Chicagoans of a certain age might be dumbstruck, I mean just gobsmacked, by the resonances of today’s news that the Sears Towers are to be renamed the Willis Towers come this May (disMay? arggghhh!). Some of us who are of a certain age, for instance, will pick up this little coincidence (I found the article by searching on "Willis wagon") and wonder at the flow of synchronicity.

By the way, "I Will" is the old motto of the City of Chicago. And the struggle with Willis (and of course, Richard J. Daley) over school segregation and the underlying real issue of equality of school expenditure within the Chicago system is part of the background, or tone-setter, to such better-known events as the arrival in Chicago of Martin Luther King, Jr. and SCLC a year or two later.

(Incidentally, yes I know this naming and leasing are private transactions. But this is Chicago, and downtown at that, we’re talking.)