Everyone:

Just saw this today in the paper, found it interesting because
of who it mentions, thought I'd make this my first post.

Bill

(ORIGINAL ARTICLE)

Chicago Sun-Times - April 6, 2007

Woody Guthrie lives here - This 'land' was made for you and me

By Sally Duros, Real Estate and Homelife Editor

Woody Guthrie is the patron saint of this real estate section.

That means this "land" was made for you and me. All readers are welcome here. Everyone --not just home buyers or home sellers, not just Realtors or builders, not just public relations execs or marketers, not just homeowners.

We ask all of you -- especially renters and newcomers -- to pull up a chair and make this section home. That's because, like Woody Guthrie, we intend to bring tales of truth, fairness and justice to these pages, while having some fun and elevating your spirit, too, We like singing a pleasant tune.

Real estate is a market. It's an investment. It's a house, town house, condo or rental apartment. It's the biggest purchase and the largest sale most of us will ever engage in.

But it is so very much more than that.

Real estate is the rich ground that roots us all to Chicago. Whether we rent or own -- we can't make a go at life unless we have a proper place to live.

Real estate is a deep subject that goes to the very core of what it means to be an American and a Chicagoan. It thrives on legend, myth and illusion as well as commerce, dealmaking and common sense. As proud Chicagoans, we measure our quality of life not by whether we own, but by where we live and our connection to the neighborhood around us.

In this section, we explore all the controversial facets of Chicago real estate -- from affordability to lending to taxes to fraud -- and the context that informs those facets.

That means we won't back down from exploring hot-button issues like the regulatory environment surrounding our home purchases and the laws that affect the quality of our home lives. Our modest goal is to cover these issues in a non-politicized, applied way, and in a manner useful to you. We will have succeeded if we make your life a bit easier.

A house or apartment is not simply a structure. It's a living place that we experience as a home.

In this section, we'll also be exploring those soft nuances and transformative elements -- decor, furnishings and natural world -- that turn a city plat into a Chicago home.

In the next few weeks, we're adding several new features that go to the heart of your Chicago Real Estate experience. We hope you will enjoy them:

CHICAGO STYLE BY FRANK FONTANA. Frank Fontana is the engaging wunderkind who hosts Design on a Dime's Chicago segment Saturdays at 9 p.m. on HGTV. He accepted our challenge to define a Chicago School of Interior Design. Look for his weekly column exploring Chicago's ethnic decor to interior design shops in our Sunday Real Estate section.

PLANTING PARTNERS BY JOE AND SHIRLEY REMES. Chicago gardeners Joe and Shirley will answer your gardening questions every week in our Sunday Real Estate section.

YOUR CHICAGO HOME BY TOM CORBETT. Tom is a home inspector and a consumer advocate who will offer advice and insight into the specifics of Chicago housing. Look for his column in the Real Estate section on the first Friday of each month.

In addition, look for our regular coverage.

WHAT IS THIS PLACE? A ground-level look at a Chicago neighborhood, who lives there, who's moving there and why. Every month, the second Friday.

HOW IT WORKS. New to Chicago or even old in Chicago and still feel like an alien who's fallen from the sky? This quarterly special report offers civic enlightenment for renters and homeowners alike on subjects ranging from taxes to government.

TRENDS BY ANGIE HICKS. Angie, founder of Angie's List, will zero in on a home-improvement trend that's shaping our fair city; second Sunday of the month.

GREENHOUSE. This simply terrific feature offers a full page of gardening insight, even visual delight brought to you by Sun-Times staffer and master gardener Susan Randstrom, every other Sunday.

These new additions join well-established local offerings we've been bringing you for years. Staffer Bill Cunniff brings useful news on open houses and developments inside the city and out. Columnist David Mack reports on condos, Ed Sacks reports on rentals, and writers from the Chicago Botanic Garden provide a heads-up about what to look for that week.

Then there's this column, where I report on news that's shaping Chicago's real estate future. Every Friday here.

Bill....Welcome!....Nice effort but... B O A R I N G!!!! I'm sure this is not quite what Woody had in mind....But hang in there. I'm sure that as you read the posts here, you'll be caught up in whirl wind of insperation!!...Take care & good to have you on board....Mike

MKF

Mike:

You'd be amazed at the number of cross-references I find
in articles these days, musical and otherwise. I was sur-
prised to see Woody mentioned like that myself.

I agree, I could've edited out the last half and not lost that
much.

Thanks for the welcome,
Bill

P.S. I was looking at the Articles & Reviews section - unfor-
tunately, most of those links are dead - they're now empty
pages.

It would help greatly if the articles were posted instead of
the links.

Bill Janowski

as I've noted elsewhere, arlo's become almost a regular in the NYTimes crossword puzzles...

as to the posting vs. link controversy... well the stated "preference" here would be to use Link vs. Post.
That's primarily for the same reason that some of the links go dead, because the original eats up bandwidth, so the pages get archived (or just plain old deleted) to make space. If everyone here just posted, we'd consume much more space. Of course, it is annoying to hit those dead links too...
Sooooooo, bottom line, use your best judgement. A small article, or a snippet can be useful, but large articles, you'll do everyone a favor by just puttin' up a link, and maybe just a 1-2 sentence snippet.
And when putting up that link, don't be afraid to use a URL compactor such as Tinyurl to shrink those large (and sometimes fragmented) URL's, okay?

thanks kid!!