The Dry Cleaning Business in Wilmette; an ensemble

      Drive around Wilmette. Find anything surprising in business districts? I know, I know, there are four, yes four, Starbucks in Wilmette alone, but that could be a whole other post. I'm talking about something more discreet, something that teenagers don't exactly find themselves wandering in and out of. You guessed it, it's the alarming amount of dry cleaners.

There are seventeen (seventeen!) dry cleaners in Wilmette.

This GoogleMap shows the clusters of cleaners in Wilmette.

According to GoogleMaps, there are three different dry cleaners in the small business district of Fourth and Linden. And it Downtown Wilmette, there are three more dry cleaners. This potpourri of garment cleaning services is impossible to miss once you notice it. It feels like around every corner, there's another dry cleaner. But really, how much ironing, pressing, and buttoning do our clothes need? Does every town like have this many dry cleaners? 

I decided to do some investigating. I found that in Park Ridge, a suburb with 10,000 more people than Wilmette and 2 more square miles in area, there are only twelve dry cleaners, according to Yellow Pages. But why? Why does Wilmette, a town with an average income of $40,000 more than Park Ridge, have that many more dry cleaners? Perhaps, it is because of the type of workers in the wealthy suburb of Wilmette? Do we simply wear more clothes that need to be dry-cleaned?

Guess who slept through US history?

"They say I can't tell people to kill themselves 

didn't know freedom of speech had limitations"

This is what Washington Redskins receiver, Jabar Gaffney said, after he tweeted what is pictured below to a taunting Cowboys fan after a Redskins loss:

First off, I don't really understand why a grown man would say that in such a permanent fashion. Does he not know by now that in this day and age, whatever you say on Twitter is going to read and copied and pasted? You can't get it back, ever. Once it's out there, it's out there. 

But this post is about the bolded statement above. He claims that because of the reporting onslaught that occurred after his tweet, his freedom of speech was limited. But it wasn't. Freedom of speech only applies to government restraints on speech. No government entity told him he couldn't say that. He said it, and now he has to pay the consequences. There are plenty of rules like that in professional sports; in the NBA a player cannot bash on the officiating after the game without facing a fine, during the lockout players, coaches, and owners are not allowed to talk about the negotiations without facing fines, the list goes on. 

But the government isn't limiting professional athletes' speech. It's the bargain they make for the millions of dollars they earn. They can say whatever they want, but they will have to deal with the consequences. Clearly, Gaffney didn't write a great perilous times paper.

Just One Day Isn't Enough

       Friday was Veteran's day. You probably already knew that, but just in case you didn't, CBS and FOX reminded you over and over and over again with honorary commercials, PSAs, advertisements, and simple thank-yous throughout this NFL Sunday. 

       Watching these gushy commercials where the serviceman hugs his wife upon arrival or hearing that Applebees is giving a discount to veterans for the weekend, I couldn't help but think cynically. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for raising money for foundations like the Wounded Warrior Project and United Service Organization. With my own brother in the military, some of these commercials really hit home. 

     

       But my issue is with the fact that these soldiers are fighting every day and we only take this one day, Veteran's Day (okay, maybe the whole weekend), to acknowledge our appreciation for them and those who served in the past. In an earlier post of mine I wrote about the draft and linked this article. Here's another excerpt from it:  

"Americans are big on bumper stickers, and they like to go to sports events and demonstrate their patriotism by chanting, “U-S-A! U-S-A!” But 
actually putting on a uniform and going into harm’s way? No thanks."

The NFL recognizes Veteran's Day and honors
the military with this campaign. 

       It all comes back to this disconnect with the military. Americans are patriotic at our NFL games, opinionated on the back of our Chevys, yet most of us wouldn't dare enlist, and even worse, most of us don't even think about the military and our servicemen as they finish fighting one war and continue to fight another. 

       We use Veteran's Day to make up for this. The commercials, the discounts, the products, it’s all making up for what we haven’t done the other 364 days of the year. We are supposed to be showing support for those who have fought and those who are still fighting, but really are we just making ourselves feel better? Are we just showing ourselves that we do, in fact, care?  

