hour – particularly since later in the year when the time changes back, we’ll gain an extra hour of time.

Although if you want real confusion over time, consider the situation right here in Illinois and nearby Indiana. Most of the Hoosier State falls within the Eastern Time Zone, while we in Illinois are an hour behind in the Central Time Zone.

Except for the far northwesternmost-corner of Indiana that is also Central. Which puts places like Gary and Valparaiso an hour behind the rest of the state – including the capital city of Indianapolis.

THAT PREDICAMENT HAS some Indiana officials thinking the whole state ought to shift to one time zone – the Central. Which would put all of the state in line with Chicago-, rather than New York-time.

Which in a certain sense would be logical – all of the Midwestern U.S, on a common time zone. Although some are complaining that now Indiana would be split off from its eastern and southern neighbors.

Need a new watch?

Evansville, Ind., and Louisville, Ky., would wind up in different zones (with a Kentucky city being an hour ahead). Somehow, that seems odd.

Whether that idea will ever come about is uncertain. The state’s Legislature is running into people who think it’s “natural” for the status-quo to remain. Perhaps they’re the kind who wish the time hadn’t changed this week so they could remain in the dark.

  -30-

EDITOR'S NOTE: One thing I like about professional baseball -- the entirety of the season from April through late October, takes place during Daylight Saving Time. Time changes back to standard time Nov. 4.

Revenge on India-noplace? Why bother!

Personally, I have always regarded Indianapolis as being the equivalent, municipality-wise, of Peoria or Des Moines, Iowa.

Small cities that may be nice places to visit. But does anybody seriously want to “live” there?



INDIANAPOLIS: A place to send postcards from, not to



SO EXCUSE ME for thinking it a tad ridiculous that some Chicago-area officials are thinking in terms of “revenge” against Indianapolis for having the unmitigated gall to think they could get the Chicago Board of Trade or the Mercantile Exchange to relocate to the Hoosier capital city. Maybe these people also want to target Los Angeles for "stealing" away Playboy magazine?

Crain’s Chicago Business used its website to report about efforts by the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau to create a new sports commission – one of whose duties will be to try to get some of the athletic events that now take place in Indianapolis to move to Chicago.

Snatching away those events that give Indianapolis its occasion bits of national attention when they appear in the datelines of sports stories just sounds so trivial. Heck, I wish our officials would spend as much time trying to draw business interests to Illinois for economic reasons, rather than trying to create a political grudge match between the two states.

If anything, I can’t help but think that such an effort by Illinois does nothing more than reduce our fine state to the level of Indiana – which has had its “Illinoyed” marketing campaign that has tried to cherry-pick assorted Illinois companies into moving to Indiana, based on the idea that Indiana will ask less of them in taxes than Illinois does.

Would an LA magazine highlight a Cubs ballgirl?

OF COURSE, INDIANA also will provide them with less in benefits than Illinois, which to me confirms the old adage, “You get what you pay for.”

Had the commodities exchanges actually relocated from the South Loop to Indianapolis, it would have been a public relations coup for the Hoosier politicos. But it didn’t happen, because our General Assembly eventually got its act together politically and passed those assorted tax breaks giving the exchanges $100 million in financial benefits.

Even though the supporters of the tax breaks argue that all they really did was changed Illinois law to reflect the realities of the 21^st Century where many commodities transactions are done electronically – rather than in the trading pits.

It just would have been too much of a change in the culture of those commodities exchanges to physically relocate their operations to a city whose only day of international significance is the one around Memorial Day weekend when the automobiles race round-and-round the track for a few hours.

THE IDEA THAT we now have to “avenge” ourselves against Indiana is just too ridiculous a concept to take seriously.

Perhaps it is because I was born and raised in the part of Chicago where Indiana isn’t an esoteric concept, but is that smelly industrial area (the oil refineries in Whiting, Ind.?) located just a few blocks to the east.

I look into Indiana and don’t see a thing they truly offer that we don’t already have here in Illinois. In fact, considering the lack of respect that Lake County, Ind., gets from the rest of its state (including the Indianapolis political scene), I often have thought that the best thing that county could do is accept the fact that it is part of metropolitan Chicago and join Illinois.

It makes more sense than those people on the Springfield political scene who would like Chicago to break off into its own state. If we did, we’d be a more significant state than anything offered up by Indiana or the rest of Illinois, particularly because that county (in many ways) IS the most significant part of Indiana. But it’s not going to happen anytime soon, no matter how much ideologues rant and rage in favor of the concept.

I’M ALSO REALISTIC enough to know that there are some of these “events” that Chicago officials want to dream of snatching for our city that aren’t going to come here – in large part because the people who put on those events like the smaller scale of an Indianapolis – where all the out-of-towners can stay in a hotel located within walking distance of the stadium/arena where it is being held.

That is the attraction for the Big Ten to play its end-of-season men’s basketball tournament in Indianapolis, rather than at the United Center.

