The Birth of the Modern Democratic Party

The Birth of the Modern Democratic Party

In the early Clinton for President campaign, I moved to Little Rock from my home in Chicago to work as Clinton’s campaign scheduler. I had plenty of campaign experience with upstart little-known candidates whose campaigns were short on funds. In other words, I had a knack for getting Bill and Hilary Clinton around the country utilizing volunteer drivers, advance people and discount event producers.

Despite rumors of Clinton’s womanizing in 1991, a lot of Democrats believed in him. When I told a political friend I was moving to Little Rock, he said “Good Luck!”, his acknowledgement of another bad life decision I was slinking into. As the campaign scheduler, I needed a big bench of nationwide advance people to create events. I knew plenty of former presidential campaign veterans who loved Bill and Hilary Clinton and others who were just happy to help. No one was in it for a potential White House job because no one actually believed he could win. Bill Clinton positioned himself as the underdog and we love underdogs, or at least we used to.

In early March 1992, campaign bigwig James Carville called and directed me to schedule Clinton at the Stone Mountain Correctional Institution in Georgia, a boot camp for young male prisoners. He and the other Clinton consultants, advisors and friends reasoned that a photo of Clinton strolling with black inmates and Southern white male politicians would cinch Clinton’s appeal to the state’s Reagan Democrats (white voters) and he’d win the Super Tuesday Georgia Primary.

I assigned an advance team for the hastily organized event. The lead advance person called me a few hours after he’d arrived and had gotten the lay of the land: “Regan, the Ku Klux Klan hold an annual cross-burning at Stone Mountain Park. Are you sure you want Clinton to come here?”

I called Carville: “James, are you sure Stone Mountain is a good idea?” He assured me the bold move would boost our poll numbers.

The day after the event Carville called me: “This is not your fault,” he said in that red-hot Cajun voice of his, “I take full responsibility.” He was trying to take the fall. I knew right then the campaign staff on the road with Bill Clinton were blaming me for the debacle (I left the campaign soon after). And debacle it was. Bill Clinton’s New Democrat (conservative) campaign advisors were determined to make him the law-and-order candidate. The photo on the front page of every paper in the South helped Clinton win the Georgia Primary, but not without a price. The national press excoriated Clinton for his racial insensitivity.

Democratic candidate Jerry Brown (former governor of California) said, “Clinton and the other politicians looked like colonial masters trying to tell white voters ‘Don’t worry, we’ll keep them in their place.’”

I was reminded of Stone Mountain recently in reading an article by historian Jamar Tisby about a naive racial reconciliation attempt on Stone Mountain. Of course the Clinton campaign wasn’t attempting to reconcile the races—quite the opposite. They perpetuated racial divide in order to win.

And some of those same Democratic advisors, friends and consultants are still at it, running for office, advising others and pontificating.

Sassy Sisters for Biggs

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Regan Burke, Roberta Cohen, Janie Urbanic

In the three to four generations we’ve lived in Chicago, there have been very few summers that the Chicago Public Schools have not been in the impending doom segments of the news. And here we are again with errant school board members creating an August budget crisis by trying to shame the Illinois General Assembly into filling a $150 million budget hole. Responsible CPS board member Jessica Biggs voted against this misguided move stating it is “not a reasonable source of revenue” (https://www.biggs4chicago.com/headlines).

Yeah, it’s not.

We’ve had it!

Where is good government? We think, have always thought, as the Chicago Tribune editorial on August 7, 2026 pointed out, that merging the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund with the state Teachers Retirement System is not just a sound fiscal idea, but no-brainer good government. What’s the holdup? Is it some ancient bend to Illinois’ notorious corrupted government institutions? Right about now, merging these retirement funds would be a good public relations move on the part of the Speaker of the House who is facing down yet another sexual harassment foot-dragging scandal.

