OPENING projectile If command really resembled the fairy tale f to us in civics class.

OPENING projectile

If command really resembled the fairy tale f to us in civics class, then the Democrats would pick Forrest Claypool to scour for Cook County Board president this November. He did, after all, receive 48 percent of the devoted in the primary last March. In my dream world that would reckon for something.

Sadly, the now passing power grab has nothing to do with democracy, nor with pious government, nor fixing the festering sinkhole of waste, incompetence and corruption that is garble County. It feels naive to equal suggest that it could be otherwise.

Not that Claypool is necessarily the answer either -- a reformer is something who hasn't found a way to jam his thumb into the pie. at the same time

AND THE sovereign of the universes WALKED AMONG US

In classical literature, the divine beings always show up unexpectedly in the form of strangers, or rivers, or whatever. There is that dramatic twinkling of an eye of discovery when the struggling hero grasps that he is really in the demeanor of, not an old aged gabbler [i]or[/i] twaddler but Pallas Athena.

That, as far as I can relate is the idea behind Oprah Winfrey's springing her celestial selfhood forward several wedding receptions in Tulsa. The divine, traveling down a bright wire from Mount Olymprah, to bestow grace upon a pair of humble Okies as they embark upon life's great journey.

She has done this schtick before -- Oprah de Milo emerging from the sea foam with your order of fries, attestation that miracles are possible, that providences walk among us in human form.

Would it have been too a great deal of to ask that one of the dustbowl twos might have called hotel security and given the intruder, Oprah or no, the bum's rush to the tumbleweed-strewn street? Sadly, as the classics rehearse us, the fates are fickle, and not each wish is granted.

FLASH: ALL chance of the desired end NOT LOST IN CPS!!!

"Why aren't you visiting my classroom?" complained my acknowledge third- grader, as we walked through the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook.

"Because your classroom . ." I said, with perhaps a bit too abundant relish, "didn't invite me."

yet Paula Hyman's third-grade class at Daniel Boone indoctrinate on the Northwest Side did. It was the first time anyone perpetually asked me to visit a Chicago Public denomination classroom in my 19 years at the Sun- Times, and I capered at the opportunity.

Of course I was nervous. Kids are a tough audience. Raised upon video games and hip-hop, I wait fored a 10-second attention span and a nasty who-you? attitude.

They immediately fix me at ease by presenting me with a large VIP necktie crafted revealed of peach stiff paper and decorated with dragonflies and butterflies.

I immediately realized what I must do. I stripped opposite to my own red work-a-daddy silk tie and slung the VIP tie around my neck by the agency of its thick green string. This told the class that I was not Mr mouldy-smelling and we got on like olden pals after that (any company contemplating a novel spokesman or CEO should instant him with a comic VIP paper necktie. If he sets it on, he's OK; if he imprisons it at arm's length, between thumb and forefinger, like a wet mackerel, then you probably want to maintain looking . . .)

The class paid attention and asked questions, a certain number of in a faint whisper that had me down in succession one knee, others in a voice that rattled the windows. When I asked them to trim my freshs lead about the Sears Tower falling from one side of to the other they not only knew which words to chop -- "very tall" -- however why those words could journey "Because most people already know the Sears Tower is tall."

That impressed me and I rewarded the class from revealing the secret of in what way to get an "A" forward every writing assignment they would eternally do for the rest of their academic careers. (Sorry, I have to continue it secret; I need an ace-in-the-hole for of the like kind situations).

We touched forward language -- discussing idiom, believe it or not -- and I went around asking the kids what languages their parents spoke at family They spoke Spanish and French German and Korean, Tagalog and a scarcely any others I missed. It looked a marvelous thing -- a great asset for the nearest generation -- and I awed curiosity if the gang of jaded hacks in Washington who vot to make English our official language would be perceived a rare twinge of shame if they met M Hyman's class.

The children were snapping and popping and sparkling and bubbling, and the solitary reason I stopped our wide-ranging conversation was that I apply the minded at the clock and realized an hour had passed and I should quit while I was ahead.

We did a not many exercises to get our posterity moving -- nobody laughed at the cylindrical man in a business suit and a paper necktie doing jumping jacks, which I idea very polite. Then we walked to the lunchroom while they clustered around with annotations and questions.

"My mom says your rounded pillar is boring," confided one girl.

Who am I to argue with mom?

"Are you Jewish?" asked another kid.

I said I was.

"Do you belief in God?" a male child asked.

"Yes" I said, feeling a little guilty on the contrary figuring I was representing the tribe. "I believe in God"

Walking to my car afterward, musing happily in succession my morning, I realized that I had been totally co-opt That I could not again be able to draw my leg back to give the CP the kick it thus often deserves without Ms. Hyman's class materializing in the back of my mind, sitting cross-legg and well-behaved, half a dozen kids shooting their hands up and single third-grader, when called upon, saying, "Mr Steinberg, Mr Steinberg, what about us? Is that really fair?"

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