The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked Scrooge if he knew it.

“Know it!” said Scrooge. “Was I apprenticed here!”

They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welch wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two inches taller he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement:

“Why, it’s old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it’s Fezziwig alive again!”

Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shows to his organ of benevolence; and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice:

“Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!”

Scrooge’s former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-‘prentice.

“Dick Wilkins, to be sure!” said Scrooge to the Ghost. “Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear, dear!”

“Yo ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig. “No more work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let’s have the shutters up,” cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, “before a man can say, Jack Robinson!”

You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at it! They charged into the street with the shutters — one, two, three — had ’em up in their places — four, five, six — barred ’em and pinned ’em — seven, eight, nine — and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.

“Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. “Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!”

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter’s night.

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother’s particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her Mistress. In they all came, one after nother; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them. When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, “Well done!” and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.

There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley.” Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no notion of walking.

But if they had been twice as many: ah, four times: old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that’s not high praise, tell me higher, and I’ll use it. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t have predicted, at any given time, what would become of ’em next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, hold hands with your partner, bow and curtsey; corkscrew; thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig cut — cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger.

When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr and Mrs Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the two ‘prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their beds; which were under a counter in the back-shop.

During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.

“A small matter,” said the Ghost, “to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.”

“Small!” echoed Scrooge.

The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: and when he had done so, said,

“Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?”

“It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. “It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

He felt the Spirit’s glance, and stopped.

“What is the matter?” asked the Ghost.

“Nothing particular,” said Scrooge.

“Something, I think?” the Ghost insisted.

“No,” said Scrooge, “No. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now! That’s all.”

His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air.

May Fezziwig’s spirit inspire your Christmas.

A front-page article in last week’s Park Ridge Journal reported Park Ridge Recreation and Park District Director Ray Ochromowicz’s dismay with “misinformers” – Senior Center members who were (according to Director O) disseminating inaccurate information about the Park District’s plans for the Senior Center (“Misinformers Try Park Director’s Patience,” Nov. 24). 

Apparently some members of that semi-private club are unhappy about the Park District’s exploration of ways to operate their clubhouse more cost-effectively, such as by running non-senior programs at that facility in order to reduce its $190,000 operating deficit that the taxpayers have been covering each year.  That such a deficit is being rung up for an operation with a little over 1,000 members – a good number of whom aren’t even Park District residents – suggests the need for some new management ideas. 

Running more programs out of there is one way.  We understand that the Park District has been running a summer KinderCamp out of the Senior Center, although we also understand that the Park District inexplicably has not included those revenues and expenses in the Senior Center’s accounting.  Why not? 

But if the seniors really want to preserve their age-based (55 and over) exclusivity, we again suggest charging Senior Center members more realistic membership “dues” than the measly $35/year currently on the books.  Dues of $225/year (the current $35 plus $190 more) would make the deficit vanish, and the seniors could keep their exclusive clubhouse for what amounts to about 60 cents a day per member. 

At this point, however, that doesn’t appear to be on the Park District’s radar. 

Instead, Director O and his staff remain engaged in “negotiations” with what we understand to be representatives of Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc. (“Seniors Inc.”), another one of those private 501(c)(3) corporations that seem to like to call themselves “community groups” because it sounds so much nicer than “corporation” when they show up asking for their annual handouts of public funds.  Up until this current fiscal year, Seniors Inc. was getting thousands of dollars from the City of Park Ridge despite sitting on a tidy bankroll – $114,000 at year-end 2008, the last time Seniors Inc. filed an IRS Form 990. 

So why negotiate with a special interest that, in theory, should be totally under the control of the Park District?  Why hasn’t Staff and the Park Board, representing all the District’s residents and taxpayers, simply come up with a better plan and implemented it? 

Could it be because politicians (and the public officials who answer to them) tend to bend over backwards for seniors who vote in far greater percentages than other groups?  That might explain, at least in part, why Park District Commissioner Stephen Vile – who we understand to be a Senior Center member himself – recently argued for the Park District’s increasing its Senior Center subsidy to make up for Seniors Inc.’s loss of City funding.  

Robbing Peter to pay Paul, Commissioner Vile?

Or just trying to placate those misinformers?

To read or post comments, click on title.

