respublica

Happy Halloween

This year, 2007

Last year, being propped up.

Capitol ghosts

Via Politico (thanks Kate!), a Halloween report on ghosts in the DC government buildings.  For example:  Abraham Lincoln, whose lanky spirit reportedly haunts more than one White House corner.  Seems Old Abe shows his "shade" quite often around the White House, even in the Lincoln bedroom which was his office.  Makes those fundraiser guests during the Clinton years seem quite brave.

"There's nothing that compares to this."

The Collinsville Kahoks boys soccer team is headed to the state tournament after beating Springfield Sacred Heart Griffin in three overtimes last night at SIU-E's Korte Stadium.

It has been 11 years since the Kahok boys soccer team has made a trip to the state finals.  They'll be playing Barrington at North Central College in Naperville at 4 on Friday.  Good job guys.

Scary trucks just got scarier

Driving from St. Louis to Collinsville today, a quick glance in my rear view mirror made me do a double take.

"If there's somethin strange in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call?"   Truck Busters!  No?  "We ain't we ain't we ain't afraid of no trucks."

Sidewalk work

The west end of Collinsville's Main Street is getting new sidewalks and the work is pretty shocking when you first come upon it, concrete trucks, bobcats, rock, paint, dirt.  Cool.  Here's a look at the whole process.  As always you can click each photo to enlarge.

First they tear everything up.

Really tear things up.

Then comes the forms.

And then the concrete which is stamped (see stamp machine in above photo) to look like brick.

The concrete is lined in a brick pattern then red powder is tossed on while still wet to get that bricky look.  I like this type of sidewalk, it looks good and it is really better, safer really, than real brick because real brick will often burp up in cold/wet weather and can cause people to trip and fall.

Then the residual red dust/powder must be vacuumed away or it would get on the bottom of shoes and tracked in everywhere.

But, are the stores still open during all this commotion?

Yes they are!

Bag that mask

For those wanting a really scary Halloween mask and have no time to shop, EP.TC has a way for you to make your own Larry Craig paper bag mask by printing the image and gluing it to a paper bag. 

"It's unfortunate they got caught up in some voter irregularities."

The Belleville News-Democrat editorialized yesterday on a story I missed out of East St. Louis: 

Last week City Hall welcomed the return of two federal vote fraud felons: Sheila Thomas and Jesse Lewis. City manger Hermon Betts said they'd paid their debt to society and were chosen because of their familiarity with city operations.

Unbelieveable.  These two were part of a major 2004 election story, being convicted for vote buying.  Now, they have finished their prison terms and are now back working at city hall.  "They were chosen because of their familiarity with city operations!"

Wow. So no one replaced these two during their prison terms?  What does this say about city operations that they can't find anyone in the entire city to do whatever job it is?

Good Halloween manners? Booo

The MAtH (man about the house) and I are a day late with Dianne Isbell's Monday Etiquette column in the Belleville News-Democrat, but, hey, it's about Halloween and Halloween isn't until tomorrow.

Me:  Dianne is always on top of things, very relevant.

MAtH:  Why do you always have to exaggerate things?

Me: No, seriously, she has a whole column devoted to Halloween etiquette.

MAtH:  Halloween?  Isn't that the one day when good sense and good taste goes right out the window?

Me:  Not in Dianne world, she takes on the trick or treaters this week.

MAtH:  I bet an unhappy person wrote her about unruly kids, right?

Me: Yep.

A civics quiz

From the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a 60 question, multiple choice quiz to test your knowledge of America's civics legacy.  Legacy seems to be fast becoming the new big thing in conversation, discussion, speeches, politics, religion these days and this quiz attempts to get us to reacquaint ourselves with just how much we know about our history, government, international relations and market economy.

This isn't one of those quick quizes, it takes a bit of time and thought and in some cases, a bit of wracking the brain to pull out something you might have learned way back in high school or college social studies.  Sadly, the average college senior scored 54.2% on this quiz and the brains at Harvard did only slightly better coming in at 69.6%.

Riley at the dog park

Katie and Charlie's 4 month old Wheaton Terrier loves going to the local dog park.  He especially likes the big water bowl provided for the dogs.  The video is only about 10 seconds, but a cute ten seconds.