Hasta La Gadget!

YouTube has become a place where anyone can upload creative content in an attempt to be noticed. Though the service has given plenty of viral heroes their start, a new report suggests the video service is in a panic. The Wall Street Journal, citing sources inside Google, say YouTube is in a “fire drill”. The reason for all the concern … Continue reading

Overnight, Sony’s PlayStation store went down. For roughly two hours, the online portal for PlayStation users was unavailable, and a hacker conglomerate is taking responsibility. The Lizard Squad, which cryptically refer to themselves as “lizards” who “want to watch the world burn”, seem to be claiming responsibility for the disruption in service. In a Twitter post right around the same … Continue reading

Seamless and Grubhub should be very afraid: Amazon is testing a restaurant takeout and delivery service called Amazon Local in Seattle.

Read more…

When the writers who are Chicago’s eternal gift to literature gather in the smoky dark spilled beer taverns of heaven to share their best work, Bill Granger will be bringing along Time For Frankie Coolin. Granger left us with a bunch of terrifically entertaining, solid stories. The November Man series — even with the marketing mischief done in the reissues in changing titles and making a horrible movie–will stand the test of time. But it’s Time For Frankie Coolin that will earn Granger a place at the table with the masters.

I first read the book in 1982, the year it came out and around the time it takes place. Back then, I knew enough to put it on the shelf next to my favorites. But I couldn’t tell you why. Now in 2014, having just read the reissued book, I can tell you why it spent all those decades on the shelf next to James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonnigan, Richard Wright, Algren, Royko, Bellow, Bill Brashler and Studs Terkel.

First, because of the pitch perfect dialogue. This quiet gem of a book is a series of conversations that masterfully tell the story of that time and place. Which means that they are not always pretty. But they are always authentic. They show the way people talked to each other. The racism (or the pretzel logic denial of racism) rising up today in the national psyche was also bubbling over in 1970’s Chicago when this story took place. So racism was part of the conversation. Woven into the fabric of the character’s lives.

But it’s the full spectrum of eternal themes like family, loyalty, hard work, craftsmanship and flat out love, that run beneath these conversations and make the book quietly resonate 32 years later.

The title of the book carries all sorts of meanings. Frankie has the specter of jail time hanging over his head. His “crime” being that he is part of a family, a culture and yes—a time. All this set against the question, where does all the hard work, the hustle, doing the right thing, where does it lead? And if you don’t ask questions, if you don’t share, where does that get you? Granger’s genius is the realism shown both by what is said and often more importantly, what isn’t said.

Time For Frankie Coolin is not for everyone. No car crashes or terrorists or sexy conspiracies.

But in these times of racist horror shows, the disappearing middle class and all the changes in what it means to be a family, maybe this book is just what the world needs again.

Especially in the pauses, the silences in conversations when so much is left unsaid.

If you choose to listen, you’ll find that in Time For Frankie Coolin, Bill Granger left the world a gift. Like all the great writers do. Because in this book, Granger started a conversation.

Like the one we just might need today.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The colorful cards arrive from all over the globe at a clip of 1,200 a day — each wishing tiny Addie Fausett happy holidays on what is expected to be her final Christmas.

Six-year-old Addie has an undiagnosed illness that has halted her growth since she was 3 and is now causing cerebral atrophy. Doctors say she has less than one year to live. She hardly talks anymore and struggles to walk and sleep. She weighs less than 25 pounds. And she can’t play with other kids because her illness causes behavior problems.

As her family coped with the painful realization that Addie is dying, her grandmother came up with an idea: Let’s ask people from around the globe to send her Christmas cards to cheer her up. Days before the first Facebook post by grandma Maree Jensen, Addie told her mom she wanted friends like her two older sisters and to be able to laugh and play.

“Grandma just wanted to be able to tell Addie she has a lot of friends,” said Addie’s mother, Tami Fausett. “My mom wanted Addie to think she was really loved. It worked. “

In the first days, they counted the cards one by one, up to eight the week before Thanksgiving. Then, a Salt Lake City TV station ran a story, getting the campaign wider exposure. Now, they count them by the thousands. About 3,000 arrived on Thursday — the same day the family attended a funeral for Addie’s father.

Since Monday, more than 1,000 cards have been arriving daily for Addie, said Barbara Gordon, postmaster in the tiny rural town of Fountain Green, Utah, population 1,000, about a 1 ½-hour drive south from Salt Lake City.

“Some of the stamps are so unusual,” Gordon said. “They are coming from all over the world.”

They have come from Germany, Australia and Saudi Arabia, Tami Fausett said. One judge sent a signed and stamped court order for Addie to have a Merry Christmas. One little boy sent a hand-written note telling Addie he was her boyfriend.

“She loved that one,” said Tami Fausett, 29. “She has a couple of boyfriends.”

She always smiles when they open the cards. Sometimes she lays on top of all of them on the floor. A couple of times, she’s broken down in tears. Not the type that come with a tantrum, her mother said, but the tears that come with emotion.

Addie was a happy, healthy child until she turned 3, her mother says. Then they noticed she stopped growing. A battery of tests were done. They tried giving her steroids to spur her growth.

Nothing worked. Doctors couldn’t figure out what it was.

She has been deteriorating rapidly in the last year. She has tremors, twitches and pain in her legs. Last month, an MRI revealed extensive brain damage. Doctors said she probably will live at most one more year, maybe less.

“It’s sad,” said Amber Brosig, who runs a charity, Children and the Earth Inc., that has been helping the family. “You pick her up and you can’t believe she’s that old and that little.”

They are just treating symptoms and keeping her comfortable, her mother said. Doctors have asked Tami Fausett to fill out a form that states how far she wants physicians to go to keep Addie alive.

“There is still enough of Addie that I don’t want to fill that paper out,” she said. “That’s rough when they hand you that for your child.”

For now, the family is finding holiday joy in the daily bounty of colorful cards that bring out the best in Addie.

“I had no idea asking for a card would spread so fast. It means a lot that so many people care that much,” Tami Fausett said. “A card doesn’t seem like a lot, but to Addie it is so much. It is amazing.”

__

Online: http://bit.ly/1tRHaYa

Like Us On Facebook
Follow Us On Twitter