I will be meeting C-Nor in Peoria tomorrow night to see the hilarious and delightfully nutty Maria Bamford.

(If you don’t recognize her name, I’m betting you will instantly recognize her face and voice.)

So, in other words, I will be

• driving in the dark to a next-door-to-a-strip-club comedy club,
• on a weeknight,
• to a town an hour-and-a-half-away,
• possibly blowing big bucks on a hotel room afterward so I don’t have to drive back to Forgotonia on a two-laner in the dark.

My priorities are tight, yo.

(But if you are getting older and broker by the day, isn’t laughter an appropriate form of therapy?)

I realized, on Saturday night after having had a great time at Penguin’s Comedy Club, that I had been snobbishly assuming, beforehand, that “nobody who comes to the Quad Cities would really be that funny.”

But the guy C-Nor and I saw on Saturday night, Mark Sweeney, was cracking me up (and the whole crowd, too) the whole show!

Here’s a clip of one of his bits:

• The grand, ostentatious houses all up and down the hearts of the town–Prairie, Cherry, Seminary– and the rhyming street names, and the turrets and balconies, and the sheer fact that some of these houses held ballrooms in them.

• Being able to walk to work on spring mornings
• Walking along the brick streets and taking in the feeling that everything was so full-of-past-life because of these houses (and knowing that they inspired Jack Finney to write “I Love Galesburg in the Springtime”)
• Watching the drug-sale activity at the house across the street from my Cedar Street apartment.
• Driving or walking past the Mansard-style house on Prairie Street where my friend Cyn lives.
• Seeing Robert Hellenga’s bright yellow car around town (like, parked in front of the public library; walking home from work and knowing that the owner, a best-selling novelist, was inside reading the paper or whatever)
• Walking by the big old building on Broad Street–the one that has variously held junk shops or paint stores or what-have-you–which (I learned upon a little research) actually used to be The Auditorium, where the Marx brothers were allegedly christened with their nicknames
• Knowing that, over on the south side of the tracks where the most drug-related arrests and shootings take place, the poet and Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg was born, and knowing that he too had heard train whistles in the town
• Walking by the Kensington and knowing that when it was a hotel, its previous owner was very likely the same man who “invented” the Reuben Sandwich
• Walking by WGIL on Simmons Street and knowing that, when the world was being hit by Beatlemania, a British WWII wife by the name of Louise was working there behind the mic (and no one around her had any idea her brother was George Harrison)
• Going to the Pizza House on Simmons Street and, despite warning myself beforehand to watch my waistline, eating practically the entire pizza
• Going to the Galesburg Public Library and perusing through the trough-style racks of new novels and non-fiction books
• Going to the Galesburg Public Library and talking to the older lady (whose name I can’t remember–Edith? Enid?) who knew a lot of local history
• Buying Christmas gifts at night on Seminary Street and walking through the lamp-post lit street with little shopping bags and prettily-wrapped packages in my arms
• Eating at the Landmark, no further commentary need.
• Eating french onion soup, cinnamon rolls and all the stuff off the “produce wagon” at The Packinghouse (and knowing that Billy Corgan once ate there, too)
• Shopping at the Galesburg Antique Mall, being unable to leave without buying something, (even though before I started going there I would never in the world have thought I liked antiques)
• The specific paper-y smell/scent of the Register-Mail building on Prairie Street (where I worked in the newsroom for about 2 years)
• Finding vintage-y, kitschy treasures (and talking to the little old ladies at) the Cottage Corner consignment shop.
• The owner of Jalisco asking me at the end of every meal, “Are you done?” (and the creative uses of Alphabet Soup served during lunch….)
• The weird, synthetic, and-yet-somehow strangely comforting smells I would take in while walking laps (behind silver-haired seniors) at the Sandburg Mall– the weird mixture of Bath & Body Works, press-on-nail chemicals, the Weight Watchers leader’s perfume, and food-court food
  
• My awesome hardwood-floors-and-huge-sunporch apartment on Selden Street (where I lived above a kind, caring woman who just happened to be a professional jazz singer)
• Every single thing about the walking path at Lake Storey (seeing the sun glinting off the lake, reading the teenage graffiti on the spillway bridge, watching families fish, passing all the church and family picnics in the park…), and where, on my long walks, I made some of the bigger decisions of my adult life, communed with nature and the higher power and all that, (and also, once, on roller blades, ran in to a tree).
• add your own here (comment below).

I took these pictures sometime around 2005:

One of the things that bugs me about Macomb is that it can tend to seem pedestrian-un-friendly.

Every time I try to take a walk on a nice day–such as on on North Randolph Street, for example–I have to zig-zag back and forth from the east side of the street to the west, and back again, because just as I get going at a good pace, the sidewalk will abruptly come to an end.

(Yes, kids, Shel Silverstein truly was a prophet.)

I sometimes feel like there are hardly any streets where you can safely walk or ride a bike.

But, full disclosure:

I might be a tad more passionate about this topic than the average Macomby Homey.

Because, well, let’s just say– hypothetically, of course–that I one time had AN INCIDENT on Western Avenue.

Which–hypothetically– involved me being behind the wheel, a young pedestrian walking out in front of me and putting her hands on my Honda’s hood, and me ending up getting a ticket.

