Doug Oberhelmen laments that his company can't find qualified employees despite high unemployment. He's not the only person to make the point, as the debate over "structural unemployment" continues. Read more
Summer is high season at Devil’s Lake State Park near Baraboo, Wisconsin, but the long days of early fall are just as lovely. Chief among its scenic wonders: the Ice Age Trail, which climbs into the 1.6 million-year-old Baraboo Hills for stunning views... Read more
On Labor Day, the young women of Ottawa who died of radium poisoning from their work at Radium Dial were memorialized. Chillingly, they were the second Radium Girls: an identical case made an identical furor in New York ten years prior, but it took years for the science, and the law, to make it to Illinois. Read more
The graying of Obama has become a theme of this presidency: to his supporters each patch of gray reflects another piece of the mess that George W. Bush left his successor to clean up; to his detractors the gray reflects the anxious condition of a man in way over his head. I sought the opinion of Dr. Charles Zugerman, associate professor of clinical dermatology at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University... Read more
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a new series of superhero-themed buttons from Chicago’s own Busy Beaver! On Friday night, the 16-year-old button company released its next installment of 15 designs... Read more
List Price: $3.2 million Sale Price: $2.25 million The Property: First listed in 2007 for $6.5 million, this once-grand mansion on five acres in central Lake Forest sold on September 7 for $2.25 million—just 34 percent of the original asking price. Built in 1914, its architect was Arthur Heun, who designed many of the premier mansions in Chicago and Lake Forest... Read more
In October 1933, a plane bound to Chicago from Newark via Cleveland exploded in the skies over Chesterton, Indiana. It's cited as the first incidence of American airline terrorism... but it's still a mystery. Read more