As anyone who has read this blog knows, we generally like NIMBYs – people who take political action solely because of their unvarnished self-interest in preventing something they don’t want from happening in their literal or figurative “back yard.”  

That’s because, like canaries in a coal mine that provide an early warning to miners that danger literally is in the air, NIMBYs draw our attention to problems we might otherwise overlook because they’re not too high on our personal radars.  And that’s a good thing, irrespective of the actual merits of their position. 

The most recent example of NIMBYism here in Park Ridge is the cell tower T-Mobile wanted to erect at Northeast Park, next to the tennis courts. 

T-Mobile received the blessing of the Park Ridge Recreation & Park District, which stood to receive around $25,000 a year in license fees.  Although the Park Board approved the tower at a sparsely-attended public meeting back in April, an outpouring of NIMBY opposition at the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission hearing last Tuesday night (October 26) prompted P&Z’s denial of T-Mobile’s request for the necessary special use permit it needed for the tower.  

Frankly, the Park District screwed this up, big-time, by not giving the Northeast Park NIMBYs the direct-mail notice of the April Park District meeting it customarily gives neighbors before taking actions that would have a significant impact on any parks.  Had that custom been followed, the crowd that showed up at City Hall for the P&Z meeting likely would have shown up at Park District headquarters back in April; and the T-Mobile deal might have been scuttled right then and there. 

That mistake by the Park District created a lot of unnecessary ill will.  Hopefully, Director Ochromowicz and the Park Board members have learned their lesson. 

And we hope the entire community learned the lesson that a relatively small group of citizens – in this case, the 80 to 100 who showed up at the P&Z meeting – can have an impact on local issues that is generally impossible to achieve on the county, state or federal levels, absent the contribution or bundling of $500,000+ to some politician’s campaign fund.  

But we wonder whether a more important lesson was learned by, or lost on, the NIMBYs protesting the cell tower, many of whom seemed a little too impressed with what was achieved with only one visit to City Hall – a well-deserved victory, most assuredly, but one that may have been as much (or more) the product of T-Mobile’s own failure to satisfy all the City’s special-use application requirements as it was of the merits of the NIMBYs’ complaints. 

A cell tower in a park is the easiest of political targets, and clearly not representative of most governmental problems – whose complexities regularly bedevil our elected and appointed public officials.  

What about resolving the City’s continuing multi-million dollar deficits, or its flooding problems? What about District 64’s less-than-impressive performance on the ISATs compared to other districts?  What about the Park District’s losing almost $100,000 a year on Oakton Pool, and another almost $200,000 on the Senior Center?  Or, for that matter, how does the Park District go about replacing the $25,000/year it was going to get from the cell tower? 

These problems can’t be solved in one meeting, or by a few handfuls of impassioned speeches. But they are far more important to the present and future of this community than one cell tower in one park.  And they deserve a whole lot more resident attention and input than they seem to be getting. 

The big question is:  Can NIMBYs, including the Northeast Park variety still basking in the self-satisfaction of their recent cell tower victory, see their civic duty as extending beyond their own backyards?

To read or post comments, click on title.

The scene appears in that slightly grainy black and white of 1950s film footage:

It’s Northeast Park’s soccer fields, tennis courts and enclosed children’s play area, bustling with recreating residents of all ages.  Suddenly, an ominous tower intrudes, scattering the tiny humans with high-powered blasts of invisible Radio Frequency (“RF”) radiation that homes in on each of their cellular telephones, especially the babies’.

The camera slowly pans out from the horror to reveal a black-suited Rod Serling, who exhales a long puff of cigarette smoke before flatly intoning his trademark: “Submitted for your approval….”

In reality, neither Northeast Park nor South Park are being invaded by conquering cell towers.  But judging from the contents of leaflets being distributed in the City’s First Ward, it seems that way to some of our residents.  And that’s okay, because petitioning our government is guarantied by our Constitution.  And cell towers are not “native” to parks.

While we have heard various health and safety concerns raised about them, however, it is our understanding that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 pretty much precludes opposition to cell towers based on health-related issues.  So what we have here is really pretty much a question of aesthetics.  And perhaps some NIMBY-ism, which we also applaud because NIMBY’s tend to draw our attention to significant things we otherwise might have missed.