If those event-goers were interested in doing things other than the specific event, then Chicago could top any municipality. Perhaps we just offer too many distractions, just like those conventions that would rather be held in Orlando, Fla., or Las Vegas, Nev. A place you visit, then return home from.

A time-filling trip to DisneyWorld or a real-life Vegas casino is simpler to comprehend than squiring around Chicago – although the latter would be a more worthwhile use of one’s time AND a more memorable experience.

SO WHILE I’LL wish these Illinois officials some luck in terms of bringing events to Chicago, I don’t think their efforts are essential to prove that the Second City is a more worthwhile place than any other Midwestern municipality.

Because about the only time that Indianapolis ever trumps Chicago is on those occasions when the AAA-level Indianapolis Indians play better-quality baseball than our Chicago Cubs.

Which is all too often!

  -30-

It’s a whole nuther world when one ventures east of Indianapolis Boulevard

I’m sure Sunday was a day of glory and gloating in Indianapolis, as Big Ten officials announced that their brand-new end-of-season football championship game will be played in the Hoosier capital city.

In choosing to make Indianapolis a place of sporting significance beyond the Memorial Day auto race, the Big Ten rejected a bid to play those games in Chicago – specifically at Soldier Field.

CONFERENCE OFFICIALS SAID one factor in their decision was that Indianapolis has a domed arena in which to play football, while Soldier Field in December would be downright cold – if not snowing as well.

Now some will argue that real football ought to be played in such conditions. But I’m not going to get hung up on the decision, largely because I think such a game should be played on a college campus. This should be a debate between Champaign, Ill., and Bloomington, Ind. (along with Madison, Wis., and Ann Arbor, Mich., to name a few).

So fans of Big Ten football will get to venture off for a pre-bowl game in Indianapolis. Maybe that city is capable of providing an integrated sporting experience that allows people to ignore their surroundings (rather than all the distractions of Chicago – which are what make it a far more intriguing city to live in).

Once the games are over, we all have to return to the real world. And in that world, I can’t help but wonder what goes through the minds of Indianans when they contemplate the political spat their state is now engaged in with the United States of America. There is a reason I don’t like venturing any further east than Indianapolis Boulevard (about two miles from the aptly-named State Line Road).

THERE WERE A few states this spring that had their conservative ideologue-led Legislatures pass measures meant to take those right-wing ideals and ram them down the throats of the masses.

Wisconsin drew much of the attention in that regard. Yet let’s not ignore our neighbors to the east – some of whose legislators fled to the sanity of Illinois to escape getting caught up in the partisan nonsense.

One of the measures that GOP-led state Legislature passed was their attack on Planned Parenthood. Indiana officials want to cut off the funding the group receives from state government because that group helps women at its health clinics if they are interested in aborting a pregnancy.

Which led to the federal government, in the form of the Department of Health and Human Services, telling Indiana officials last week that they are the ones in violation of the law.

THEY WENT SO far as to threaten to cut off Medicaid money for any services, unless Indiana state officials do something to repeal the bill they approved this spring that Gov. Mitch Daniels signed into law.

Which means we’re now in a staring match. Who will blink first?

If this follows through to conclusion with everybody standing pat, it would mean that all those people who live in Indiana who rely on Medicaid to cover their medical expenses would not get their treatment.

Indiana officials already are trying to spin this situation as one where the federal government will be willing to risk the health and lives of low-income people, and they desperately want to believe the public at-large will see things that way. Yet another reason to vote against Barack Obama come 2012.

NONSENSE. HOGWASH. PURE rubbish.

I think the bulk of people will see this as the state willing to let the health and/or lives of its residents be put at risk so they can make some morally-crass ideological statement about abortion.

The only people who are going to see things through the Hoosier-colored glasses are those whose ideological hang-ups are so intense that they can’t accept the reality that abortion is a legal medical procedure.

The idea that the state should be doing ANYTHING to make it more complicated to obtain an abortion is of questionable morality. It definitely isn’t an issue where they can claim the moral high ground.

THE TRICK IS to see how long the political stalemate will last before the day comes that some sort of emergency legislative session is held in Indiana so as to do the legalistic paperwork that would alter their new law just sufficiently for sense to prevail.

I’m sure the political people there will rant and rage against the federal government imposing some mandate on them. I’m just curious to know if any Hoosier-type speaks honestly enough to let the words “state’s rights” slip off his tongue. That would really make this issue all too similar to the old days when states tried to justify morally repugnant policies solely on the grounds that they had the “right” to do so.

DANIELS: Calling a special session?



Personally, I think such policies are all the more reason to think of it as a pathetic joke every time Daniels goes on WLS-AM and makes some sort of anti-Chicago or anti-Illinois diatribe. There may be a way of viewing Indiana as a place that has a lower-tax rate. But living there means you also have to put up with goofs in charge who will push this ideological tripe.

Enjoy your five years of football games, Indianapolis. If there’s any cosmic justice, Indiana and Purdue universities won't play in any of them.

  -30-