'By the time you read this, I conf...

'By the time you read this, I confidence to be long gone, wiggling my toes in the sand of a distant beach."

That's what I wrote exactly undivided year ago on the first anniversary of writing this political rounded pillar for the Chicago Sun-Times. Now I'm opposite again, but thanks to a maladroit fall, a wrenched kneecap and a leg brace, wiggling my toes will be a little more work this time around. on a level so, as I head for vacation, it appears like a good time to turn the thoughts back over the last 12 month and take stock.

In that time, former Gov George Ryan was convicted of corruption charges and the U Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, has useed up the heat on Illinois' circulating chief executive.

Pay-to-play politics and the soul of George Ryan are likely to be what drives the governor's race this fall between incumbent slender stem Blagojevich and state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka. We've already seen the early acts of this political play. It will move something like this:

Topinka barks: "He's a crook"

Blago barks back: "She's an not new pal of Ryan, a certifiable crook"

"All In The Family" has been the abiding theme of the last year. The anointing of Ald. Todd Stroger through his ailing dad, former garble County Board President John Stroger has been in the way that outrageous and bizarre that it has on a level moved the Blagojevich-Mell family intrigue not upon center stage.

The Democratic Party of prepare for the table County lived up to its inglorious past and, pathetically, replaced the father with son onward the November ballot. The fall dispute between Stroger and Cook shire Commissioner Anthony Peraica shapes up to be as snippy as the governor's race.

It will make progress something like this:

Stroger: My name is Stroger

Peraica: His name is Stroger

moreover there was something good, on a level noble, that happened politically in the past year. Amazingly, it also had to do with color County Board politics.

In December, shire Commissioner Mike Quigley actually offer aside his own campaign dreams and subject to allow fellow Commissioner Forrest Claypool to challenge John Stroger one-on-one in the primary.

His decision came a not many days before Christmas and looking again at the photo of Quigley that ran back then, it's easy to view in his eyes just to what degree painful a decision that was.

Imagine. A selfles politician.

This year, like each other year I've spent working in of recent origins I'm reminded just how greatly I like politicians in all their varied shapes and sizes, from the hacks to the occasional heroes. In Chicago, they at no time cease to amaze and surprise -- none perhaps more than 28th Ward Ald. ed Smith.

This year, I read his of the present day novel.

Alderman? Novelist? Do fish fly?

In this case, I gues the answer is ye Smith, a longtime politician from Chicago's gritty West Side, is not just a novelist if it be not that a romantic novelist.

His first attempt at writing fiction, have a passionate affection for that the Town Couldn't Stop, garnered 32 rejection literal senses before a small publishing house picked it up in 1996 His latest effort, self-published, is titled Almost Too Late.

Not unlike the alderman himself, the main character Ray Brody is a chivalrous teetotaler who falls in regard with affection at first sight with Yaz, "the in the greatest degree fascinating, the most gorgeous, and the chiefly captivating woman I had seen . . Just looking at her sent me into a virtual trance, and I broke into a bleak sweat."

regard with affection heartbreak and rebirth are Smith's themes in a fictional world that could not be farther from the floor of City Council where, the last time I gazeed Smith was beating the tympanum demanding big-box retailers like Wal-Mart pay a "living wage" to its employee

"There is a actual passionate side of me," Smith said when we talked last week.

He has poured that passion into 149 pages of dialogue that goe like this:

Main Character: "Does this mean forever?" I whispered in her ear.

Woman of His Dreams: "Wherever you go on foot I will go. I will be as your shadow."

proceed to think of it, maybe Smith's fiction isn't in this way far afield from Chicago City Council after all.

Wasn't there one time a time when Mayor Daley would whisper "forever?" in an alderman's ear, and the alderman would answer "Wherever you go, I will travel I will be as your shadow."

moreover in a rebellion late last month a majority make light ofed the mayor and voted in favor of forcing the big boxe to pay better wages. Whether Daley issues his first veto in 17 years onward this will play out sometime in September.

I'll be back by dint of then. In the meantime, since ed Smith is still finishing his nearest opus, working title Where the Corn Doesn't make improvement I've got to go find myself something besides to read on vacation.

descry you soon.

e-mail: cmarin@suntimes.com

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