Ward on Words

Facebook is interesting because you communicate with friends from all phases of your life. And if you're on Facebook, you know that certain topics and videos get shared by a variety of people from very different backgrounds. Here's the political chit chat that's trending today with my Facebook friends: A unionized public employee, a teabagger, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the teabagger and says, 'Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie." Not sure of the source of that joke, but to me, it's a sign that the out-of-balance compensation program we've got going on in America is beginning to simmer on the burner of public opinion. Hope we're not that frog, continuing to sit in increasingly hotter water until we boil to death.

Big noise from Chicago - the biggest big-shouldered building in the city is undergoing a name change. That's right - the Sears Tower will now be called the Willis Tower, named for the London-based insurance company that is taking over much of the space. With three towers named in honor of insurance companies (Aon, John Hancock and Willis), the hog-butcher to the world apparently has found its new millennial niche as an insurance broker. The Sears Tower has been an icon in the city since it opened its doors in 1973. At that time, it was the World's Tallest Building - a fitting home for one of the world's largest retailers. It gave us something to brag about in those years of drought among our sports teams. We may not have had world champions in our midst, but we had the biggest damn building in the world. For the last decade or so, the Sears Tower has had to be content to be known as the tallest building in North America. Asia went crazy in the '90s and trie...