Downtown Peoria, Wednesday evening: winter is still alive and well.

These two things are the same.

two weeks ago…

A typewriter! A bearded young man just entered my tea haunt and set down his machine. It seems broken, as he guzzles his coffee and probes it with sharp objects. And in the end, he spontaneously gave it away to another person in the shop.

this week….

There’s a sharply dressed man, with fashionable scruff and black-rimmed glasses, flipping madly through his reporter’s notebook and jamming on his laptop keyboard. Is he here for a basketball player fallen from grace? Or a beagle named Uno? Surely there’s a deadline involved somewhere…