As we understand it, the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District has signed one or more contracts with T-Mobile to install at least one cell tower at Northeast Park and a second one at South Park.  Both are supposed to be “stealth” poles similar to the one that has been at South Park since 2001 (on the East side of Kalina Field, with some spotlights tacked on to help light the field) without any known incidents of radiation death, lightning strikes, or other catastrophes.

T-Mobile reportedly paid the Park District $4,000 for the “privilege” of being able to pursue the location of the cell towers at South Park and Northeast Park.  The new one at South Park is supposed to generate $2,000/month in lease/license payments.  The more controversial one at Northeast (to be located near the flag pole, at the southeast corner of the tennis courts) is supposed to generate an upfront, 5-year payment of $120,000.  Both will have initial 5-year terms, with additional 5-year options at T-Mobile’s discretion; and there are supposed to be CPI payment adjustments.

For those of you who oppose these new cell towers, or are looking for more information before deciding, we encourage you to attend tomorrow’s Park Board meeting at the Maine Leisure Center, 2701 West Sibley, beginning at 7:30 p.m.  Although the cell towers are not on the Board’s agenda, you can ask about them during that portion of the meeting where citizens are permitted to address the Board on non-agenda items.

Or you can attend next week’s Planning & Zoning Commission meeting at City Hall (10/26 @ 7:30 p.m.) and voice your opinion to the governmental body that will be making the initial determination of whether the towers get the special use permits needed to go forward.

In a perfect world cell towers wouldn’t be needed, and someday they might not be.  But here and now they are necessary evils – “evils” much like liquor-serving establishments, airport expansions, lotteries and casinos which generate the “non-tax” revenue to which our governmental bodies have become addicted now that there is so much public opposition to paying more property taxes.

And while part of that addiction is the result of overspending on stupidity, waste and corruption, most of it is the result of too many of us accepting, and even demanding, more and more government services for which we don’t want to pay retail.  That makes us willing dupes of those pandering politicians who keep telling us that we can have all those services we want…and at somebody else’s, or some other generation’s, expense.  Yayyyyy!

While it’s easy to blame the Park Board for “selling out” the beloved green space of our parks for a figurative 30 pieces of silver, the bottom line is that public officials of all stripes have been encouraged to take this tack by those residents who keep on wanting a free (or at least a taxpayer-subsidized) “lunch”: the parents who enroll their kids in every free and subsidized program at the Park District or the Library for what amounts to discount babysitting; the people who beat down every attempted fee increase at the Community Center but then complain about the condition of the facility; the “good Samaritans” who demand handouts of public funds to their favorite private “charities” with no accountability; those who insist on keeping Oakton Pool open despite its losing almost $100,000 a year; those 1,200 or so seniors who demand their private club (the Senior Center) even though it runs annual deficits of a couple hundred thousand dollars a year; and countless others.

Like it or not, if you are one of those people who has demanded and used more non-essential local government services than you have paid for in full, you should look in the mirror before investing in some torches and a few strong ropes for your upcoming visits to the Park Board or the P&Z Commission – because you are one of the reasons that the Park District is willing to consider cell towers in parks.  

And that goes double for you T-Mobile subscribers.

Today is Labor Day. For some of us, it’s nothing more than the quasi-official end of Summer.

But for those of us who “labor” for the wages it takes to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, Labor Day should be something more. It should be a time for reflection on how our “labor” is treated, and valued, by the “political” class of our society whom we charge with governing us.

These days a substantial portion of the wages for which we exchange our labor end up, pretty much involuntarily, in the pocket of some unit of government or other; and it is spent in a number of ways many of us do not view as particularly essential or necessary – and we’re not even talking about the money lost to the waste or outright corruption for which this state has become well known.

The “Feds” and the State of Illinois take their generous portions from most of our paychecks before we even receive them. Crook County, our City, our schools and our park district wring their shares out of our homes and commercial property through real estate taxes. And virtually everything we buy comes with tariffs for the state, county and City.

The politicians have tried to help us forget that is country was founded, in large part, on the concept of limited government – and limited taxes.

That is why, in his first inaugural address in 1801, President Thomas Jefferson described “good government” as being “a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, [but] shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

On a day when the politicians traditionally take every available opportunity to dissemble about jobs and labor, we don’t expect to hear this particular Jefferson quote.

That’s because, for the politicians, taking from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned is a lot easier than delivering “wise and frugal government.”