The third time is not the charm

You gotta love election campaigns.

That's when you get the best, the worse, and the questionable insights into the candidates.  Forget about Rahm, Chico and Carol.

Let's talk about Rob, as in Rob Sherman.  It seems like the village's best know atheist wants the world to know him as Captain America fighting for what's wrong and trying to correct a world where evil brings virtue and justice none at all.

So as he peruses the suburbs in his Rob Sherman news vehicle, which is about the size of Delaware, he wants the world to know that Buffalo Grove voters should elect him the next Village Clerk and not incumbent Jan Sirabian.

Sherman has tossed about a few ideas, but nothing concrete.  His latest tirade comes from a closed-door endorsement meeting with the Daily Herald in which he claims Sirabian said Buffalo Grove residents are lazy.  Obviously, in a closed meeting there's no documentation, so we need to take Sherman at his word.

So he denies Buffalo Grove residents are lazy and is probably taking something out of context to boost his own image -- and a sorry one at that.

Consider this -- if Sherman is so concerned about the village, why doesn't he attend Village Board meetings?  Odds are he probably figures there are not enough people there to be an audience for him, so what the hell, why go.

This is the same Rob Sherman who showed up at the EPA hearing on L & L in his Sherman mobile to collect signatures for his petition -- but did not stay for the hearing.  Nice commitment, huh?

So where is Robbie?

As noted here before, he spends some of his free time attending various events.  As noted here, one was the car wash in Bloomington, or maybe it was attending a lecture on women's underwear -- or maybe it was attending a book club.

Now we're not talking a book club at a local library -- after all, why spend time with residents -- instead Sherman spent time with a group of female literary fans -- as in the "Naked Girls Reading Event."

Yes, our village clerk wanna-be just had to attend the event in July 2009 and decided to blog about it -- complete with a picture of he and some of the participants.  While Sherman is clothed, the participants are not -- they are, however, covering every nook and kindle with a book or bookmark.  Seriously. This is on his blog that carries the tag line -- Serious Journalism, Professionally Written. Serious about what?

Sherman defends his attendance by writing "...By removing their clothes, the girls stripped themselves of the artificial symbolism of importance that clothes attempt to suggest.  It was just like being upstairs, at home with my wife, Celeste, where we go about our personal tasks at the beginning and end of the day without regard to whether we are wearing any clothes...."

Yeah, right.

If this was the first time Robby wrote about young females, we could, possibly, roll our eyes and wonder what he was thinking about.  It is, however, the third such entry.

His flaunting young bikini clad coeds washing his car, or young naked women reading books, Sherman is doing little more than degrade women.  You could say that his attacks on Sirabian are not politically motivated, but yet another attempt to boost what appears to be a sexist ego.

Sirabian is not perfect -- not public servant or public figure is -- but she works hard as village clerk and when she's not attending to her village duties, she's working hard in the community for various charities.

As for Sherman?  Aside from continued self-promotion I haven't seen much on Sherman's blog about any charity work.

I guess a clothing drive wouldn't interest him.

There's no business like snow business....

For the most part, folks around these parts don't get too concerned about things unless it really hits home.

When I was president of my condo association before becoming a single-family home owner in 'burbs, I quickly learned that the things that ticked off residents the most were:

1. Doggie defecations
2. Parking
3. When the pool was open
4.  Snow removal.

And not necessarily in that order.

Things don't seem to change with folks when they move into their own little acre of the world.  Residents who have issues with the village do, for the most part, focus on parking, fence height, fire works and, oh yes, snow removal.

Been there, done that.  Some readers think I started blogging because I was friends with the Board and was out to get she-who-shall-not-be-named.  In actuality, my contact with the folks on Raupp began after a couple of snow storms when the snow plow operator saw fit to use my driveway as a place to pile snow.

Rather than wait until the next business day, I called Elliott Hartstein at home.  I am not sure what he was going to do, but removing mounds of snow from my driveway was not my idea of a good time.

For the record, Hartstein called me back, as did then Village Manager Bill Brimm and whoever it is/was/maybe who handles snow removal.

Was the problem resolved?  The next time we had snow, I was outside cleaning my driveway when the plow started down the street.  Much to my amazement, the driver stopped, got out and asked "Are you Mr. Zoller?"

We discussed a way to pile the snow away from my driveway and some other options and since then, there has not been an issue -- problem solved.  I'm not saying it's always perfect, but it's an example of how the village, to steal a phrase from Chicago, is a village that works.

A simple path and clean-up job is all
the Fire Department needs for
snow-covered hydrants

So as we dig out from "The Blizzard of 2011" here a couple things to take into consideration:

*  Snow removal is a thankless job.  Been there, done that.
*  There are folks who habitually  screw it up -- like a neighbor's snow plow service that leaves stuff all over the street.
*  Record snows take time to remove.  The village went into the storm with a plan, one which was distributed by Lake County and is available at the village's web site (www.vbg.org).
*  Yes, the end of your driveway will get blocked when the plows go by -- believe me, I know.

So cope with it -- and by the way, while you're digging out, take a minute to dig out a fire hydrant.  The fire department has a "Pluggie Pal' program meant for kids -- but if kids don't want to do it -- step up.

It's only a snow storm.  The village has been faced with a lot of snow jobs recently --- this one we can deal with.