But which was NOT, I repeat NOT,

an actual hitting-of-a-pedestrian caused by me.

Got that???

I’ll tell you the story sometime, but let’s just say I still cannot tell of THE INCIDENT of the NOT-an-actual-hitting-of-a-pedestrian, I don’t care what you say, officer), without getting, rather….passionate about it.

Anyhoo.

Despite my extreme frustration with the young people in Macomb who

• refuse to use crosswalks,

• walk in the dark, down the middle of the street, wearing all dark clothing

• toss a football back and forth to each other from opposite sides of the street,
  and/or

• run to catch the bus without looking to see if any vehicles might be coming down the street near said bus,

• etc., etc., etc.,

I also think it’s fantastic to see how many students (and facutly, too) are riding bikes to campus these days.

Mabye I’m wrong, but it seems to me that compared to, say, 10 years ago, there are tons more students (and facutly) riding bikes to campus.

SO, as you might guess, I am quite pumped about the news that some fine folks governing our city are actually voting to create some bike paths in town.

(Now if they could just do something about the animals-being-let-from-the-zoo-like atmosphere of Western Avenue…)

(from the PJ Star earlier this week:)

Bicycle lanes may soon be showing up along two main Macomb roads after the Macomb City Council’s Community Development Committee voted Wednesday to recommend the plan.

A sub-committee made up of local residents and city officials have been meeting for several months to discuss the addition of bicycle trails and what they would cost.

Committee member Jeff Calhoun presented the developed plan and a map of it to the five aldermen on the development committee. It calls for a large rectangular path as part of phase one; taking in Carroll and Washington streets and bordered by South Ward Street and Prairie Avenue.

The plan calls for a bicycle lane on the roadways, which would be striped and signed. That may mean, Calhoun said, the one-way streets of Carroll and Washington would be forced down to one lane of travel area instead of two. The path also considers travel destinations such as Spoon River College, Western Illinois University and the Macomb square.

Alderman Richard Vick said he didn’t see any reason why the one-lane traffic flow should matter.

Alderman Dave Dorsett pointed out there’s a misconception locally that people who live or own property along the route would have to pay for the path addition.

The city has included $33,000 in its budget for fiscal year 2010 to cover the cost of striping and signs for the route.

Aldermen unanimously voted to recommend the plan and map to the full city council for consideration at a future meeting.

Also Wednesday, aldermen were updated on a project to turn the former Lamoine Hotel into condominiums. Currently, only the first floor of the business is being used and the multiple upper floors have been empty for many years.

Former Macomb resident Jason Welch of Naperville is partnering with Macomb construction contractor Jack Laverdiere in an effort to bring new life to the building.

But City Administrator Dean Torreson said a second look at the necessary renovations caused a jump in construction costs of $100,000 and may put the project in jeopardy.

One thing that could save the project, Torreson said, is the effort underway to designate a section of the city as a historic district. He said it would allow the renovations to qualify the developers for a federal tax credit, which could cover the funding gap.

from the Peoria Journal-Star yesterday and today:

Al-Marri indicted on terrorism-related charges; Justice Department seeks dismissal of complaint he filed

By ANDY KRAVETz

Al-Marri may be tried in Peoria

Nearly six years after he was whisked away after being named an enemy combatant, it appears Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri will come back to the land of Lincoln.

Local federal prosecutors couldn’t comment but news reports from the Washington Post and The Associated Press cited confidential sources that said al-Marri’s case would likely return to Illinois and possibly Peoria, where previous charges were dropped in 2003.

One of the people familiar with the al-Marri case said prosecutors plan to charge him with providing material support to terrorists, a charge similar to what he would have faced if tried by a military tribunal.

Sharon Paul, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Springfield, said she could not comment on the matter. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd declined to comment on the plans for al-Marri.

The move comes just weeks before President Barack Obama’s administration had to file papers in al-Marri’s case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court outlining their position on whether the Qatar national could be held as an enemy combatant indefinitely.

Obama had ordered the Justice Department to review the case and give him a report on his options. The president has never made clear his stance on the matter and government lawyers have a few more weeks to file their final briefs in the Supreme Court case.

At issue is the constitutional question of how much power the president has during wartime and whether the government can hold a person without charges and without a trial.

It was unclear Thursday if the anticipated move would render moot the case before the high court. Jonathan Hafetz, one of al-Marri’s lawyers, said he would oppose such a move, saying the Supreme Court must rule on the legal quandary.

Hafetz called the potential transfer of custody an “important first step,” but one that must be accompanied by a parallel action in Washington, D.C., which could possibly set limits on the power of the executive branch in wartime.

The attorney, with the American Civil Liberties Union, said he had spoken to al-Marri this week and that his client was doing well, despite nearly six years in solitary confinement. His overriding desire, Hafetz said, was to have his case heard in court and then to return to his family in Qatar.

Al-Marri was arrested in December 2001 as a material witness for a New York-based grand jury investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Within weeks, he was charged first in New York and then in Peoria’s federal court with credit card fraud and lying to the FBI.

Those charges were dropped in June 2003, when former President George W. Bush declared him an “enemy combatant” and whisked him away to a naval brig in South Carolina, where he has been held since.

Government officials have said al-Marri came to Peoria under the guise of getting his master’s degree at Bradley University, but his intent was to lead a second wave of attacks against America.