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The Legacy of Ruth Stone

And The Legacy Illinois Left Upon Her

“Ruth Stone, a poet who wrote in relative obscurity until receiving the National Book Award at the age of 87 for her collection In the Next Galaxy, died on Nov. 19 at her home in Ripton, Vt. She was 96. Her death was announced [last] Tuesday by her daughter Abigail Stone,” the New York Times reports.
“A quietly respected poet who wrote in rural solitude, Ms. Stone became something of a public figure when news of her award was announced in November 2002 and press accounts drew attention to her unusual life story of struggle and belated acclaim, dominated by the suicide of her poet husband in 1959.”
Walter Stone was a graduate student at the University of Illinois when they met.

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Posted on November 29, 2011

Why The Cubs Are Such Turkeys

By Glenn Stout

“It isn’t Wrigley Field or because they play so many day games . . . it’s always been poor management . . . [Theo Epstein faces] a far more daunting task than when he took over the Red Sox.”

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Posted on November 22, 2011

Tony La Russa vs. Chicago

By Steve Rhodes

No rival manager has been as entwined with both Chicago baseball teams as Tony La Russa, who started his managing career with the White Sox – and whose firing is famously Jerry Reinsdorf’s biggest regret – and who went on to manage the Cubs’ greatest rival.
Buzz Bissinger’s 3 Nights in August, in fact, is a profile of La Russa as reported through the prism of a three-game series against the Cubs in 2003 – and includes plenty on his White Sox days.
Now that La Russa has retired following his World Series win, it’s a good time to go back and take a look at the Chicago portions of Bissinger’s book, as well as a few other tidbits.
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“When he started his managing career with the White Sox in the middle of the 1979 season, the prevailing sentiment was that he had been hired by owner Bill Veeck because he came cheap; his only experience was a little more than a year of managing in the minors with Knoxville and Des Moines.
“He was thirty-four years old and scared for his life. Self-doubt rattled through him – Do I really know what I’m doing? – and he became a whipping boy for the radio broadcast duo of Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersall, who offered the almost daily critique that he managed with his head squarely up his ass.

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Posted on November 3, 2011

Wage Theft in America

By Interfaith Worker Justice

“While crowds seeking economic justice occupy Wall Street and other cities, an interfaith movement has been busy winning victories and making allies in the effort to end wage theft. Kim Bobo tells that hope-filled story in her newly revised and expanded version of Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Americans are not Getting Paid and What We Can Do About It.
The book is being released this month, in conjunction with the National Wage Theft Days of Action scheduled for Nov. 17-20.
Bobo, Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice, says few people in media or government were paying attention to “wage theft” in 2008, the year her book was first published. But she says, “A lot of progress has been made since then.”

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Posted on November 2, 2011