Riots amidst PSU scandal, fighting wrong battle

       Jerry Sandusky is an evil man. Most people know this, and there is little controversy surrounding that opinion. For those who have not been following the Penn State scandal, in short, former assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky was arrested on November 5th and charged with 40 counts of sexual abuse of young boys over a fifteen-year period from 1994 to 2009. Sandusky retired in 2000, but continued to frequent PSU's athletic facilities and games. 

Sandusky's victims were part of The Second Mile, a charity program for young boys who come from troubled families. Sandusky founded the program. He allegedly showered these boys with gifts, took them to college and professional football games, worked out with them, and hosted sleepovers at his house. The sexual abuse--anything from touching to rape-- took place in PSU athletic facilities' showers, Sandusky's basement, and even motel rooms. 

On Wednesday night, Joe Paterno, PSU's longstanding head football coach since 1966, was fired for not taking responsibility and seeing that Sandusky was disciplined. In 2002, a graduate assistant had reported walking in on Sandusky raping a 10 year old boy in the PSU showers. He told Paterno, who then told the athletic director. The athletic director then revoked Sandusky's privilege of using PSU's showers. The police were never contacted. He continued to sexually abuse as many as 20 boys. 

PSU students bringing down a lamp post amidst the riots. 

In the football world, Paterno is revered as one of the greatest coaches of all time. His termination lead to riots among Penn State students in front an administrative building. They brought down light posts, flipped over a TV van, and lit off firecrackers. They chanted "Hell no, JoePa won’t go!” and “We are Penn State!” 

In a New York Times article, one student said about the riots, “I’m here because I just need to be with the rest of my school right now. This is devastating for us.”

Okay, I get that students didn't want Paterno fired and how much he means to the school. But his firing is "devastating" to you? Imagine what those victims are going through right now. Imagine, for a second, that you are one of Sandusky's victims. 

In the wake of coming forward, letting the world know the pain that Sandusky put and still puts each one of his victims through, PSU students riot Paterno's firing. They riot the administration for firing their leader. How about they riot the administration for not stopping Jerry Sandusky from sexually abusing young boys? How about they riot for the cause of bringing sexual abuse out of the dark? How about they riot for the victims? Those causes are better reasons to riot than Paterno's firing. It isn't just about sports anymore. To give them some credit, they did hold a vigil for the victims the following night, but it might be a little too late. Clearly, most of the focus of the scandal is on Paterno and PSU, not on the victims. 

"Personhood" and its Flaws

Recently, I was skimming the headlines of The New York Times, and I came across this article: The ‘Personhood’ Initiative. I hadn't ever heard the term "personhood" before so I read the first paragraph. It completely blew me away.

"A ballot measure going before voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8 would define the term “person” in the State Constitution to include fertilized human eggs and grant to fertilized eggs the legal rights and protections that apply to people."

I know that many people, including myself, have strong feelings, for or against abortion. I want to make something clear, in this post, I am not trying to argue about abortion.  


This is a much more specific argument. It's the argument of what qualifies as a person and how that definition could hurt women everywhere.


This definition of a person was staggering to me. Did people really think that a fertilized human egg was a person? It's .22 mm wide! And how could this fertilized human egg have the same rights and protections as a person? 

In another New York Times article, Dr. Randall S. Hines, a fertility specialist in Jackson, Mississippi working against this vote, said, “Once you recognize that the majority of fertilized eggs don’t become people, then you recognize how absurd this amendment is.”

Even more, the article writes, “The aim is to redefine abortion and some of the most widely used forms of contraception as murder, obliterating a woman’s right to make childbearing decisions under the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.”

If a women gets raped and then pregnant, then she wouldn't be able to get an abortion. The same applies for incest. Types of birth control would be illegal, but more importantly, women's rights would be limited. But wait, isn't it 2011? 

• If you have further interests on this topic here is the website for the "Personhood" amendment.