Good government has brought us an elected school board for the first time in Chicago’s history. From its inception, we cynically worried about another lobbyist-controlled institution run by loudmouth bullies with an ax to grind or point to prove — not a board organized around educating and caring for Chicago public school kids.

In November Chicago has a chance to change the generations old crisis-driven CPS by electing Jessica Biggs as its first independent School Board President.

Oh we get it. The fix will take a while and just like Moses never saw the promised land, we may not see a functioning, well-oiled, incorruptible school board come quickly. But we know Jessica Biggs will lead CPS toward a promising legacy for our progeny, our city’s future.

Jessica Biggs, a graduate of Loyola University and Harvard Graduate School of Education was a special education teacher and a Chicago public school principal. She’s a fiercely independent experienced leader who brings together different points of view that lead to new solutions.

A current school board member, independent candidate Biggs built a multicultural, multigenerational rare coalition in 2024. She won her 2024 school board campaign by 44% of the vote against two candidates who were funded by special interest groups. Jessica is a winner.

*Sassy Sisters for Biggs Janie Urbanic, Roberta Cohen, Regan Burke, Jessica Biggs*

Friends in our generation ask why we care about the Chicago Public Schools. We no longer have school age kids or even grandkids in CPS. The answer is easy: 1) The school board budget, funded mostly by property taxes affects our household budgets whether we rent or own our homes. 2) We love and care about Chicagoans, no matter what generation, what age, what income bracket, what education level.

And we want to leave our city in good hands.

We believe leaders like Jessica Biggs are those good hands.

Cops at the Door

In Resma Menakem’s book, My Grandmother’s Hands, we learn that racialized trauma lives in the bodies of White Americans. Not Europeans. Not Asians. Not Russians. White Americans. There’s evidence that the DNA of Black African Americans and, in a different way, of White Americans, has changed as the result of enslaving Black Africans within the past four centuries. If you’re a White American, the trauma has been passed down from your White ancestors and will be passed along to your White progeny.

Reading this introduction, I paused. For a long while. Did I want to go this deep in recognizing and ridding myself of my own racism? Not really. I’m exhausted by introspection on racism, which I’ve been drawn to and stuck on since the murder of George Floyd. But my book group is engaged in a six-week study and I like them.

Its unclear whether certain strings of DNA draws generational traumatized people to law enforcement. Or, do we all have the same traits, and then police work brings out reptilian responses managing Black bodies? In White neighborhoods, policemen jump to a heightened state of control and figure out a way (legal or not) to remove Black people, well, really young Black men, especially when they’re sighted walking down the street hooded and slouched.

When the police go to court to defend these arrests, they say, “residents were afraid for their lives.” If they’ve roughed up, maimed or killed a Black defendant during the arrest or in the jail cell, the judge and jury are persuaded it was self defense with the simple words, “I was afraid for my life.”

This chapter in the book, “White-body Supremacy and the Police Body” seemingly had nothing to do with me. As an old White woman, I have little interaction with the police. But during the meditation exercises at the end of the chapter a memory busted out of my subconscious.

In the mid-1990s I answered a knock at the door to two White policemen. They questioned me about an altercation I had that morning with my car and a new BMW. Both of us were squeezing into one lane of an off-ramp and I banged into her car. She rolled down her window, screaming obscenities, yelling at me to pull over. I did not. I sped up, drove straight home, closed all the curtains and dove into a pint of ice cream. The police plainly stated my actions could be a hit and run. My lizard brain impulsively launched into a devious defense.

“Did you see her?”

“Well, you must see how afraid I was? She scared me to death. I was afraid to pull over. What if she had a gun?”

She was Black. The policemen backed up, put away their notebooks.

“We understand. Don’t worry. She doesn’t have your address. We won’t pursue it.”

The book begins with a quote from Charles M. Blow: “One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding is sufficient.”

MLK Jr teaches this. So does Jesus. And now, reminded of that ugly part of me, I have to learn the practice of empathy and understanding.

Someday.

