For several years now, I've been a Democratic Party Precinct Committeeman in Coles County, Illinois. During our organizational meeting this year, I was chosen to serve as Treasurer of the Central Committee. After getting more involved with the group, I also developed a new website for them at ColesDems.com.

One thing leads to another, and I was recently approached by State Senate candidate Josh Weger to work on his site as well. Josh is a great guy. He's very energetic, has sound ideas, and is especially committed to improving the economy of our region - so it was a true pleasure to help with the campaign by sprucing up his site.

As usual, I chose WordPress for the platform, and found a nice "red, white and blue" theme called Independence Day. After extensive tweaking (and a couple of struggles with file permissions where the site is hosted) I took the site live today at JoshWeger.org.




Here's wishing Josh the best of luck in November!

Last Friday, I took a new Website live for my friend Kevin Geisler, who is an attorney in nearby Charleston, Illinois. We've still got some images to replace and some other tweaks to attend on the site, and we'll continue to edit and add content in the days and weeks to come, but I'm happy with the basic structure and design of the site. As usual, a StudioPress theme on the WordPress platform makes it fairly simple to create an attractive, functional site with a lot of room to grow.

It was a pleasure to work on this project. I've known Kevin for many years, and he has always provided good counsel to me and to my family. When one of my children was injured in a car accident and there were issues with insurance companies not honoring coverage as they should, Kevin's firm handled the case very ably. We will certainly turn to Kevin again in the future whenever we need legal advice and services.

Drop on by the site and take a look.

Claudia and I are back home from a visit to San Francisco this week. I was there for work and she took the opportunity to travel along and enjoy some much deserved downtime in the city.

We got off to a bit of a rocky start, with our American Eagle commuter jet delayed into O'Hare, making us late for the sky to SFO that night. After a decent night's rest at a Holiday Inn Express, we flew out early, arrived in San Francisco around 9:30 Sunday morning, and caught the BART train to within a few blocks of The Sir Francis Drake. To anyone planning to walk even a short distance in this city, I would caution that everything is always uphill. John C. Dvorak later confirmed that the town was, indeed, laid out by Escher.

There was still plenty of time to enjoy an incredibly beautiful day, beginning with brunch at The Cliff House. The food was excellent, the Champagne was flowing, and the views of the Pacific around the property were spectacular. There's a wonderful old camera obscura on the ocean side where we spent quite a while in rapt fascination.

Then we enjoyed a supremely entertaining and informative ride with an Armenian cabbie to City Lights Books. I'm not ashamed to admit that my eyes welled up while browsing there. It is an holy place.

We walked around North Beach for awhile, eventually making our way to Fisherman's Warf for our first view of the bay. Then we grabbed a trolley back to the hotel, closing the books on Sunday with an essential San Francisco experience.

Monday morning found us at Sears Fine Food for breakfast. What a find it turned out to be, with great, home style fare and old school atmosphere that made me feel connected to the history and the heart of the city.

Another interesting cab ride brought us to the MeVIO mothership, where I met the other members of my team. Claudia headed out for a day strolling around the wharf and North Beach area, while I spent a truly wonderful day in the office. I can't remember the last time that a day of meetings was a pleasant activity for me, but discussion and planning with these incredibly talented and smart people was simply a blast. I also got to meet several people face to face that have been heroes and compatriots to me for many years.

After work I joined Neil Dixon, Steve Rodriguez, Brian Caldwell, Rob Dolby, Andrew Grumet and Adam Curry for cocktails at nearby Nova. It was wonderful to finally spend some time relaxing with these people. They are fine company, to a man.

Claudia and I had another exceptional meal at the end of the day, this time at Scala's.

Tuesday morning found us back at Sears for breakfast. Neil, Rob and I enjoyed (euphemism alert!) a brisk walk to the mothership for another great day of discussions and planning, while Claudia was pampered at a day spa near our hotel. At the end of the work day, we got a ride back to the Drake in Rosie's legendary yellow van, another quintessential San Francisco experience. I'd go into more detail, but it would almost certainly be lost in translation. That evening, Claudia and I took the trolley to Chinatown and had a nice meal at House of Nanking. The walk back to the hotel was actually downhill most of the way.

Wednesday was another morning in the office (my last visit there), and Claudia joined me later so she could meet more MeVIO folk. Then we walked to the Apple Store and Art of Shaving before catching the F train to Noe and Market. The train ride deserves it's own post at some point. Let me just sum it up by saying that one might consider himself lucky to be serenaded on public transportation (with selections from The Little Mermaid and Evita) by a Black guy with a blond Mohawk from The Castro.

There are some pretty, tidy homes in the area South of Market on Noe. We made our way to Tartine Bakery for lunch, then had a walk in The Mission and back to the train for a ride up to the Bay, where we were fortunate enough to spot TCHO Chocolate. The tasting room was still open, so we partook. More walking. Another trolley ride. Another lovely day.

Our last morning in San Francisco we ate at Lori's, caught a SuperShuttle to the airport, and bid the city a fond farewell.

I would certainly recommend any of the experiences and places mentioned here. Don't miss The Cliff House. If we visit again, we will make time for a closer inspection of the Bridge, a visit to Golden Gate Park, and perhaps a day in the wine country North of the Bay. There's so much to see and do that a few days really isn't enough, but we did have a marvelous time, and the trip whetted our appetite for another visit.

We celebrated a bit early this year, with a trip into the city on Saturday for the parade and then lunch at Miller's Pub.

I'm scheduled for some surgery tomorrow, so there'll be no shepherd's pie nor corned beef and cabbage (nor Guinness, nor Jameson's) for me today. I expect we'll get to some of that over the coming weekend, and perhaps I'll bake some Irish soda bread if I'm feeling up to it.

In the meantime, I'm wishing everyone a happy St. Patrick's Day, and a beautiful Springtime to come. Here's a short video from the Chicago parade.

Five years ago today I published my first podcast. It was the first episode of what is now the longest running Catholic podcast on the Net, Verbum Domini. That program is now under the auspices of my friends at SQPN, and ably produced by a wonderful team of volunteer lectors.

I'm still producing several other shows, including The Frank Truth (which started shortly afterward on February 19th, 2005).

Although I didn't set out to commemorate this anniversary with anything special, I did manage to release two new podcast episodes today - Episode 65 of The Comedic Genius of Martin and Lewis, and Episode 24 from Studio C.

The 5th anniversary of this weblog, The Daily Dispatch, is also this week. As I mentioned earlier today on Twitter, after these many years, blogging and podcasting are still a wonder to me. The ability to communicate and interact with people all over the world of like mind and interest is an incredible thing.

As we celebrate the life of Dr. King and reflect on his legacy, I find myself wondering what he might say were he with us today. Certainly he would still be concerned with justice in our land, and with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. This year, I suspect that he might also have more than a little to say about the climate of conflict and war in which we live.

The following are his words, from a speech given in 1967.


I'm spending some time today in contemplation of these words, and offering prayers for peace.

Firefighters spent much of last night battling a major fire here in Mattoon, and are still on the scene this morning. The fire started at Villa Pizza, a local establishment that has been nearly synonymous with our town for decades. It appears that there is extensive damage to Villa and perhaps to several nearby concerns as well, including House Brothers Tavern, another irreplaceable local institution.

My prayers go out for all of those directly effected, and especially for my friend John Arena and his family. This is just heartbreaking for our entire community.