It’s the holidays again, and time for us to visit our favorite suburb, Nirvana Hills.
Nirvana Hills is the ultimate example of the suburban escape from urban ills: this town is so perfect and so well-run that it doesn’t have to depend on casinos or horse racing or even the Lotto to support its bright and spacious new schools, its state-of-the-art libraries and its wonderful youth and senior activities programs.
Taxes are reasonable, housing is spacious but affordable and every family has a mom and dad and happy, well-adjusted kids, who spend joyful hours together at the huge new community center or frolicking in the safe and clean public parks. Everybody’s dog is little and friendly–who needs a Rottweiler to guard their home in Nirvana Hills?–and they never get mistreated or abandoned or run around off-leash.
This is the way life was meant to be lived. Government is helpful and honest, the roads are in good repair, traffic is never unmanageable and there’s always the mall for fun. There are no single moms here, no abused or missing children. And in this perfect environment, it is hard to imagine anyone being born with a disability or challenge of any kind–but not to worry, in Nirvana Hills, families are well-equipped to take care of their own.
This is the kind of town where the worst thing that happens all year is that your favorite grocery store chain moves away; where the biggest public protests center around the closing of a block-long street, and the worst vandalism comes from teenage skateboarders nicking up the cement blocks in public parking lots. Yes, life is good in Nirvana Hills.
Of course, why shouldn’t it be? It’s the ‘burbs.
Who wants to worry about homeless people sleeping in the cars in a dealership’s back lot, or bored teenagers joining gangs? Those kind of problems stop at the city line, we all know that.
Right, and now it’s time to pick up your 1958 calendar.
It’s the 1990s and we would guess you don’t live in Nirvana Hills, or even nearby. The good old days, when the biggest problem facing suburbanites was how to keep the village snowplow from knocking over your mailbox, are long gone. It’s time to recognize worse things can happen than a high-rise building of $250,000 condos going up in your downtown, or a dog walking on the trails in your park district or a gazebo being built across the street.
Now we have a lot of the problems everybody moved out here to avoid. There are homeless people spilling out of church basements all over the northwest suburbs and food pantries that can’t keep enough canned goods on their shelves to feed everybody who is hungry. Teenagers are dying in drunken-driving accidents and gang fights There is crime and pollution and congestion and all those things we never thought there would be.
All of a sudden we’re living in a place where Make a Difference Day really does make a difference.
And so does the Chicago Tribune Holiday Fund. It makes grants to organizations that help needy children, the developmentally disabled, the homeless and hungry.
Last year, the fund made grants totaling more than $3.5 million to 166 organizations all over the Chicago area, including these venerable northwest suburban institutions: The Children’s Advocacy Center (Hoffman Estates); Omni Youth Services (Buffalo Grove); Clearbrook Center for the Handicapped (Rolling Meadows); Options Inc. (Des Plaines); Resources for Community Living (Mt. Prospect); Community Crisis Center Inc. (Elgin); Harbour Inc. (Park Ridge); McHenry County PADS Inc. (Crystal Lake); Shelter Inc. (Arlington Heights) and the HIV Coalition (Mt. Prospect).
Not one dime of the money collected by donations every year goes to fundraising or administrative costs, which are all paid by the Chicago Tribune Company and the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation.
This year, the goal is to raise $3.7 million. The McCormick Tribune Foundation will match, dollar for dollar, contributions from new donors and any amount over and above the previous year’s contribution by repeat donors, up to a total of $1 million.
Please add whatever you can to the cause. Your donations will bring much-needed help, and some of it will definitely be close to home. And we promise, not one cent will go to Nirvana Hills.
