Archive for July 2020

You Chose These As The Top Ten. And I Am Sure You Were Right.

Getting More From Les has passed another milestone. Yesterdays Tick Tick Tick was the 400th posting in ChicagoNow. It’s a good moment to look back over the past 100 blogs, and recap and update the 10 most widely read posts of that batch (yes, I do know how many readers there are, even if I don’t know who... Read more »
By lesraff,
July 31, 2020 at 9:45 am • 

There Is Ticking In The Walls

There’s ticking in the walls. It started a few weeks ago. A tick-tick-tick. Steady and incessant in the wall of our bedroom. The sound is not from a clock nor is it the whirring of our ceiling fan. It is loudest at night; at least that is how it seems to me. Barb hears it too.... Read more »
By lesraff,
July 30, 2020 at 11:03 am • 

Donald Trump Is No Doctor Ben Casey

    We have been inundated with the news that Donald Trump successfully remembered for a few minutes the sequence “person, woman, man, camera, TV” as part of his recent cognitive skills test. Well, I can remember five words with a similar cadence, and they are from a lot more than a few minutes ago. In fact,... Read more »
By lesraff,
July 24, 2020 at 1:52 pm • 
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Five Books I Read Years Ago That Still Have a Message for Today

Remember the bestselling book from the 1990’s “All I Really Need to Know I Learned In Kindergarten”? It was filled with truisms like “Don’t hit anybody” and “Be nice.” Good stuff, but in talking with an old friend recently I realized we didn’t learn it all in kindergarten. We also learned some important life lessons in Mr. Wohlberg’s 8th-grade class at the... Read more »
By lesraff,
July 21, 2020 at 6:55 am • 

Four Things I Know Doing Crossword Puzzles In Ink

It gets messy. There are scratch-outs and write-overs and margin-scribbles. Some of the little square boxes, originally white, now are so intensely filled that only I can tell what letter I have ultimately figured out is the right one. And that’s the way I like it. Doing my puzzles in ink, I see every step I have... Read more »
By lesraff,
July 14, 2020 at 9:01 am • 

Adventures in Cat Land

  Barb and I went on a road trip yesterday. A friend had posted a link to an animal shelter in the south suburbs, a community we had barely heard of and never been to before. Our friend thought we might be interested in a cat that was ready for adoption. The kitty was a... Read more »
By lesraff,
July 8, 2020 at 10:53 am • 
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Did Hugh Downs Make Me What I Am Today?

My boyhood TV hero died this week. You probably think I am talking about Carl Reiner, who passed away June 29th. After all, Reiner created The Dick Van Dyke Show, one of my favorite TV shows of all time. But as a pre-school kid, I just knew the faces in front of the camera, and Mr. Reiner’s... Read more »
By lesraff,
July 2, 2020 at 7:01 pm •