How Orban’s Defeat Reflects on Trump’s Leadership

Victor Orban doppelgängers tread the sidewalks, take the bus, greet diners and volunteer at the shelter. And why wouldn’t they? Chicago has the second largest Eastern European residents in the U.S. If you live in Manhattan, you must see sixty two year-old, jowled-faced, grey-haired Orban lookalikes all the time. Of course, I hardly knew his face before he lost it in the recent Hungarian election.

For a few days Victor Orban appeared on every loopy screen in hotel bars, hamburger joints, doctor’s waiting rooms-everywhere I went. Orban touted his government as an illiberal democracy, one devoid of woke freedoms, gay rights, women’s rights, minority rights and protections for immigrants. Others described it as a kleptocracy, a mafia state. The Heritage Foundation fashioned their destruction of democracy after Orbanism and called it Project 2025, the Trump Administration’s roadmap. Orban’s loss was so monumental that freedom fighters the world over rejoiced.

Donald Trump’s role model as a loser created a shift toward a glowing hope in the world while cornering an animal in the Oval Office. More and more credentialed people started speculating that our President is sick, demented, mentally ill. MAGA podcasters turned on him. White Christian Nationalists turned on him. Republican talking heads turned on him. And he’s gotten crazier. Reports suggest he was kept out of the Situation Room while the high-stakes military operation in Iran to extract the downed pilots was underway.

Wall Street Journal, April 18: Aides kept the president out of the room as they got minute-by-minute updates because they believed his impatience wouldn’t be helpful, instead updating him at meaningful moments, a senior administration official said.

The entire month of April, Trump has been so weird. Orban’s loss is his loss. His ignorance of war strategy in Iran humiliates him. Bumbling diplomatic efforts in Western Europe, the Middle East and China belittle his leadership. Elites talk about his failures. He’s a hot table of delight for late night comedy. His reaction to getting backed in the corner is to post an array of crazy, from an AI photo of himself as Jesus to yelling about wiping out a whole civilization.

From sea to shining sea, Christian pastors are condemning Trump’s Jesus and his spiritual advisor Paula White for comparing him to Jesus at a White House event. Other preachers pride themselves on keeping politics out of the pulpit. But Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who lays Jesus on every military helmet, have brought the pulpit to politics. MAGA Christians like Paula White preach Trump has a divine mandate to rule. Divine.

If Trump were our relative we’d be huddled at the kitchen table scheming on how to take the car keys away. The last thing we’d do is rejoice over all the bad things happening to him as a result of his damaging behavior. Nor would we be kneeling down to say “God will take care of us” as he lit the house on fire.

But we can’t take away the keys. Or the matches.

God help us.

Mow the Grass War Tactic

God and Nature teamed up to give Chicago a few 70 degree days in March. On one of those days, Elsa hopped into the back of a Flash Cab, happy to be going anywhere in a car, even to the vet for a shot. She gave the vet a kiss, because Elsa loves attention, even if it stings. Afterwards, sunshine accompanied us on a mile walk to the park. Elsa chased a few squirrels then jumped on the bench next to me, laid down, eyes open to the sky, blinking away sleep.

I’d been softly observing the small periwinkle clumps popping out of the fallow ground here and there. Hyacinths. They were rebelliously making themselves known far away from the boundary where the rest of their family sprouted. Did you know the hyacinth root is poisonous? Yep, if Elsa digs up Hyacinths with her snout or teeth, it would precipitate an emergency vet visit.

These Hyacinth bulblets multiply slowly over years. When you see them out there on their own, you can bet the root system is strong and ancient. It’s impossible to get rid of. They always come back in the least expected place. When the grass grows an inch or two Chicago Park District employees arrive with monstrous noisy machines that gleefully mow everything down, including errant Hyacinth cells.

