I found all this stuff in a forgotten box in my basement. These are press passes to two of the many events I covered back when I was a journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times. The first is from Lech Walesa's visit here in 1989. I was a 24-year-old City News Bureau reporter then and the crowd that jammed the Daley Center plaza was the biggest I'd seen in my life. I knew a lot of movers and shakers in the city's Polish community then. How that happened is kind of funny: The previous year, 1989, the president of the Polish National Congress here in Chicago died and I got sent to cover all the memorials, tributes and selection of a new leader. Throughout that, I ended up learning how to pronounce Polish surnames with a Polish pronunciation and inflection---I even picked up a phrase or two. As a result, I got a pretty good spot on the plaza for Lech's visit. But not as good as my CNB colleague Mary Wisniewski, who--if memory serves---got a kiss from Lech that day.  The other passes were from the Democratic National Convention here in 1996. I spent to spend two days with Jesse Jackson, whom I already knew, because he was supposed to have a signficant role in the convention. He really didn't, unfortunately, which means much of my reporting wasn't needed. But there was one high-point. Rev. Jackson is a Sam Cooke fan---as am I---and we ended up spending an afternoon in his kitchen eating Dock's Fish (Chicagoans will know what I'm talking about) and listening to Sam Cooke records.
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