Editor’s note

Gov. Pat Quinn has suggested that Illinoisans spend a few moments at their Thanksgiving table discussing the state’s pension problem. They might even set a place at the table for Squeezy, the Pension Python, the creature on the governor’s new website, thisismyillinois. com. Squeezy, so cute and adorable, threatens to choke the life out of Illinois. In this story it is unclear how Squeezy is stopped, but all turns out well. At the end of the governor’s video the state’s children offer “thanks in advance” to legislators for solving the problem. People should just stop asking what the governor, as the state’s leader, intends to do about pensions. This is it. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher

Cover: Frank Ryan, owner of The Artist’s Edge tattoo shop. Photo by Patrick Yeagle