“Mowing the grass” is an Israeli war term coined in their conflict with Hamas in Gaza. These days we hear about the mow-the-grass theory with Trump’s war in Iran. It’s a violent approach meant to weaken Iran’s, or Hamas’, capabilities through intense surface bombing. Mow-the-grass implies that our beef with Iran is intractable. We can only manage it, akin to the Park District gardeners regularly chopping the heads off the relentless hyacinths. The roots are never destroyed. Iranians have unending seedbeds of henchman whose aim is to destroy Israel and terrorize the United States, just as those poisonous doggie land mines remain beneath the surface. Mowing the grass provides temporary relief. There is never, nor will there ever be, lasting freedom from danger.

Meanwhile, the Iran war has distracted us from Israel’s mowing the grass in the West Bank. “Settler Mind” has become a buzz word describing Israeli soldiers (IDF) who kill and maim Palestinians on their own property. The Israeli Settlers have been given free reign to burn out their Palestinian neighbors.

The US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, avowed Christian Zionist, has stated on Israeli radio (before the explosive Tucker Carlson interview) that “biblical lands” belong to Israel. He insists on calling the West Bank “Judea and Samaria”, biblical names. Have you wondered lately why the US policy on Israel has shifted away from Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict? The US is sitting on the park bench softly observing Israel mow the Palestinian grass.

If the White House doesn’t remove Ambassador Huckabee soon, the Arab countries will deem the United States a non-player in any constructive role in peace in the Middle East. Their only regard for the US will be in whatever corrosive deals the individual Gulf states are cooking up with the Trump dynasty. Is that the real strategy?

At the moment, even those corrupt deals look bleak. For who can trust a small-fingered discrepant mean old would-be king?

State of the Union? You’re Kidding, Right?

Why did so many people ask me about watching the State of the Union speech? And not just me. Local news reporters asked people on the street. I’ve Had It Podcaster Jennifer Welch asked Resister Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut if he was going.

“Well, hell no, I’m not going. He’s made a mockery of the State of the Union. And we don’t need to be a backdrop to his histrionics.”

Honestly, it’s not like the speech was the U.S. Women’s Hockey finals at the Olympics. It was Donald Trump’s State of the Union. The news about the number of Democratic Members of Congress and Senators not heading over to the House Chamber in the Capitol was interesting. However, it was expected. We didn’t need to see breaking news headlines about each boycotter pop out of our phones all day.

Resister Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia preached at Trinity Church in Chicago Sunday. His sermon was titled I’ve had enough. Using the Hebrew Bible’s Isaiah, he reminded us of wicked kings. These kings and wannabe kings erase anything that looks like diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“Don’t act like this is politics as usual. This is not just politics, it’s spiritual wickedness in high places. Haven’t we had enough?”

Senator Warnock said God hates solemn assemblies that normalize this political spiritual wickedness. God hates?

“Wickedness in our lifetime is being facilitated and approved and applauded by people who are sitting in somebody’s church this morning,” preached Warnock. I’d hate that too if I were God.

Last summer, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson gathered some of his boys in prayer. They met in the basement of the Capitol. They emerged from their subterranean huddle to vote on the bill that kicked 15 million people off health care. Warnock questioned who those boys prayed to. Who did they talk to?

Senator Warnock did attend the State of the Union speech. Good for him. His ministry of solemn presence condemns the MAGA religion of those boys in the basement.

Trinity Church’s pastor, Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III and Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock are alum of The Auburn Senior Fellows. They are two of twenty-five top leaders who bring justice-centered faith into the public square. An unprecedented cohort of changemakers, they were brought together by Auburn Seminary in New York City. You’ll see them in places like Minneapolis and Alligator Alley, No Kings rallies and detention center protests. No matter your religion or no-religion, if you ever get a chance to see one of them, go. Just go. They are listed here.

The titles of Jennifer Welch’s podcast I’ve Had It and Warnock’s preaching I’ve Had Enough are misleading. Yes, they’ve had it, had enough. But they keep going, keep speaking out, keep organizing, keep preaching.

