#newsamehope / 4.17.20

What is new in the last 24 hours?

• A disheartening amount of the CARES PPL money went to big businesses, and not to the small businesses the act was claiming to support. Is the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse chain more deserving of its $20 million ask than the local bakery asking for $15k? Smoke and mirrors. 

• Illinois will partner with six other states to restart the Midwest economy in what Gov. JB Pritzker said today will be a phasing-in of relaxed stay-at-home and business closure orders.

• Chicago Public Schools announced today it will spend $2.5 million to give its 12,000 homeless students computers and internet hotspot devices. BURIED LEDE: There are at least 12,000 homeless students in CPS.

• 60 car pile-up on the Kennedy by Dan’s old studio due to the early morning snow on Wednesday.

What is the same?

• The way re-steeped tea is a ghost.

• How good it feels to surrender to a couch nap. (In the moment. Less good when you wake up at 11pm with your contact lenses firmly affixed to your eyeballs.)

• The sound of a freshly cracked can of LaCroix (or Belle Vie, Aldi’s excellent dupe).

What is the hope?

• Chicagoans may have noticed that it’s winter again this morning. I spotted a wee bunny seeking refuge from the snow on a tiny patch of green beneath a lawn chair. Impressed by this bunny.

• I heard students reading their musings on emerging from the pandemic. They are expecting the world to be better and sweeter. They demand change, and they are able to see the possibilities that exist. Teenagers who are missing their friends and their planned milestones are still crying out for a kinder world. We mustn’t disappoint them. 

Photo: Evanston Lake Front, November 2019.