Because they haven’t had so much that they quit.

Why Vote? To Be in That Number

The first vote I cast was against the Viet Nam war. It didn’t matter who the candidate was. I voted to stop the killing and maiming of Americans and Southeast Asians fighting on the other side of the world. Every vote since then has been for others. Oh, I could say I’ve voted for women’s rights, my own civil rights, or to keep Social Security and Medicare, but I’m a privileged white woman. In reality, my rights have never been directly threatened as a woman. And, though I have no personal or family wealth, I’ve never feared Social Security and Medicare cuts. My Plan B was, and is, simply to “go without.”

The Chicago Board of Elections notified me recently that I’d be receiving my mail-in ballot for the March 17, 2026 primary. Mail-in voting is perfect for me. I always know who I’m voting for. I mark my ballot, then drop it in the mailbox long before Election Day.

Most of the votes I’ve cast were for candidates who vow to protect the rights of others. The rights of women, gay rights, the civil rights of Black and Brown people all figure into my sizing up candidates for all the years I can remember.

This year? Jeez, is this year different.

I’ll mark the ballot for all my favorite candidates, but that’s a secondary reason for voting. Present times call for me to vote for myself, to be in the number, to exercise what’s left of Democracy. The witless words of the current president of the United States make me aware of the precariousness of my ballot. The other day he fantasized aloud about nationalizing elections. Here’s what those words said to me: Hey Regan, I’m not going to count your vote.

Among the “Ice Out” and “Remember Renee and Alex” signs carried by activists in sub zero fields of love across the Upper Midwest in January, slogans like these bobbed up and down in the snow-drenched crowds:

What Happened to Love?

If You’re Family’d Been Taken You’d be Here too

Hate Never Made America Great

Dark Skin is not a Crime

ICE is for Drinks not Communities

Resist the Cruelty

Never Again is Now

Grandmothers and fathers, programmers and poets, priests and ministers, rabbis, imams, and buddhists all risked their lives, reputations, livelihoods and freedoms to raise their voices in nonviolent outrage. For others.

Millions of us have always voted for others.

I’m a lesser fan of the Christian bible but there’s a passage in the gospel of Luke that goes like this: Then Jesus turned to the crowd and said, “When you see clouds beginning to form in the west, you say, ‘Here comes a shower.’ And you’re right. When the south wind blows, you say, ‘Today will be a scorcher.’ And it is. You know how to interpret the weather signs of the earth and sky, but you don’t know how to interpret the present times.”

For you and Alex and Renee and all I’ve ever cared about, I vote. For civil liberties, justice, and freedom, I vote.

But I see that present times call for selfishness.

Present times call for me, and you, to vote first for ourselves.

Doomsday Prophecies: From Hal Lindsey to Trump’s NAR

In the early 1970s the doomsday prophecies in Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, stoked my Toms River, New Jersey, Christian fundamentalist cult. Little did I know that the prophesies of the cult religion of my youth would come true through a new religious movement, the National Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Fifty years later.

Based on his interpretations of the Book of Revelations, Hal Lindsey connected end-of-the-world Biblical prophecies to current events. In his view, Satan’s plans to form a one-world government and religion were triggered by the establishment of the state of Israel and the World Council of Churches—both in 1948.

Converts, like me, of the 1970s Jesus movement, still flash-backing to acid trips, saw signs of the end times around every corner. In our small church community, anti-globalism was our protest because Satan was using the banks to form a global economy. We boycotted the Bank of America. We refused to use credit cards. We wrote letters condemning the birth of the European Union. An increase in the divorce rate, recreational drugs, new technology, the gasoline shortage, religious ecumenism. All these signaled the diabolic end of the world, the coming of the Antichrist, or some kind of unearthly vision that terrified vulnerable young comfort-seekers.

I left the Christian cult after sobering up in Alcoholics Anonymous, divorcing an abusive husband, and moving 1,500 miles away from the scene.

Starting in the 1980’s, unbeknownst to me, Christian fundamentalism slowly morphed into the New Apostolic Reformation. The prime NAR chronicler, Matthew D. Taylor, describes the NAR’s leadership as a “spiritual oligarchy” of apostles and prophets. Apparently God has told NAR adherents that Donald Trump is their spiritual leader. You’ll have to figure that one out for yourself, but the results are obvious.

The NAR apostles and prophets tell Trump his job is to “advance God’s earthly kingdom so Christ can return.” Advancing the earthly kingdom is outlined in Project 2025. The elimination of abortion and women’s rights; same-sex marriage and gay rights; dismantling USAID as a stand against globalism—all the shockers in the first year of Trump 2.0 are advancing the earthly kingdom.

Venezuela is the biggest shocker so far, at least for me. Fifty years ago I learned that the Book of Revelations prophesied God would make the United States, Russia and China the world’s three spheres of influence. The United States would get the entire Western Hemisphere. Russia gets its region, and Europe. China gets all of Asia, India, Africa. This is the umbrella of national sovereignty, the opposite of international integration and the seeds of anti-globalization.

A radio broadcaster startled me on Saturday morning, January 3, with the news that the US invaded Venezuela. The long-forgotten voice of myself as a 25-year-old Jesus Freak bellowed, “Uh. Oh. Wake up. It’s happening.”

Donald Trump, in a 2017 speech to the Joint Congress, announced he was not the President of the world. Instead, he stated, he was the President of America. These words sent a signal to anti-globalists and end-times prophets around the world. It was a declaration that the US will once again dominate the Western Hemisphere. Vladimir Putin confidante Alexander Dugin, heard the call and issued a statement that traditionalism had won, globalism lost.

Anthropologists say pandemic uncertainty, virtual reality, environmental issues, old-age anxiety, border disputes, memory disorder, and gender trouble put society in a self-protective liminal state, a state betwixt and between. Perhaps these unsettling markers ushered in Donald Trump as the leader of the new world order. Now that we’ve fallen over the threshold, what do we do?

I don’t know.

But holy shit.

Wake up.

It’s happening.

Dead Dogs

The cat jumped from the cabinet behind the Christmas tree onto the back of the couch and slinked over to perch behind the woman sitting across from me.

“Watch out! The cat’s behind you,” a nearby party-goer warned.

“Oh that’s ok. I like cats,” said the guest in proper guise.

Staring down the resident pet, I drifted off to a time long ago when I was in the same position as the proper guest. When I turned to greet the host’s cat (a stupid-human gesture), she swatted me in the face, claws out.

The Christmas party conversation turned to pets.

“Do you have any pets?” I was asked.

“Oh yes, I have a Westie.”

I love my dog and I talk to her a lot, but I don’t talk about her much. My mother, Agnes, hated people who anthropomorphized their pets. Really hated them. My feelings aren’t as strong but I have the genes—an aversion to pet talk.

It turns out Agnes was onto something. As long ago as the 1870s Charles Darwin criticized the natural tendency to ascribe humanlike attributes to non-human animals. His pitch was for humans to show as much interest to the natural world of insects and plants as we do to our pets. In doing so, he opened the forbidden subject of anthropomorphism. Darwin’s England was ground zero for the upper classes treating their pets like children or stand-ins for friends. Since then, many scientific abstracts and PhD theses have tried to punctuate the negative consequences of anthropomorphism: over-spending on human-like clothes, feeding pets non-compatible human food, beautifying dogs with toxic cologne, nail polish, breath freshener and worst of all, expecting non-human animals to have human emotions.

I suspect Agnes was more drawn to anthropomorphism than her sophistication would allow. Her sobering suggestion that trees are worth adoration are probably my earliest spiritual experience of our life together. Another was her reverence in quietly revealing the nesting robin’s eggs outside the bathroom window. But she’d never stand for conversations about them. In her world, if you didn’t present a funny story based on serious articles from the New York Times or Time Magazine, you were an out and out bore. Her ghost leads me to the Never-Trumper’s Bulwark podcasts, whose tagline reads “a few laughs to wash down the crazy.”

There’s a trail of dead dogs nipping at my aging heels. I threw this into the mix at the Christmas party in order to join the pet talk.

“Do you dream about dogs from your past?” Someone asked of no one in particular.

“All my dead dogs are present,” I blurted out.

It’s a goofy thing to say, like I’m a Buddhist or Spiritualist or the crazy white-hair in the corner with her Diet Coke. Other than my dog Henry, who talked to me during the Covid shutdown, I’ve always thought of my pets as nothing more than animals (forgetting that I, too, am an animal). No fancy garments, doggy day care or prepared meals. But as dead pals, they are sentient. Here. They may be the beings between the here and the hereafter, waiting to guide me to wherever that is. I hope so.

I’ll need protection to escape the cruel and the crazy running my country.

Knock On Wood

The activist community that confronted ICE in Chicago has quieted down for the winter since ICE commander Gregory Bovino hightailed it out of town with 100 of his 200 military combatants. Southern activists report that ICE is wreaking havoc on the streets of New Orleans and other Gulf Coast towns while training the 10,000 newly-enrolled ICE recruits. In the Upper Midwest, we’re like mama bears and cubs in hibernation. We’re squirreling away our esprit to ready ourselves for the war we expect ICE to launch over the threshold in the spring.

Oh, there are cadres of fresh revolutionaries protesting against high property taxes at winterized town halls. Indivisible and other groups are keeping the newly activated engaged with Happy Hours, Coffee Hours and Sound Baths. And eager canvassers are stepping out in the cold to knock on doors for their favorite state and local candidates.

llinois’ 2026 primary is March 17. In times past, a St. Patrick’s Day election meant a big turnout at the polls. Can you guess why? Yeah, a lot of people took the day off for the parade and voted afterwards. But Illinois Governor Pritzker has told us that Bovino and his returning troops may try to disrupt our elections. What does that mean?

No one has a clue.

Amidst all this dread of the future present, I received an unexpected message about my life story that put the worries of the world on the back burner. In 2020 Tortoise Books Chicago published a memoir I’d written thanks to the encouragement of friends.

A few years after I retired I attended a poetry reading at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Shuffling up to Poet/Author/Moviemaker Kevin Coval, I disclosed, “I wish I could write”.

“Everyone can write. Everyone has stories to tell,” Kevin responded. “Come Saturday afternoon to the writing class. It’s free.”

Kevin and the others welcomed me, a much older student, into the upper room of significant creatives. One day he introduced me as “one of our writers,” and a bolt-of-lightning zipped around my bones.

Beth Finke, memoir writing teacher extraordinaire, praised my weekly essays while x’ing out the “weak” verbs and extraneous paragraphs. Writing expended a lot of brain energy and I often gave up from exhaustion. Then Beth would assign an energizing prompt like, “the tune you most remember from childhood” (Elvis’ Hound Dog). Poor thing had to listen to every detail of every step in the long saga of getting my book published.

Vivienne, an accomplice in many adventures, insisted I write a book so she could make a movie about my life. This seemed preposterous, but slipped into the maybe compartment when she wrote, produced and directed her full-length feature, “Dare to be Wild” (Netflix). It still seemed preposterous because as a friend asked me recently, “Is your life that interesting?” No. Yet, Kevin Coval attests every life is interesting.

The unexpected news I received this week puts the idea of a production, based on my book, on the front burner, in the cards, out front, on center stage, in the spotlight, on the radar, on a winning streak, ahead of the game, beating the odds, nailing it, on fire.

Knock. On. Wood.

Regan Burke

Author "In That Number" from local booksellers or Amazon

Tag: politics